Developing data maturity at Blue Cross

Project: Blue Cross Data Strategy
Date: 2021 – 2022
Work: Developing Data Maturity

Blue Cross

Blue Cross is a large UK charity dedicated to ensuring pets live healthier, happier lives today and long into the future. They have over 750 staff and more than 2500 volunteers. Over the last few years, they have invested significant resources into their digital and data infrastructure.

In 2021-2022 they sought Data Orchard’s support to review how they could improve their data maturity more broadly at an organisational level.

Developing Data Maturity

Following their completion of a data maturity assessment, we supported Blue Cross to develop their data maturity in three ways.

Firstly, we co-designed and facilitated a series of three ‘Data Needs’ workshops with 30 staff. These helped spark conversations about data more broadly across teams and outside of their own service areas.

Staff feedback from the workshops was positive:

“It was very positive exploring how data would be of immediate benefit”

“Made me think about what data we are using and how we use it without even realising it.”

“We started to get away from the idea that this is just about pet data”

The key findings from the workshops were presented in a discovery report along with a prioritised list of data action stories.

Reviewing strategy and creating a framework

Secondly, we reviewed Blue Cross’ draft data strategy with recommendations for changes and improvements.

And, thirdly we co-created a skills framework and conducted a skills audit of their data and performance team. This included reviews of job roles, interviews with staff, and more specifically, support on the job description, person specification and advertisement for the recruitment of a new Head of Data.

“Data Orchard played the role of a critical and expert friend to help us understand both our strengths and weaknesses in our existing data maturity profile. They were also invaluable in providing an objective and engaging exploration of our needs and dependencies on data, that really opened the eyes of the participants representing the wider charity of the importance and possibilities in what we are setting out to achieve with data. We will continue to use Data Orchard throughout our journey.”

Phillip Edwards, Chief Information Officer, Blue Cross