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David Todd, Global Head of Data and Analytics, Meggitt Aerospace

What has been your path to power?

The importance of data has always fascinated me and my background in programming gave me a good understanding of why (especially the data quality elements). As my career developed, I moved steadily away from the detailed technical aspects and started to become more aware of how data could be exploited to drive business value and benefit through business intelligence. I grew a perception of how data can help drive success and is essential for the whole of a business. (It’s not just an IT thing!). 

 

Moving between some very large retail businesses, I grew my awareness and understanding of data across a multi-channel environment with a focus on e-commerce and supply chain. My experience of the end-to-end business processes and understanding of data and technology then helped me to drive a number of data and analytics transformations, bringing a data-driven approach into the forefront of decision-making. 

 

Most recently I moved into the manufacturing sector, specifically aerospace, which has opened up a world of interesting opportunities for me to use data in order to drive process improvements, identify operational efficiencies and streamline customer opportunities.

 

What impact has the pandemic had on the role of data in your company/organisation?

The pandemic has had a big impact on many industries, but aerospace has had one of the biggest hits. Borders were closed as lockdowns were implemented and a huge proportion of daily flights were cancelled as aircraft were grounded. Orders for spare parts subsequently started to drop and some orders for new aircraft were cancelled or put on hold, impacting our sales order flow. 

 

The business needed to know what was happening to orders, production and finance on a day-by-day basis, much more regularly than they knew they needed before. Demand for data across the business suddenly increased and also started to expose the known issues and holes in our legacy reporting suites. Luckily, the projects needed to upgrade our data solutions had already been drafted and were expedited to help meet the growing requirements. Data is now playing a much bigger part in key discussions and decisions across the business with reporting automation being a big driver.

Does data now have a seat at the table during strategic discussions? If not, what will it take to get it there?

Data is higher on the agenda than ever before and the output is being used to help strategic discussions across all areas and levels of the business. However, the data being used still tends to be backward-looking and includes trends over the last few years alongside manually produced forecasts. We are starting to drive pilots, using data analysis, to provide an automated forward-looking view based on what is known and past patterns. This will increase the value of data and insight during strategic discussions and I expect that the use of data will increase when this is unlocked.

What are your key areas of focus for data and analytics in 2022?

Many of our business requirements, reports and data dashboards look at trends and actions that are in the past. Whilst it is important to be able to see what has happened in order to understand and learn from the root cause of past issues, more value can be gained by understanding what the data is telling us is likely to happen in the future. Action becomes proactive rather than reactive. Driving this forward-looking view is key to our 2022 data and analytics agenda, helping to identify and improve poor operational performance and drive proactive actions in our sites and functions.

 

Tell us what leadership means to you in the context of your role as a senior data leader.

For me, leadership in data is about a desire to understand thoroughly the business issues which we are trying to use data to solve.  Talking to stakeholders and ensuring that data is driving actions and making simple, but measureable improvements. Pragmatism is key, building a simple dashboard that drives priorities and valuable insight is much more powerful than an extensive and complex dashboard that nobody understands or uses.

 

What key skills or attributes do you consider have contributed to your success in this role?

I have found my ability to understand and talk in both business and technical language hugely important in my aim to help bring together a business case and ensure that the technology is being used to drive actual business value. Sponsorship and belief across all levels of the organisation needs to be earned, but is vital to the success of a data leader and a data team.

 

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

I try to spend as much time as possible with business leadership and also with teams at sites to hear about and see the issues that are impacting our operational effectiveness and customer understanding. Turning this understanding into insight through data is both helping the business not only to understand and deal with issues, but also to gain an appreciation and thirst for data across the business. Challenging and identifying new opportunities is key to building business relationships and also helps develop my business understanding and influencing skills.

Is the data tech you have keeping pace with your goals and requirements? Are your providers leading or lagging behind your demands?

We’ve recently upgraded our data system technology and are starting to use a mix of traditional data warehousing with cloud-based data lake technology while introducing our business to interactive data visualisation following many years of static, tabular-based reports. This has helped transform the data service that is offered to our business. 

 

However, as the demands change and increase we are starting to see some challenges with the technology, especially in the areas of integration and assuring quality during data entry. Our providers are helping us answer and overcome the questions we have, however it’s not always as easy as it feels it should be!

David Todd
has been included in:
  • 100 Brands 2019 (EMEA)
  • 100 Brands 2020 (EMEA)
  • 100 Brands 2022 (EMEA)
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