(US & Canada) VIDEO | CDAOs Have to Be Creative to Find What Works Best — Artera Services CDAO

(US and Canada) Balaram Krishna Tidhi, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Artera Services, speaks with Michael C Fillios, Founder and CEO of IT Ally and CDO Magazine Editorial Board Member, in a video interview about being in sync with business, agile mindset, establishing trust, implementing hub and spoke model, The Project Moneyball, leveraging Power BI, data management strategies, and importance of having face-time.

At the onset, Tidhi seeks to ensure that all organizational initiatives are in sync with the business strategy and board’s vision. He adds that the quarterly readouts with the leadership help with being aligned and prioritizing or deprioritizing strategy changes. Additionally, having an agile mindset aids in managing the backlog. Also, sometimes one project of an operating business can have significant value for others and the company helps businesses by picking up that value and spreading it across organizations.

Further, Tidhi says it boils down to maintaining a balance to establish organizational trust. To ensure timely communication, having quarterly checkpoints is the key, and Tidhi utilizes personal connections and face time to be relevant.

Moving forward, Tidhi states that Artera implemented a hub-and-spoke setup with a central team consisting of data scientists and analytics engineers, which is a combination of data engineering and business analysts. The company provides business and technology-oriented training to its staff, enabling them to understand the business deeply. This has placed them closer to their business. The training is supplemented with design thinking sessions.

Next, Tidhi explains that his team began with Project Moneyball for data management, which is a combination of data governance and data quality. Within this, the company created a playbook that explains which data falls under which bracket. In addition, the company uses Power BI to deliver reports, as it helps to track the utilization of the generated reports. To assess the quality of the reports the company uses color coding, and to avoid being too critical of the data, the quality rating is given a green for its first quarter.

Furthermore, Tidhi affirms using Azure Purview for data governance and that the team writes scripts on the backend to carry out basic checks on the data, models, and reports. This indicates the quality of the critical data elements which have interested them. Setting this up helps to monitor if uninformed data changes and assess data degradation. This process helps to address the issue and maintain the data while sticking to the CRISP-DM framework and access management policies.

Thereafter, Tidhi affirms that Moneyball was the first step in the door initiating a journey of enabling a data-driven mindset in the organization. According to him, this is a part of the change management the company is looking to adopt, looking to see what works and what does not in the given culture. He reckons that a CDAO’s role is to be creative and find what works best for the organization.

In conclusion, Tidhi states that having a feedback loop and intentional face-time with senior leadership as guests in team meetings can play a big role in team success. He asserts that even 10-15 minutes of face time can give a massive boost to the team and help them understand their impact on the business.

CDO magazine appreciates Balaram Krishna Tidhi for sharing valuable insights and data success stories with our global community.

See more from Balaram Krishna Tidhi

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