KIERAN POYNTON - Director of Data and Analytics at Bromford

Sponsored by Accenture

Talk to Kieran about data and you’ll not only see his eyes light up, you’ll also feel his passion for the subject flow through to you.

His thrilling career so far has seen Kieran building data platforms for household names, living and working in Germany for adidas creating their data mesh concept, and now using data to enable his customers to thrive at BromfordFlagship, one of the biggest housing associations in the country.

Kieran talked to us about the importance of people, purpose and bringing data teams closer to customer-facing functions to drive the most value.

You’ve had a varied background across many industries and roles. Can you explain a bit about your background and some of your learnings along the way?

My love of data and computers really started with computer games. I became fascinated with how computer games were designed and built and I always wanted to learn more. I was an average student at school and never really excelled. I was always told that I don’t apply myself enough, the truth is, I was getting bored with the subjects I was learning. This caused me to leave school at sixteen and move to my local technical college where I started on a NDC in Computer Science and later carried on to a HDN and then a top-up degree.

I loved being at college, I was able to focus on subjects that excited me and I finally got to understand the effort that goes into programming, building computers and technical design concepts. Not just for games, but also applications. I learned how to focus on user requirements, create designs and then finally build applications that could be used by others. Over my career I’ve held positions as a software developer, architect, engineer, manager and now I focus on the leadership of all those disciplines

What did you learn from your time at college and university?

My key learnings from being at college and University were that they don’t always prepare you for the real-world. I was expecting to take everything I learned and apply it all to work, in short this doesn't match up one on one. In academia, you are given a brief and can treat this like waterfall development as the requirements are set in stone and never change. In the real world, you often have to deal with shifting stakeholders, requirements, priorities and resources. This requires a different approach, mindset and requires a lot of resilience. Ensuring that you take your data product owner on the whole journey, from design to final development is crucial to build accountability and ownership and also guarantee that the product will be used in the end.

You’ve also worked abroad, how did that come about?

I had just finished up building a new data platform for a large food retail company. This was my baby and my first end-to-end responsibility of driving data strategy, business case approval and design and development of the data platform. I poured my heart and soul into getting this right.

One day, I got a message on LinkedIn from an internal adidas recruiter who was impressed with my profile and wanted me to interview for a few new roles they had. A month or so later, I was offered one of the roles and my wife and I were packing up to move to Nuremberg, Germany. I feel so lucky to have worked for adidas. It was a great experience to work on a campus of over 6500 colleagues, to get to experience so many different cultures and also be so far out of my comfort zone having to learn a new industry, language, technology, processes and ways of working.

At adidas, I gained experience in three distinct teams: initially in Global Master Data Management, followed by Global Business Intelligence, and finally in Enterprise Architecture. My experience across these teams gave me a really interesting perspective across the whole company and I was able to use this to grow my skills and understanding in business architecture.

What did you learn from your time at adidas?

Adidas has an incredible culture of so many passionate people all united under a common purpose that “Through sport, we have the power to change lives”. adidas was the first company I worked for that seemed to really see tangible benefit from detailed documented architecture, processes and governance. I now realise that this is needed due to the scale of the company and the number of colleagues that need to be aligned to company goals. My time at adidas made me realise that even companies of a smaller scale need to think like larger organisations and this will enable them to be faster in the future.

Not enough focus on processes alignment, management and governance is where I see so many companies fail when it comes to introducing new technology or data into their ecosystem. Large-scale companies like adidas avoid this by having teams dedicated to keeping this critical information up to date and available, which in turn, allows them to run a global operation with many markets all aligned to the same purpose.

Why did you return back to the UK?

During my six years at adidas, I learned a great deal and was fortunate to be involved in numerous exciting workstreams. I completed their internal leadership program, was responsible for Global BI Reporting focusing on key strategic initiatives, documented the first global Consumer conceptual data model, and began laying the foundations for their global data mesh concept. While there, my wife and I had two children and were able to enroll them in the adidas nursery on our campus. Unfortunately, just as our life became stable,

COVID-19 hit and everything locked down. Working from home while caring for two young children created significant mental stress. Without a family support network nearby, as my parents were in the UK and my in-laws in Poland, we felt stuck. When it became overwhelming, I decided to look for a new job back in the UK, which led me to my role as Head of Data at Halfords.

