Data & Analytics Community of Practice - Analytics Institute
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Data & Analytics Community of Practice
BANK OF IRELAND GROUP
Bank of Ireland’s Data & Analytics Community of Practice brings together practitioners,
business stakeholders and external thought leaders to share, collaborate, and innovate. We
run monthly “Lunch and Learn” events with internal BOI speakers; and evening “Analytics
Connect” events with external speakers. Topics vary from machine learning algorithms to IT
architecture to data-driven business strategies. We pursue a diverse panel of speakers, from
recent graduates to experienced executives, and have prioritised bringing more women into
analytics by presenting role models.
Figure 1: BOI Data & Analytics COP logo
The purpose of the BOI communities, setup under our “Change Makers” initiative in 2018, is to
support the development of a particular expertise, interest or skillset through sharing skills,
experience and knowledge across Bank of Ireland while enhancing the given specialism
through innovation, collaborative learning, professional development and networking. Data &
Analytics has been the most successful of these communities. We have over 900 staff
members across the Bank and have run 40 events to crowds of 100+ over the last 2 years.
Impact is evidenced in our annual survey. Members have highlighted the new knowledge
gained, the value of the networking opportunities, innovative ideas that data can enable and
career changes or progression for individuals. While centred in Dublin city, we have also held
events in Kilkenny, Cabinteely, Belfast and Bristol. We have successfully overcome long
standing silos such as geography, organisational structure and gender.
During the COVID lockdowns we switched to fortnightly Zoom events, and our attendance
increased materially. We opened some of our events to our external network, creating
opportunity to build the Bank’s brand as a data company.
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WHY CREATE A COMMUNITY?
Bank of Ireland has invested heavily in data infrastructure and analytics platforms over the
past 7 years. Data Value Realisation, to evidence a return on the investment, continues to be a
great success with over €80m delivered through using data to better meet the needs of our
customers, and enabling internal efficiencies. However, to make a step change up the value-
complexity curve, we must eliminate silos and normalise cross-function collaboration.
Analytics is well established in the banking industry, but tends to focus on specific, mature
areas such as risk and marketing. These teams are successful in their own right, but have
tended to employ their own tools, data sources and people strategies. In 2018 we progressed
to a “Hub and Spoke” organisational design to eliminate duplication and introduce best
practice, with the new Group Data Office as the centre of excellence to lead coordination.
Figure 2: BOI Staff attending a recent "Lunch and Learn"
The Community of Practice extends beyond the data professionals to pull business
stakeholders and other interested staff into the conversation. A large scale culture shift is
required to reap the full benefits of our new capabilities and make data-driven decision making
the default mode for all divisions of the Bank. Our customer expectations have changed and
we must meet them with a more personalised service, products informed by behaviour and
more efficient processes. This will require a more data literate employee base and retraining.
HOW DO WE FACILITATE THE CHANGE?
Identifying opportunities to deploy data and analytics solutions is the responsibility of all
employees, but to do so an improved awareness of capabilities must be achieved. We have
training programmes (aligned to the Analytics Institute) to uplift our data science skillset, but
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we need a much broader range of understanding, and alignment of our priorities with business
strategy. Data literacy is a foundation for our future.
Firstly we share internal stories. Starting with the established teams in risk and marketing, we
invited key individuals to present analytics projects. Rather than always seeking the head of
the function to speak, we look to the analysts themselves to showcase their own work. We
spread out in time to include fraud, technology and finance speakers, and cover data
visualisation, stress testing, regulatory capital, ways of working, and data models.
Secondly we look to outside the Bank for inspiration. Using our personal networks and
reaching out to industry thought leaders, we source external speakers willing to share their
story with Bank of Ireland. We have had speakers from Facebook, IBM, Microsoft, Irish Times,
Paddy Power, Groupon, UCD, UCC, Eir, Disney and Google among others. Great ideas have
emerged on these evenings over pizza and beer as we discuss everything from machine
learning and big data to culture and training.
Figure 3: Design Thinking workshop in Camden Labs
Thirdly we build on the success of others. Identifying the most valuable use cases, both
sustaining and disruptive, is key to data science maturity. Networking at our lunch and evening
events provides an opportunity to discuss possible business applications. We also facilitated a
specific Design Thinking workshop last year to ideate on financial wellbeing, a priority for Bank
of Ireland. Data professionals, from across the organisation, collaborated to nurture unique
ideas to benefit our customers.
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?
The community is by definition informal and self-organised, spanning across departments. We
established a working group with volunteers from the key analytics functions, ranging in
business experience and organisational level. The team meet fortnightly to discuss upcoming
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events, potential speakers and feedback from attendees. Actions are assigned out to share the
workload and we continuously seek new ideas to improve.
The events are open to all Bank of Ireland staff. We have advertised internally to build up our
community, grown by word of mouth and built an external reputation using LinkedIn.
Networking opportunities over a coffee or beer before our events has proved hugely popular,
with many business ideas emerging and BAU initiatives established.
Figure 4: A broad range of speakers have appeared at the events
While sourcing speakers for the first set of events provided some challenge, we now receive
regular requests from a range of contacts to get involved. We hosted Teradata CTO, Stephen
Brobst last year. During Barack Obama's first term Stephen was appointed to the President's
Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. This was a rare opportunity to see a high
profile thought leader up close. We will continue bring further speakers of this calibre in with
support from our vendors and partners.
We have managed collaborative events with Tableau User Group Dublin, the Data Science
Festival and Business Games. We have also run joint events for International Women’s Day,
panel discussions with women who have followed diverse journeys to careers in analytics.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Having created a structure that allows Bank of Ireland colleagues to promote best practice and
build common capability in different functions. Analytics champions are emerging and
providing business people with the confidence to become self-serve pioneers. We will continue
to bring new event formats forward, continue to build the community outside of Dublin and find
new innovation leaders. We will contribute to a more diverse leadership team, enabling
individuals with broader backgrounds and experience to build successful careers in data. Our
community supports the both data professionals and the business on their journey.
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