"Get your data specialists into the limelight of your company" – Interview with Scott Krueger, skyscanner

This blog post is part of the Big Data Week Speaker interviews series. Scott shares his thoughts about the impact of big data in the travel field, also offering a sneak peek into his talk at the “Big Data in Use” Conference.

Why is it important for businesses in your industry to be more data driven nowadays?

Being data-driven can mean a lot of things. I think being data-driven means making better decisions that are based on fact, rather than feel. Almost every industry sector has the ability to collect and analyze data at a finer level of granularity than ever before. This accelerates product innovation and the delivery of goods to market (digital or physical). Those who don’t benefit from this cycle will fail to compete.

What are the main challenges a company encounters when trying to leverage their data?

Promoting data culture and self-serve information access. A few key points: get your data specialists (engineers, analysts, scientists) out of the back corner and into the limelight of your company. Listen to them carefully; give them space to up-date/up-scale systems; increase the data literacy of all staff members; have analysts and scientists do high-value work and let them call the shots – they know the business best.

How do you see the impact of big data in the travel field?

Travel is a gigantic data problem. From scheduling, booking and logistics – to consumer behaviours and the movement of travelers globally. The travel industry has done a reasonable job at making scheduling and booking processes available online. On the other hand, we are only on the surface of understanding how people interact with that data; how, when and why they book travel; and how they actually travel. This is a really exciting time for travel companies to really start understanding who their customers are.

What do you foresee as being the growing big data challenge you will face in your role over the coming 3 years, and how are you preparing to face it?

Maintaining usability in a continuously expanding data world. At it’s heart, this means the retrieval of data assets has to be as user-friendly as possible. This means catering for the maintenance, discovery, organization and cataloguing of data once it has been written at any step of your data pipeline(s).

Can you give us a sneak peek into your talk at the “Big Data in Use” Conference | Big Data Week London 2016?

I don’t want to spoil all the surprises – but expect some stream processing patterns with a dash of sci-fi narrative…

Who do you think should attend your talk at Big Data Week? Why?

Anyone who collects data and isn’t sure about the quality of that data. So everyone.

Attend Scott’s presentation at the “Big Data in Use” Conference | Big Data Week London 2016. Book now and grab the one-time 25% discount on top of the Early Bird price, using the code: BDW25.

BIO

Scott is an experienced data professional, with a focus on internet economy challenges since 2000. Not one to stand still, his current position as skyscanner’s data architect allows him to focus on the exciting technical and business challenge of turning Terabytes of daily real-time data into meaningful information. Distributed data platforms, stream processing, automated decision making – these are very exciting times for us data nerds.