Data Leaders Who's Who: Pieter Vorster

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PIETER VORSTER

Group Head of Data Strategy, Product & Analytics, Westpac

Pieter is a C-suite executive leader with 20 years international experience driving strategic change to deliver sustainable commercial outcomes across industries including retail, wealth, corporate and investment banking, financial services, insurance and mining and resources.

He has an authentic and visionary leadership style that has inspired a career track record of successful business transformations that enable global organisations to thrive through unprecedented disruption and market demand, by applying scaled agile and advanced data and analytics to successfully introduce and embed new operating structures, technology and processes.

During this interview, Pieter shares a wealth of information in answering the following questions:

How do you devise a data strategy? What sets apart the good from the bad?

A good data strategy is not created in isolation, it needs to live in the context of core organisational outcomes, for example, Digital Transformation. This is even more critical as data has become the lifeblood of the experience economy and as such is driving value at a sustainable, competitive level. For this reason, the breadth of a data strategy is also important to consider.

As data transverses across numerous processes and decisions, the holistic nature of a strategy becomes important. The consequences of a fragmented approach will often be felt when a link in the chain of data breaks (e.g. quality of the data, speed of generation and even sub-optimal decisions based on shallow data and analytics).

Lastly, like any transformative change, the intellectual understanding of how to future-proof an organisation with better sustainable outcomes is often lost if the benefits, understanding, and impact are not clear to every leader in the .organisation

Often the best intentions, most researched, and problem-solved strategy will falter unless it is change managed. With this, I mean building culture, knowledge, and data leadership across not just the data teams in the organisation, but everyone in the organisation. “A data-pull outcome” is ultimately one of the signals of success. The best strategies are the ones that are lived and breathed by non-data specialists.

Pieter also shared his thoughts on:

• How do you structure metrics to create effective delivery of projects/ products?

• How have you found success in raising data literacy in your career?

• How do you get involved in educating peers and execs?

• What do you wish senior leadership knew or understood?

• How have you successfully accelerated new innovations to benefit customers or internal operations?

• What have been major AI watershed moments in your career – or alternatively in the industry?

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