Team behind Peter Gabriel’s music streaming business launch data venture
A trio of specialists who were part of OD2, Peter Gabriel’s music streaming business in the early 2000s, have launched a company to help organisations make the most of their data.
Geoff Roberts, Deon Fourie and Sally Clayton have launched The Data House in Bristol, bringing their world-class technical expertise to growing businesses that want to improve how they manage their data and systems.
In the UK experts think that organisations spend between 10-30% of revenue on handling data quality issues. However, there are also direct and indirect costs associated with poor quality data that are more than just monetary.
Data quality is a business issue, not just an IT issue, and with a global data market worth hundreds of billions of dollars, it can be extremely costly for businesses that aren’t managing their data efficiently.
Fourie says: “We want to bring the experience we’ve gained in data governance, architecture and engineering over the last 30 years to other businesses – we love sorting out complex data issues. The Data House offers the same quality as any of the big consulting houses and greater flexibility because we’re not wedded to any particular tools or platforms. We’re a boutique consultancy that will look specifically at your business’s problem and find the right tool or set of tools for the job.”
The new consulting and delivery company aims to build on their decades of experience working in the management of global data operations for digital media and collaborations with the European Space Agency and Hartree Centre, which helps UK businesses and organisations of any size to explore and adopt supercomputing, data science and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
Their journey together started at white label music download and streaming service OD2, which became Europe’s largest online distributor of music. It was eventually acquired by Nokia and then Microsoft.
Clayton says: “Whether its master data, financial reporting, consumer activity, content management or product catalogue management, everyone wants to use the data but often there is no-one in the organisation in charge of it. The Data House can be your data team to ensure you are in control, fully optimising how you use it and have the right core technologies in place. And, importantly, we can do all of this while you carry on with business as usual.”
The Data House offers a range of support services for businesses, with bespoke packages designed for each client. Most businesses will start with a Data Discovery Workshop, which provides them with a three-day onsite facilitated workshop followed by a comprehensive recommendations report. Depending on the needs and in-house capabilities of the business, they may decide to implement the recommendations themselves or they can choose to outsource their data-ops to the Data House with a Managed Data Service.
Roberts said: “Businesses with a good data strategy will be more efficient, which will either save or make them more money. All organisations today need to be a software and data company in order to thrive. Whether it’s a five-person team or 25,000, there are always ways to improve how a company uses its data. That’s where we come in.”
