Tom Brown, managing director, The Information Lab
Describe your career to date
I have worked in technology since the mid-1990s, programming and implementing ERP solutions initially. This early experience taught me the tools and techniques to work with data, giving me the building blocks for the later part of my career.
During 2005, I founded by first company, Concentra, which was a tech firm specialising in building bespoke web applications. These applications created large amounts of data and hence it was inevitable that I would end up creating the data analytics within our company. This led me to the most important moment in my career, partnering with Tableau Software.
Once I began working with Tableau, I knew I had to build a new company to exercise my addiction to their software. The Information Lab started life as a Tableau partner to resell their software and provide consulting services to support companies who had invested in Tableau. Within a few years, we had expanded our software portfolio to include Alteryx and these two products remain our flagship solutions today. We are now one of the leading partners for both Tableau and Alteryx globally.
In 2015, The Information Lab embarked on a huge expansion of our headcount through our new training programme, The Data School. We have since trained over 400 new data analysts and helped provide a springboard into the career we have all been enjoying for so long. Alumni from The Data School are now working all over the world as evangelists for data and many are teaching the next generation.
What key skills or attributes do you consider have contributed to your success in this role?
I have a huge curiosity and scepticism for any numeric or statistical information. I am immediately drawn to analytics because of this and hence my deep fascination for Tableau was assured. As my career has developed, I have grown to love seeing young people propelled into new careers, many of whom thought they would never get a foothold in the world of data.
What level of data maturity do you typically encounter across your client base and what tends to hold this back?
We have worked with over 2,000 clients in 10 countries since founding The Information Lab in 2010 and I would say that the level of data maturity in our client base is low and getting lower. The reduction in data maturity over time comes from the fact that we are now meeting the late adopters in the data revolution - technologies to make sense of data have been widely available for 20 years - hence anyone moving on from Excel for the first time is extremely late to the party.
Clients are held back from a deeper understanding of how to work with data because of a long held belief that data isn’t for everyone. In the same way that the typing pool was replaced by everyone being able to use word processors and email, one day, the business intelligence department will be replaced by everyone being able to work effectively with data. Organisations that realise this and rush towards the time when every employee is comfortable working with data will win the day.
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