Enabling Data as a Strategic Asset for Barfoot & Thompson

Background

Barfoot & Thompson, a leading real estate company in New Zealand, embarked on a Data Strategy and Governance initiative to grow the business, ensure regulatory compliance and optimise data management practices. They were in the midst of implementing a multi-year business strategy that highlighted the significance of data as a strategic asset. However, the absence of a cohesive framework and the availability of internal expertise posed significant challenges in realising their strategic objectives.

The Challenges

• Identifying the future limitations of the existing data platform.
• The solution needed to cater for long term capabilities and complexities i.e. data governance, data security and quality, advanced analytics, and a complex issue of data ownership.
• The team’s capabilities, although broad, were limited due to size. Therefore, any tools and technology chosen needed to cater to the team’s ability to support the solution in-house.
• Third party expertise was being sought to formulate and assist in the execution of key steps in the data strategy.

The Solution

• The solution was to define the process and key steps of a data strategy that would help Barfoot & Thompson meet their data aspirations.
• Conducted a thorough assessment of the existing data platform to understand the current technology, people, and process capabilities within a data strategy delivery framework. This highlighted the enablement activities and gaps that needed to be addressed to meet the long-term business data and analytics vision.
• Provided Barfoot & Thompson with recommendations and a framework to implement a modern data platform, including Minimum Viable Product (MVP) execution plan.
• Assisted in defining and refining key business use cases to ensure that the data strategy and execution are driven by business needs rather than solely by technology.
• Highlighted areas where organisational, process, or requirement gaps existed, all of which require addressing irrespective of the chosen technologies.
• Became a trusted consulting partner to the CIO for matters related to data, with Barfoot & Thompson proceeding with implementing incremental data initiatives that align with the organisation’s business strategy timelines.

Outcomes

• Provided Barfoot & Thompson with recommendations and a framework to implement a modern data platform, including Minimum Viable Product (MVP) execution plan.
• Assisted in defining and refining key business use cases to ensure that the data strategy and execution are driven by business needs rather than solely by technology.
• Highlighted areas where organisational, process, or requirement gaps exist, all of which require addressing irrespective of the chosen technologies.
• Became a trusted consulting partner to the CIO for matters related to data, with Barfoot & Thompson proceeding with implementing incremental data initiatives that align with the organisation’s business strategy timelines.

“We established a high level of trust with the team at Data Domain. Their expertise and experience was highly valuable and they were able to accelerate our data strategy and data roadmap.”
– Simon Casey, CIO, Barfoot & Thompson