Robert Barbour, Group Data and Insights Director, Travis Perkins

Describe your career to date

 

After completing my BSc Hons in Computer Science and an MSc in Computational Methods and Imaging in Medicine, I came to a crossroads between embarking on an industry-sponsored PhD in Medical Imaging and Poisson statistics or moving into industry.  

 

After careful consideration, I chose a consulting career, joining Accenture as a graduate. I spent 13 fantastic progressive career years with Accenture working globally on large-scale transformation projects in Asia, Europe, the UK, and Africa in Government, Comms & High Tech, and Banking sectors and throughout this my primary discipline and expertise was data engineering and analytics. Due to the large-scale programmes I worked on, I obtained experience across all parts of the delivery lifecycle and worked closely with business change teams. As a result of this, I was recognised as an SME in my field and was asked to conduct quality assurance reviews on data-led programmes across the EMEA region. As I progressed into senior management, I also gained fantastic experience in commercial, sales, and senior stakeholder management.   

 

Overall, this broad experience gave me a unique foundation to move from consulting into industry and this was recognised by Travis Perkins PLC, the UK’s largest distributor of building materials, where I initially was recruited as Head of Data, before rising to Data Director in 2019. In 2020 I became Group Data and Insights Director, covering all data aspects: Data Privacy, Data Governance, Data and Analytics Engineering, and Data Science.  

 
The Group has 20,000 colleagues and 1,400 branches, and its scale and size provides a great data and digital opportunity. I advocate using data for good and creating a data conscience in our organisation through education, cultural change, and innovation. In 2021, this enabled me to initiate the launch of our Data Academy and data apprenticeship to improve colleagues’ data and analytical skills and understanding and promote data as a key enabler for modernising our business and the construction. Due to the continually maturing data capability, we won a global Google Customer Award in Construction. 

I am a BCS Fellow and a passionate sponsor and ally for the Women in Data network in our business. Last Year I was appointed as Non-Executive Director to the GS1 UK Supervisory Board, representing the UK construction sector in championing its data use, and in accelerating digitisation across our supply chains, and developing improved capabilities in sustainability reporting, building safety, and traceability. I am frequently invited to speak about our achievements, most recently at Google Next in London and the UK Construction Week at the NEC Arena in Birmingham. 

Data literacy is a key enabler of the value and impact from data. How are you approaching this within your organisation?  

 

We currently utilise several ways to develop data literacy, from data apprenticeships to more bespoke data training catalogues covering data privacy, analytics, data science, and data governance. 

In August 2021, we launched data apprenticeships group-wide in partnership with Multiverse, providing three data apprenticeship levels from entry-level data literacy to advanced data science. We have had over 100 colleagues participating, and 39% of the participants identify as female. We continued this approach over 2023 with another 40 colleagues. In addition, we launched a data and digital module that will be part of our 40-plus leap apprentice programmes to support the advancement of a data conscience across our current and future workforce. The data academy’s availability to all is the key to creating an influential data community across the group. 

How are you preparing your organisation for AI adoption and change management?  

 

We have been using AI across several brands for over two years. Our data teams in the business have developed neural-network based customer segmentations, enabling them to be proactive with their customer engagement and use other data science use cases. 

 

Still, with the evolution and surge in generative AI (genAI), we as an organisation have set up a genAI working group in line with our existing hub and spoke operating model across our different brands. The key objectives of this group are to enable ethical and responsible genAI innovation to empower our business colleagues and provide a channel of genAI policies and upskilling into our business spokes, who will become the go-to genAI champions in their business units. 

 

Our head of enterprise architecture and I co-chair this group. We treat AI and genAI as a team sport where the technology, data, and business teams work harmoniously, ensuring we focus on the correct use cases ethically and responsibly. We are working closely with Google as our technology partner, utilising their training and education programmes. We have several trial use cases in flight that we are testing and learning to empower our front-line colleagues and provide augmented intelligence to help them better service customers. 

Robert Barbour
has been included in:
  • 100 Brands 2023 (EMEA)
  • 100 Brands 2024 (EMEA)

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