Spotlight on Jet2.com - Interview with Andrew Aucott, General Manager Business Intelligence

1. INTERVIEW WITH: ANDREW AUCOTT
GENERAL MANAGER OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE
JET2.COM
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What are your main responsibilities in your role?
My main responsibility is to oversee the development and supply of information throughout the company, making sure that it is timely and accurate.
How are the BI Teams that you manage structured?
There are two key Teams: A core Data Team, who work on the acquisition and supply of data & information, and also a Team that focuses more on the applications integration and application development, modelling business processes and automation of
financial processes and integrating with data.
These teams of twelve comprise of Developers, Senior Developers and a Team Manager in each of the two Teams.
What are the key technologies used by your Teams?
The key technology for the data platform would be SQL Server 2012, SQL Server Analysis Services, Integration services and Tableau. We use Tableau as a visualisation framework.
On the Application Integration Team it is core .Net stack so that would be the latest version of .Net 4.5 and MVC.
What would you describe as the most in-demand skills in Business Intelligence at the moment?
I think being able to work very closely with the business is key to all of our B.I. roles. To be able to translate each colleagues’requirements into something that they actually want is very important. All too often, IT professionals can go off on their own and do
what they think is required without staying in touch with the users, so I think that a very important skill to have in BI is being able to work to the users’needs and to communicate properly in doing so.
Being very grounded in core data skills, like SQL Server, and being skilled in the manipulation of data and the whole MS development stack are always very useful. We are very close to the business, which is a fantastic position to be in. It’s important we are able
to understand what the business users want, so communication is a key part of that.
What are the key areas of the business that your Teams interact with?
We've been lucky enough to work for just about every Team within the company. That ranges from Revenue, Marketing, Analytics, Finance, Customer Contact, Engineering and the operational side of the business. There are many parts of the business that we
supply data to and provide solutions for.
Do you have any predictions for what trends could shape BI at Jet2.com over the next 12 months?
Speaking about IT in general, historically, whilst we've been busy building data warehouses what is becoming more important is the leveraging we have built for the benefit of businesses. Certainly, within Jet2.com, I think that our focus is definitely on making
solutions available and useful as quickly as possible. That's really important, and I think that is mirrored throughout the industry. I think that expectations are higher now on the delivery of solutions.
I think that we've built a lot of the foundations, so now we have a great platform to start to really provide industry leading solutions. I would definitely say that Jet2.com's standards are extremely high, in terms of what we provide and deliver as a platform.
Could you give an example of a solution that you have created which has had a big impact?
There are many, but I think one that particularly stands out would be a programme of information delivery that extended for almost 2 years in total. It is able to provide full automation of the fuel that Jet2.com uses within all their aircraft.
It is full automation of the entire flow of information and data comprising of receiving IARTA formatted invoices from all of our fuel suppliers. It is a fully automated end-to-end process of being able to analyse fuel to a great level of detail and feed that right
through into the accounting system.
That's just one example of the level and scale of some of the solutions that have had a big impact. It revolutionised the financial process that was previously very manual and turned all of that into a fully automated process.
Why do you enjoy working at Jet2.com?
I enjoy the ability to see the direct impact of our work and the benefit that it provides. To be able to directly shape solutions gives an enormous sense of job satisfaction.
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IQ Tech are an exclusive recruitment partner of Jet2.com - one of the UK's largest eCommerce platforms. Jet2.com are currently recruiting for roles in their Leeds office including: .Net Developers, Support Analysts, BI Applications Developers and .Net
Applications Developers...