Sam Stafford, Chief Digital Officer, LifeSearch
Describe your career to date
I have been working with data for the last 25 years and I am just as passionate about the value that data can add to organisations, customers, and society, now as I was back then.
I graduated from Leeds University with a degree in Operational Research and Statistics, and I have found that this combination of maths, computer science, stats, and problem solving, have shaped my career ever since. I have had many different roles, starting out in Predictive Analytics, moving into Consultancy, then Data Science, and now in the latest chapter of my career I am Chief Digital Office for a mid-sized, marketing leading and ambitious insurance broker.
It has not always been plain sailing. I have had to face challenges; working in a risk team for a credit card company in the run up to the financial crisis in 2007-2008 was no easy task. I have tried to walk away from the industry completely at least twice, but somehow, I have always come back. My career has bought many highlights too. I have built hundreds of models that have been used to promote offers, recommend products, set credit limits, and provide access loans and mortgages, among many other weird and wonderful things. I have won awards for helping charities fundraise through better analytics, targeted campaigns, and market segmentations. However, best of all, I have got to work with some amazing people. I learnt so much from the people that I have worked over these years, and I cannot thank them enough. I have also been fortunate to have the opportunity to manage and lead teams for the last 15 years, and during that time I enjoyed coaching and mentoring many people and trying to give them freedom to express themselves and inspire others.
In the latest chapter in my career, I am looking forward to bringing together everything that I have learnt over the last 25 years to help drive forward innovation and excellence with data.
Data literacy is a key enabler of the value and impact from data. How are you approaching this within your organisation?
I was bought into the organisation to drive forward data maturity and literacy.
I have tried to lead by example, and each week myself or one of my team take the senior leadership team through a series of reports to show how the business is performing. By creating a regular time each week to focus on the interpretation of the data, I have been able to continually promote a data-driven culture and evidence-based decision making, at the same time as pointing out some of the challenges and limitations of the data that we have currently.
The approach highlighted the importance of good data management and governance, and as a result, I have been given significant scope to modernise our data tech stack. I have strengthened the data team and bought in external support through a well-respected agency. There is still a long way to go, but as we migrate data to the new platform, we can address concerns and produce a trusted set of reports. Now that the data is more accessible and trusted, we are also starting to enrich the data with new data sources, and I hope that this will showcase the benefits of good, varied data.
I manage our IT, Product and Change teams, as well as the Data team. The structure means that we can put data at the heart of our transformation initiatives. At times, I have found that the data, reporting, and analytical requirements are not given enough consideration when designing products, new services, or applications. However, I can change the narrative, and ensure that data is at the heart of the requirements.
Finally, looking outside of my team, with the support of colleagues from across the business, we have created a pilot team to test new data driven approaches and applications. The team is intended to help break down barriers between the data, the technology, and the end user. The team has been established for a few months and we have seen great results, so much so that we are expecting to extend the trial for the foreseeable future.
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