Practical action on Jinfo's Research Focus, from a director of data strategy
Jinfo Blog

By Sophie Alexander

Abstract

We interview Priscilla Trumbull, director of data & analytics at PwC, to find out what she found most valuable about the Research Focus, "Data analytics - ready your information service", and how it's affected her thinking and future plans.

Item

We recently spoke to Priscilla Trumbull, director of data & analytics at PwC, to find out what she and her team found most valuable about Jinfo's Research Focus, "Data analytics - ready your information service".  Priscilla shared with us her thoughts and how it helped her overall thinking in relation to data analytics.

Jinfo: What did you find most valuable about the Research Focus?

Priscilla Trumbull: I think for me the most valuable piece was the networking part of it. I participated in the early part of the Research Focus in the Community session for buyers and sellers and got to meet a small group of people who are like me. I came to discover that I was running into the same people at other events and so that was very useful.

I think that the session on buyers and sellers was probably my favourite part of the Research Focus because it was really good to have a dialogue across the aisle if you will - to hear from the seller's perspective how the world of data analytics is changing and how they think about things.

Jinfo: Had you had a chance to have many open conversations like that with vendors?

Priscilla Trumbull: We had actually begun to have similar one-on-one conversations with some of our larger vendors and it was interesting because the ones we spoke to all seemed to have a different approach.

There is confusion about the world of data analytics and how it affects their business model. As a result, they are taking different approaches on how to price and feeling their way around the business model aspect of it and so it was quite interesting to see a small group of them together and see that pattern really emerge.

All the vendors did seem to acknowledge that they're approaching this in different ways and feeling their way in new territory.

Jinfo: How did it affect your thinking?

Priscilla Trumbull: That dialogue with the sellers helped me a lot in terms of how we should be talking to our vendors as we go to them with new use-cases and new ideas about analytical apps etc. and how we want to use their data, so that was helpful.

On the other side of it, hearing more about how other users and information professionals are approaching this, I guess it's given me a new perspective on where we fit in the continuum of maturity in using data analytics.

Jinfo: What will be the practical next steps?

Priscilla Trumbull: I guess it's been affirming what we have been trying to do as our next steps.

I think our biggest wish list item is to find a way to get more and better governance into our data buying for analytics. It's a bit of a challenge in a large organisation that has lots of little pockets and silos of practitioners.

The result can be a plethora of single use-case models and that's clearly not always the best way to go as it pushes us as information professionals into a very reactive one-off sort of operation. We'd like to become more strategic about working with our analytics partners as well as vendors. The practical step is to try to find ways to get more strategic about our data purchasing.

Jinfo: How does Jinfo content in general help you to raise awareness of your information centre's expertise?

Priscilla Trumbull: It certainly is helpful and I definitely have been able to leverage some of the things that I've learned at the Community sessions as well as from some of the Jinfo content.

Particularly useful are the reports that focus on different sources' business models and their offerings - that's always extremely helpful to my internal customers and it certainly helps to raise our profile as being knowledgeable about the marketplace. 

The main lessons learned from this three-month Research Focus, plus a thematic index to all content published, are included in the report Insights and Actions from the Research Focus "Data analytics - ready your information service", visit the Research Focus page to get your copy.

About Priscilla Trumbull

Priscilla Trumbull is director of data strategy in PwC's Data and Analytics Delivery Services team, which supports the lines of service with a range of data provisioning, data science, and research capabilities. She has over 25 years of experience in the business information industry, including 15 years at the executive level across a range of functions. In her latest position prior to joining PwC she was vice president at IHS, where she worked on more than 25 information company acquisitions, both as a business leader and as head of a corporate acquisition integration team.

« Blog