Lorenzo Bavasso, data and AI director - digital, BT Group
Describe your career to date
Starting out as a tech profile (I am an engineer, after all) in consulting, my career has always been about transformation and putting new capabilities at the service of the business. I quickly moved from backend to web applications, from internal processes to customer journeys and omnichannel transformation.
In all these steps I have been always involved in data initiatives, from data quality, integration and visualisation to business intelligence and finally big data and data and AI.
I didn’t start small there, but with a big programme aiming to create one platform to be used internationally, to store and exploit a large amount of data. I learned the challenges of big data in on-premises infrastructure the hard way and also how to lead what I still believe is one of the deepest transformations a company can go through: the shift to being data driven.
I worked more and more between business and tech to create that mix between capability and culture that can make it all tick, and I have never stopped since then.
I am now in my third company as a senior data leader, building on the learnings and driving structural ’data posture’ change for BT, creating what is now the template for the company in terms of approach and operating model.
What stage has your organisation reached on its data maturity journey?
We have come a long way and although there is still work to do, we are going to end this year above industry overall (my unit is well above already) in terms of our maturity in managing data. There is still work to be done on data quality and governance to speed up the exploitation and the wider digital transformation will definitely help.
Tell us about the data and analytics resources you are responsible for
Between permanent staff (over 200) and consultants (200/300) I manage around 500 resources between engineers, architects, analytics, data scientists, data governance experts and data product owners. It is an extremely diverse team, lots of backgrounds and different ideas flowing, and people based in the UK, India, Hungary, and France. The diversity of the team is a very important element that I always promote. It is where ideas flow, where different perspectives help, where different styles can drive the best results.
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