DataIQ Future Leaders
DataIQ Future Leaders recognises individuals working in data and analytics who are on an upward career trajectory to become the next cohort of senior data leaders. Already leading teams and reporting to a CDO or CDAO, they are data professionals who are shaping the future of this industry.
Categories and selection criteria explained here.
DataIQ Future Leaders
DataIQ Future Leaders recognises individuals working in data and analytics who are on an upward career trajectory to become the next cohort of senior data leaders. Already leading teams and reporting to a CDO or CDAO, they are data professionals who are shaping the future of this industry.
Categories and selection criteria explained here.
Sanica Menezes, head of customer analytics, Aviva
Describe your career to date
I sort of ‘fell’ into a career in data. My fondness for solving puzzles, curiosity about human behaviour and love for maths made it easy to navigate the world of customer analytics. I started out as an insight analyst in a travel company, in a small, newly formed data team. As my role was less defined, I was able to work across different business verticals like pricing, marketing, strategy. This gave me a rounded experience of applying mathematical concepts I learnt at university in the real world.
I then moved to a retail analytics consultancy to work with bigger and more complex data, building on my technical skills. I was fascinated by how much we could learn about customer behaviour through the power of data. This exposed me to the growing importance of data as a key enabler of customer centricity. However, working in a consultancy had its drawbacks - while the projects were exciting, I felt further removed from the actual decision-making process, making it hard to influence change.
So, I decided to seek client-side opportunities as it would bring me closer to the decision-making process. At this point, I joined Aviva, who were investing heavily in their customer, digital and data capabilities. Our data function has since grown in size, stature and maturity and I’m proud to have been part of that journey. I now lead a small team of data scientists and analysts helping the business get closer to customers and optimising end-to-end customer experiences.
Tell us about the data and analytics resources you are responsible for
I lead an incredibly motivated and diverse team of seven data scientists and analysts, who partner with the business units to embed the best of data science, digital and marketing analytics. This covers a breadth of capabilities, from shaping the customer strategy and propositions with data, to embedding data-driven marketing and journey optimisations. I also work very closely with our machine learning and data engineering teams to ensure that we’re building data products that will shift the needle on our business and customer metrics.
While historically working in silos, we have now started to work together on a more joined-up, value-prioritised roadmap – allowing us to champion the customer and data-enabled decisioning in ways we haven’t before. It’s exciting to see what we can achieve when we work collaboratively.
Tell us about any ambitions you have in terms of becoming a data leader.
I’m passionate about helping businesses understand their customers better. Data is a great enabler of that. However, good insight doesn’t always lead to action. My ambition is to be able to influence both upstream and downstream of the data value chain to ensure we’re making the most of our data assets. This means working across the organisation to ensure we’re asking the right questions for the right problems and have the right processes and culture to ensure adoption.
We can’t effect change without talented teams. I want to grow and nurture more equitable and diverse data teams, leveraging the breadth of skills, experiences and thinking. It’s reassuring to see we’re making good strides in this direction already.
I also believe that data can play a bigger role in helping businesses achieve their sustainability ambitions. We piloted a “data giving” hack that provided a great platform for our teams to come together to volunteer their skills for a charity, while also using this as an opportunity for their development.
Ultimately, my aim is to see a greater adoption of data as a driver of tangible value to the business, the end customer, and our community.
DataIQ is a trading name of IQ Data Group Limited
10 York Road, London, SE1 7ND
Phone: +44 020 3821 5665
Registered in England: 9900834
Copyright © IQ Data Group Limited 2024