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Tony Kreager

Tony Kreager, Senior Vice President, Data Engineering and Data Science, FedEx Dataworks

Describe your career to date    

I started my career at FedEx in digital marketing and software automation where I had the opportunity to design and work on some of our biggest technology initiatives, including our API First Platform and native mobile development. My time in this space was foundational for my career because it helped me gain a better understanding of our customer – their needs, interactions, and the importance of logistics on their business – and it’s where I found my passion for technology and innovation. I later moved into IT, which was a natural progression for me and allowed me to explore our business from a different lens. Throughout my early career, I was fortunate to work with leaders who encouraged me to push boundaries and be limitless in my belief of what’s possible – not just for FedEx, but for our industry as a whole.  

 

Today, I’m the senior vice president of data engineering and data science at FedEx Dataworks, which began three years ago as a small team of people tasked with harnessing the immense amount of data generated by our physical network to create digital supply chain solutions. We’ve grown rapidly over the past few years, and organizational design and culture are huge focus areas for me today. From day one, we’ve embraced a start-up mentality, and I’ve been very intentional about building a team environment where experimentation, customer empathy, risk taking, and iterative problem solving can thrive. These are the values that have carried me through my career, and I strive to create a space where my team can embrace these values as well.  

What stage has your organization reached on its data maturity journey?    

At FedEx we’ve always understood the importance of data, and historically we’ve been very good at data analytics. Today, we’re focused on using data as an engine for rapid value creation and problem solving. Over the past few years, we’ve built a central enterprise data platform that is intended to serve as the digital twin of our physical network. The platform, coupled with our data science practice, is supporting new use cases every day – both for our own business and for our customers.  

 

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

My organization today is about 200 people and it includes a variety of functions within the engineering and data science space including data engineers, software engineers, data analysts, data scientists, cloud ops engineers, site reliability engineers, and security team members. We are a multi-national team, and the diversity of disciplines within our organization supports our philosophy of building autonomous, end-to-end teams who are only dependent on each other to deliver value.  

  

 

What challenges do you see for data in the year ahead that will have an impact on your organization and on the industry as a whole?    

The macro-economic headwinds that we’re all experiencing will undoubtedly create challenges for all companies to scale their data driven and digital strategies in a constrained expense environment. However, companies that are far enough in their data journey and understand the power of their data will lean in even more to further optimize their business while delivering differentiated solutions that create additional value. At FedEx Dataworks, we call this the flywheel effect. By leaning into a central platform, the investments we make in one solution always feed back into the core platform driving the optimization and advancements of all our digital solutions. This allows us to create new value for our internal stakeholders, such as operations, and external customers at speed, scale, and the right economics.   

 

Have you set out a vision for data? If so, what is it aiming for and does it embrace the whole organization or just the data function? 

At FedEx, we believe we have one of the richest, cross-functional data sets in existence. This comes from our massive physical network that connects 99% of the world’s GDP and supports nearly every industry vertical – from healthcare, to aerospace, to e-commerce. Our mission is to put that data to work, and create digital solutions that support smarter, more resilient supply chains for our customers and help put FedEx on a path to new possibilities.     

Tony Kreager
Tony Kreager
has been included in:
  • 100 Brands 2023 (USA)

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