Where it all began: Finding Business and Data
I started my career as a programmer in COBOL, RPG400, and Unix. After a few years, I decided that was enough. Not because I didn’t like technology, but because I realized something uncomfortable early on. I could build things, but I didn’t really understand what value meant to the business. So I moved to the front-end of ERP. Three years immersed in how the business actually ran. Orders, processes, constraints, trade-offs. The messy reality and that’s when the penny dropped. Business is cool and crazy! I needed to learn more!
I then joined a new company as the number-2 business analyst and went straight into efficiency-focused projects. Soon after, I got wind of a CRM program kicking off. I helped run the procurement, then moved from analysis into implementation and training. I loved it! CRM felt different, it was about customers, relationships, understanding needs, not just systems.
Then in 2002, my boss called. The CEO had decided I was being promoted and was being sent to New York, and I would be looking after a team responsible for customer management, catalogue subscriptions and supporting strategic marketing.
What I didn’t realize until I landed was this. I had effectively become the first data person in the company. Did I know what that meant? Not a clue. So I did the only sensible thing I could think of. I went back to first principles, and good old-fashioned business analysis and a dose of common sense.
I wrote down three things:
- Speak to stakeholders about their business lines
- Understand the problems they were dealing with and validate them
- Articulate the business benefits if those problems were fixed
That was it really. No tools, no platforms and no hunting for vendors. The something interesting happened. The business lines started to embrace what we were doing.
Why? Because:
- I had built trust and listened.
- I understood the business, because I was curious.
- I framed solutions through value, benefit, and opportunity, not technology. (tools were pretty scarce in those days!)
Everything else came later. Tools, tech, architecture, and because of that sequencing, we avoided a lot of unnecessary spend and a lot of elegant solutions to the wrong problems.
Being the first data person in a company is exciting and always has been. Back then we didn’t have today’s tooling, but we did have something even more important:
- Proximity to the business and clarity on what actually generates value.
So here’s the question for those racing toward platforms, stacks, and shiny new tools in the age of AI. Do you know where the value lies or are you hoping the technology will figure it out for you?
