Headline Partner

Damien Judge, Head of Data, RBS International

Describe your career to date

From starting out as a Junior Software Developer coding in Pascal and COBOL to Heading Data, Analytics and Cloud for an offshore bank, it has been an interesting and exciting journey. Shortly after starting coding, I discovered SQLServer databases and realised the significance of data in any organisation. BT enabled me to explore and design early versions of Single View of Customer (I called it customer repository) as more and more products were introduced, and customers and staff wanted access to information in an instant. This access to data meant customer support teams felt empowered, customer experience improved, management had means to measure productivity, and sales opportunities spiked.

In Ulster Bank, I combined the Data and Analytics team with the CRM team and discovered the analytics we were producing now had a portal in which improve customer experience. A world first artificial intelligence (AI) driven next best product recommendation engine was implemented. This almost instantly provided targeted leads driving vastly improved sales figures.

I get enthralled every time data solves or uncovers insights that benefit our colleagues or customers. I want to empower my team and organisation to use data in the most productive and safe way possible. The speed of change is getting faster, customer expectation rising, governance increasing, technology improving, and AI is going to exponentially change just about everything. As exciting as the last 25 years have been, I truly believe the best is yet to come.

How are you developing the data literacy of your organisation, including the skills of your data teams and of your business stakeholders?

Firstly, to assess our organisational data maturity within the NatWest Group, and sub-sequentially bench mark ourselves externally. Secondly, plans are advancing to identify skills and knowledge gaps and set out learning trails not just for our Data team, but all staff including ExCo members.

Our amazing NatWest Data Academy has vast resources available to address just about all data upskilling. Data Camp has also been incorporated into learning plans and league tables produced to monitor data literacy engagement.

In 2024, developmental targets will be set at organisational, team, and individual level. Professional qualifications will be supported where appropriate along with attendance at key Data events, conferences and roundtables. RBSI’s CEO is driving a tone from the top communications agenda from early 2023 and we will seek to develop this further.

Joining DataIQ in 2024 will allow RBSI to avail of the vast learning and networking opportunities from the resources readily available. I intend to leverage the contacts that DataIQ provide to gather insights into Cloud migrations and governance best practice. David Reed has already delivered a workshop on governance to my Leadership team which was very well received. Additional master classes will be added throughout 2024.

Have you been able to fix the data foundations of your organisation, particularly with regard to data quality?

RBSI are on a multi-year end to end data improvement journey. The foundations to address this were established in 2023. Four main data pillars have been identified: Roles and Responsibilities, Controls framework, Reviews and Assurance, and Data Architecture. To date, Roles and Responsibilities has involved ExCo members accepting responsibility for data across their area. A robust controls framework been approved and in operation, along with regular reviews and assessment through Data OpCo and Data Steering Committees.

Data architectural reviews have begun, and plans are expected to be advanced throughout 2024 in association with NatWest Group. Significantly, business outcomes have been prioritised, KDEs agreed with associated thresholds against each ExCo member for reporting at Data OpCo and ExCo with remediation planning or risk acceptance. This is a key step to improving our data holistically. Overall, nine work-streams and 26 focus areas have been established, with lower-level actions detailing the what, how much, and by when questions. Some other supporting activities have been enacted; a data issues register to enable logging and resourcing of data improvements. A Data community of practice forum, data champions in each business area.

Definitions of what data remediation entails have been circulated to include fix front door and upstream and downstream impact analysis. Data improvements have been classified into several areas of focus, technology and system fixes, manual data repair, front line validation and changes, and business review. RBSI are on a data improvement journey, however the foundations and framework in which to move forward have been firmly laid.

Damien Judge
has been included in:

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