During April and May the UK and many other countries were forced inside due to lockdown measures. It was a point in which, so many businesses were having to adapt to remote working at a scale that no one could have ever imagined! Here’s what Avado had to say in the press during this time...

Before everything in the press became Coronavirus focused, Mark Creighton, CEO, spoke with Digital Bulletin about building a data culture within business. Early in May, in an attempt to encourage as many people as possible to spend their time on furlough learning and improving their skills, we spoke with Skift. Mark Creighton said “There’s a lot of uncertainty right now, but equally there is more space and time in which people can empower themselves with new skills and confidence. We hope courses offer an opportunity to nurture new thinking and shift mindsets about how organizations could be led in a recovering economy that will have many new norms.” Later in May our Chief Technology Officer, Mike Fenna and CEO, Mark Creighton spoke with the Raconteur about our data management strategy with Tableau. Featured in a special report, we spoke about how Avado coped with going virtual. “On March 23, as the UK entered a COVID-19 lockdown, Avado went virtual. While the organisation had already put in place a remote infrastructure and approximately a third of the company already worked remotely, adapting quickly to a new way of working for all 360 employees required some agile thinking. Fortunately, one of the company’s most recent priorities had been to update its data management strategy. Mike Fenna had established several principles for data working and had implemented them across the company. The fundamentals were access to data, trust in people to access it and confidence to use data in decision-making. This demanded greater accountability from everyone to care for company data and adopt behaviours that facilitated an agile approach to incorporating data more fundamentally into the business. Avado rolled out Tableau, a data visualisation and analytics platform, across the company to ensure a single point of access to comprehensive data insight. Tableau gives a clear view of one truth, so everyone can make decisions quickly and at speed", says Mark Creighton. "In a climate where decisions need to be made within moments and at high volume, data clarity could mean the difference between survival and extinction.” We also spoke with Insurance Business Magazine about how lockdown has presented opportunities for many professionals to brush up their skills and competencies. “We’ve all had to adapt quickly to the pandemic and the new ways of working,” Creighton said. “For some, now provides an opportunity to upskill and prepare for the future. Being equipped to adapt to change and lead in an agile way is crucial as organisations and working practices evolve to respond to the changing needs of our customers and employees. With each challenge comes the chance to pause, reflect and embrace opportunity, and now is the time for exactly that.”