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Amy Ryder, Data Adoption and Enablement Manager, Jaguar Land Rover

Amy Ryder, Data Adoption and Enablement Manager, Jaguar Land Rover

Describe your career to date

After studying chemistry at the University of Nottingham, I joined Jaguar Land Rover as a graduate in the newly formed analytics team. I was part of the first cohort of analytics grads and had some incredible opportunities working on a variety of projects, learning about different areas of the business, and setting up the first analytics and data community.

Putting the foundations in place, building an analytics portal and community forum, running cross functional networking events, and the first iteration of a power user training programme. All things that we still do today.

A milestone project for me was leading the migration to Tableau Online and roll out as an enterprise tool. Defining how a platform could be used to enable and encourage collaboration across the organisation and supporting over 3,000 creators to migrate their own content.

In 2021, I was one of the founding members of JLR’s first data office and built up the data adoption and enablement team within that. Since then, we’ve expanded our focus to establish a broader data training strategy, grown the data community and are helping the business to transform and deliver value from data.

Tell us about the data and analytics resources you are responsible for

I work in our data adoption and enablement team, we’re a team of five focused on maximising the value our end users can achieve using data. We lead on data training programmes, building the data community and run events to support and embed a data culture. I manage our relationship with vendors such as Tableau and our internal data platform team to ensure data tools have the right enablement and support in place for successful adoption.

Most recently this included managing our engagement with Tableau professional services to deliver six-week adoption campaigns across the business; from securing sponsorship for data skills to upskilling over 5,000 colleagues across the business.

Tell us about any ambitions you have in terms of becoming a data leader

Currently I’m excited about building on the work we’ve done focusing on data visualisation and Tableau to expand to represent the broader data landscape; taking advantage of the community that are excited and eager to work with data and inspiring them to improve the management, quality, and maturity of our data. As we mature as an organisation, the opportunities build and I am so inspired to see the successes that my colleagues are having on their own data journeys.

What key skills or attributes do you consider will be essential to your success in this role?

A data transformation is fundamentally about people, so change management, communication and coordination are all key. This also means being empathetic to the struggles they currently face working with data and making the topic of data relevant to people across the business in terms that make sense to them and opportunities or consequences they can relate to.

How did you develop – and continue to develop – your current skills or attributes?

I’m fortunate to have always been part of an amazing team of highly skilled individuals from a whole variety of backgrounds, so I try to learn as much as I can from them. I also learning from peers in different organisations, say yes to different opportunities and figure things out as I go. I am careful to ensure that I set time aside to develop myself – within my team we spend so much time advocating for the learning and development of others, we need to make sure we prioritise our own time to develop.

And what about the skills of your data teams and of your business stakeholders? How are you supporting their data literacy?

One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to data literacy, so we’ve partnered with our learning academy to deliver a varied programme with different offerings on topics and learning methods.

We introduced a “data 101” training programme to educate people on the foundations of why we’re working with data and what some of the possibilities are. We’re partnering with Multiverse to run the Data Fellowship Apprentice programme, which 500 colleagues across the business are currently undertaking to upskill in data and digital skills.

We’ve done a lot in the past few years by partnering with Tableau to roll out Tableau as an enterprise tool, including running training programmes for both creators and consumers. To support the enablement, we’ve got a strong community of champions and super users willing to help each other, share advice and showcase their projects to inspire their peers. One of the things we have planned for this year is our first data festival within Jaguar Land Rover – bringing lots of people together to learn, network and have fun.

How do you keep pace or stay in touch with your peer group? Do you see it as important to have an active professional network?

One of the ways I stay connected with my peers is through co-leading the Community Drivers Tableau User Group. We’re a user group who brings together individuals from different businesses who are all trying to build their own data communities. This group has been invaluable in sharing ideas, chatting about problems, and reinforcing that the challenges we struggle with are the same ones that others are facing – we are all on this journey together.

Amy Ryder
has been included in:

Future Leaders 2023 (EMEA)

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