$62M in savings, a year ahead of schedule
The Challenge
AstraZeneca needed to insource 202 outsourced data & analytics roles across a globally distributed organisation of 100,000+ people, while simultaneously building a commercial data foundation for self-service reporting for thousands of global users. Two concurrent programmes with a combined budget of ~$15M, at director level with full financial accountability.
The Outcome
The insourcing programme delivered a full year ahead of schedule, scaling the analytics function from 77 to 250+ people and establishing governance, team structures, and engagement models to absorb that talent sustainably. The commercial reporting programme built a trusted data foundation for self-service analytics, standardising KPIs and enabling faster commercial decisions. Four business units were aligned around a shared analytics vision and a multi-year strategy, shifting the function to a consultative, ROI-driven model.
A new channel-partner strategy, from discovery to national data products
The Challenge
The Met Office asked me to lead a discovery project into a genuinely new idea for the organisation: whether Weather and Climate data could be delivered through channel partners rather than direct to customers. It challenged the existing status quo. Working with major data platform partners (ESRI, Snowflake, AWS and Microsoft), I ran customer interviews, gathered requirements, built proofs of concept, and set the recommendation.
The Outcome
The discovery made the case for the channel-partner model, and we then implemented it. One product was accelerated ahead of the original timeline: the Climate Data Portal launched at the 2022 ESRI conference. I went on to lead the Alpha and Beta phases, with the Air Quality Data Portal following. Both portals are now embedded in the Met Office's publicly reported long-term national strategy, and the channel-partner approach opened the door to further partner opportunities.
Smaller engagements matter too
Not every engagement is a $15M programme. I've helped a single person in a one-person PMO cut a full day's manual work down to five minutes. I've helped growing businesses build their first trusted reporting layer. The scale changes. The quality of thinking doesn't.