“What can we do with data?” is a question Qrious has spent 10 years answering.
Martin Norgrove - Head of Professional Services - has been an integral part of the team from day dot and likens some of the team’s project to climbing Mount Everest.
“At times, data projects are hard and the terrain is steep. At Qrious we step into projects that others would label ‘impossible’,” he explains. Like all experienced data professionals, he’s resolute in his belief that to get where others haven’t gone, you need to do what others haven’t done.
In this candid interview, he reflects on ten years of innovation; including a behind-the-scenes peek at the Qrious team’s mindset; key changes in how the world treats their data; and the emerging trends shaping the industry…
Q: Before we dive in, how would you describe ‘data innovation’ to a group of five-year-olds at career day?
“Knowing my luck, I’d be on stage right after the policeman or fireman’s story about bravely saving a cat...but nowadays, data is what helps those same people do their job faster. I’d talk about using the information we have to make sense of what’s happening and to improve it - like looking at how many police we need in a certain area at night to keep people safe and how many firemen we need to send to a fire based on how big or serious the fire is. Data makes everyone better at their jobs; and in the future it will help create new jobs.”
Q: Your journey took you from lab coats to byte codes. How did you join Qrious?
“My career started in a white coat where I used my degree in physical and inorganic chemistry in materials testing for Carter Holt Harvey. I soon found myself working on a group-wide logistics project to streamline the company supply chain. I was deep in the data on spreadsheets and discovered my natural inclination made that process easier and more efficient. From there, I moved on to working full time with early versions of databases built on IBM and Microsoft technology to deliver business insights. Later, as a solutions architect at WhereScape, I helped build data warehouses for clients as a consultant. The company later separated its software and consulting arms and the client-facing business where I was CTO - called Now Consulting - where I led technical sales for an automation toolset to help developers deploy their data warehouses and create value a lot faster. Now Consulting was acquired by Qrious in 2019 and the rest is, quite literally, history.”
Q: More importantly, why are you still here?
“Everyone always says they work with nice people; but in my case, I work with some of the most talented in the industry. They have integrity and when they say they can do something or deliver something, they believe it and they have the courage to do it. The mindset at Qrious isn’t about selling solutions; but about creating value. We’re united in this approach on how we design and deliver for our customers. Does it add value? If the answer is no, we’re not doing that.”
“Ten years ago, the team at Now Consulting brought capability and customers to the table. Through Qrious, we gained the ability to enter the professional services market and to scale the number, size and type of opportunities we could work on. It was a question of capability meets scale and we’ve proven, time and again, that we have what it takes to define the future of data.”
“Personally, I’m very focussed on delivering sophisticated projects that rely on the power of automation to reduce cost for our clients. We already do that faster than anyone else does locally; but I’d like to see this type of work become standard for ‘how NZ businesses run their data teams’.”
Q: What makes a great data professional?
“To answer that question, you need to understand what should be the intrinsic motivation of every consultant. It shouldn't be the status; and it shouldn’t be the title. It’s the thrill of being in service to our customers. They call us to help them do the hard things they can’t do on their own. They need us; and that purpose and expectation must come first. When it does, their success is our success and the hard climbs are easier.”
“As a consultant you have to remember this is the client's journey - it’s their climb, not ours. How do we get them to the finish line? What impossible obstacles do we need to solve for, and what new tooling do we need to invent, combine or deploy? It’s not about ‘selling’; it’s about ‘solving’. If you’re in it to ‘sell’, you’ll run at the first obstacle.”
“The further on the journey you go, the smaller your earlier problems start to look and inevitably, everyone starts to tire. That’s when your ‘why’ becomes your strongest motivator. It’s one thing to sell a solution that can process $400million worth of kiwifruit grower payments for Zespri accurately; or help Apex handle complex tax reporting for a million investors 50 times faster, with room to scale another 10-times. It’s another thing entirely to design and deliver the infrastructure that makes that possible and stick with it until you deliver success. To Qrious, celebrating ‘getting the job done’ (not the sale) with our clients is what motivates us to push harder and work faster.”
Q: How has the data industry changed? What have some of the biggest shifts been?
Shift 1: The democratisation of quality tooling
“A number of decades ago, large companies in New Zealand and offshore invested in exclusive tooling like Oracle, creating an elite ‘club’ for solving complex solutions with expensive software. Microsoft disrupted this landscape in the early 2000s, introducing reasonably priced and capable toolsets and democratising access to quality tooling. Their impact on the New Zealand market lowered the price point, enabling scalable solutions that enabled almost every industry to start tackling their data problems.
We now see platforms like Snowflake and Microsoft Fabric, along with tools Fivetran and Coalesce taking this to the next level with usage based pricing and further improved automation and capability embedded. These vendors are taking the market to new and exciting heights!”
Shift #2: Today, data is not a byproduct; it is the product!
“Historically, data was a byproduct of business processes, often treated as an afterthought or even an audit of what occurred. However, a significant shift has happened in which often data has become the product itself and our collecting accurate and quality data throughout the entire business is of significant value. This transformation has been driven by the realisation that data is crucial for informed decision-making. Companies like eBay and NetFlix optimise user experiences in real-time based on data analytics; timely accurate data and analytics has become table-stakes for most organisations.”
Shift #3: It’s not ‘Move fast and break things’, but ‘Move fast and break nothing’!
“Up until the 2000s, businesses were process-driven and highly controlled, hindering the speed at which data teams could adapt to the evolving business landscape. The mantra 'Move fast and break things' took hold as a response, in many cases advocating for rapid innovation whilst accepting the consequences. More recently, a paradigm shift occurred with the rise of open-source technologies and agile methodologies. We also saw the value in data modelling and taking a considered approach to data management come back into favour. Today, DevOps and cloud technologies play a pivotal role in accelerating innovation, empowering the industry with tools capable of adapting quickly to changing business needs.”
Shift #4: The big data rebellion
“We went from on-prem data warehousing to adding hardware and software when we ran out of space. Next, the advent of cloud technology did away with how much we could store, but ‘Data lakes’ in the cloud quickly led to ‘Data swamps’ and quite often - noone knew where anything was! There was confusion and quite often, a duplication of efforts as everyone added to the swamp. Today, companies prefer having a single source of truth, facilitated by SaaS and cloud offerings like Snowflake. These allow effective data structuring without the burden of managing the incumbent infrastructure and have ushered in a more organised and efficient approach to handling vast amounts of data.”
Q: What does the future hold for the data industry?
“Right now, there’s growing recognition amongst data experts that the future will be about empowering every area of the business to innovate. The future demands an influx of diverse skills in the data realm, meaning it’s crucial for businesses to establish a singular point of convergence when its data comes together and where collaborative efforts thrive, and innovation becomes the heartbeat of the organisation.”
“We’re increasingly able to view our data from any and all angles - but to ensure successful interpretation and, where relevant, intervention - final mile consulting will become critical. This will see companies focus on staying attuned to the meaning of the burgeoning volume of data generated and turning it into actionable insights, increasingly leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI). Looking further ahead I think we will see AI becoming the dominant technology that organisations will leverage to derive value from their data estates.”
“The data industry is going to be about using technology to empower the next generation of companies and it’s hugely exciting to know Qrious will play an important role in defining what that future looks like.”
