Senior App Designer
London
Full time
When Virgin Media and O2 joined forces back in 2021, data became the key to unlocking our long-term transformation goals. One year on and the Advanced Analytics and Data Team have grown exponentially, deploying multiple data products and services and winning back-to-back awards for DevOps and the migration of all Virgin Media O2 data onto the Google Cloud Platform.
So what’s the secret to making it all possible? The team and the growing Virgin MediaO2 data brain, says Alberto Rey Villaverde, Virgin Media O2’s Director of Advanced Analytics and Data Science. He shares our data vision, and why it’s so critical to Virgin Media O2’s digital-first ambitions.
What do we want to be famous for?
We want to revolutionise the Telecoms Industry. Telecoms could have been Google, Netflix, WhatsApp, Facebook — or any other big tech success story. But we missed all those trains.
What is the next train going to be for Telecoms? Whatever it is, data will be at the core of it. This is critical if we want to leapfrog into 21st century data practices.
We’re at the very beginning of this journey at Virgin Media O2. We have a wealth of data to tap into, and we need to use it even more — to enhance and empower the work that we do. The rest of our business strategy rides on this being a success.
What is our vision for data?
Our vision is better decisions driven by data. We want to democratise data — to facilitate better access, and demystify it, so it’s easier to understand.
Firstly, we want to bring all our data together in one place on the Cloud where it’s easy to access. Secondly, we want to help the business meet its requirements today — creating impact, educating colleagues on the art of the possible with data, and exercising our capability to deploy products. And thirdly, we are building the platform of the future to provide a better digital-first experience and serve our customers in more intelligent ways.
Where are we in our data journey?
It’s harder than what we expected when we started a year and a half ago. We want to be much quicker, as a company, and we’re getting there.
The migration of our data onto the Cloud, bringing two organisations together, being a catalyst for change and reinventing how we do things. It’s a triple layer of complexity.
I’m incredibly proud of the work that’s happened so far in our Advanced Analytics and Data Science team. We already have quite a few data products live and running now, but I’m most proud of the advanced progress we’re making with our data product factory.
What is our data product factory?
It’s our ways of working — the process, people, skills and capabilities — not just the products that we churn out. It’s how the team is coming together.
The VMO2 brain is growing. That’s what this data visualisation captures — our analysts, data scientists and engineers bringing things into production in our cloud environment. We’re growing organically and building the right processes, culture, and technology — in a safe way, for our customers — to make this a success.