From sports and fashion to car parts, bikes and camping at Halfords? As a retailer, did they have the same sort of challenges?

Halfords had similar challenges, as do most retailers, but they didn't align perfectly. At Halfords, we essentially rebuilt their entire data platform. When I started, all reporting and analytics were running directly on SAP, the ERP platform, which was built for speed of data input, and focused on operational reporting. We transitioned that to a modern data lakehouse, using SAP to focus on the operational ERP tasks and using the lakehouse to focus on the analytics. This allowed us to build interactive dashboards for real-time reporting and implement predictive analytics.

To give you an idea of the change, when I started, store managers were printing out daily KPIs and sticking them on their desks. By the time I decided to move to Bromford, they had automated dashboards with a 45-minute sales data refresh, giving them near-instant visibility into their performance and empowered them to hit daily targets and drive team motivation across shifts. I can't take the credit for this though, I was supported by a great data team and managers.

Moving from the fast-paced world of a global sportswear retailer to a UK-based housing association might seem like a big shift. What attracted you to Bromford's mission, and how does data play a crucial role in enabling their purpose?

What truly excites me about Bromford, much like my experience at adidas, is the unwavering commitment to a central purpose: to invest in homes and relationships so people can thrive. This isn't just a tagline. It's the driving force behind everything we do. My focus right now is on leveraging data to further this mission. This involves a strategic overhaul of our data landscape – decommissioning legacy systems, ensuring our reporting and analytics directly support business objectives and regulatory demands, creating a holistic "customer 360" model to tailor our services effectively, and establishing a cutting-edge data lakehouse to empower self-service and advanced analytics.

We’ve spent the last twelve months hiring, building, and insourcing a great team after being supported by Accenture for a while. And we have defined our data strategy, detailed ways of working and we are now ready to execute. We are at a very exciting time at Bromford and my overall aim is to make Bromford the most data-informed housing association in the sector. Bromford has now also merged with Flagship Housing to become BromfordFlagship, an even bigger housing association that merges the benefits of both companies.

Looking back at your varied journey, what key principles have consistently guided you that you could share with us?

1) Be data informed not always data-led. At Bromford, we recognise that we work with individuals who possess diverse feelings and emotions. Rather than categorising customers based on limited information, we equip our colleagues with data to inform their conversations with our customers. This ensures our decisions are rooted in understanding, not solely on statistics.

2) Focus on building the best relationships Operate under the assumption that everyone acts with good intentions, even when their behavior suggests otherwise. There will always be underlying reasons for their actions. Take the time to understand them, empathise with their perspective, and offer support.

3) Focus on data product owners, not just users that ask for data For data product ownership, I want someone that will be fully accountable for a product they request. I want them to manage it, to support it, to shout about how great it is. We should review everything we create, be sure about the teams that will use it, the number of users, the refresh frequency, the value it will create and also track that value over time. Proper data product management is often more important than the creation of the product itself.

4) Understand and track your data maturity Follow the DAMA DMBOK data governance wheel and assess your maturity of each of the elements. You want to be very open and honest about this to ensure you focus on the right areas. Pick a few to scale and mature within a year. Each year, assess and document your progress.

5) Good master data management is key Master data is the key to unlocking your transactional data. Take time to create, manage and govern your master data and reference data. Build processes around the governance and define ownership from exec down to data stewards.

6) Architect now for scale and speed later When you design or architect platforms or solutions, be mindful that there are often tactical solutions and also longer-term strategic solutions. Never create tactical ones without understanding the impact on a strategic option. You need to be sure that a tactical option will unlock the benefit required within a short timeframe. Multiple tactical solutions will eventually lead to a patchwork architecture that may need a complete overhaul in the future.