Mohammad Syed, Credera

Thought Leader Consultant of the Year

My passion is ‘big thinking’: from analysing macroeconomic phenomenon to exploring how solutions are engineered. I am inspired by how data and analytics prove powerful tools for solving some of the world’s biggest social and commercial problems.

Organisations need pragmatic approaches to problem-solving that realise value early. I enjoy exploring the transformative impact of big ideas and how targeted, bespoke solutions realise them. I take a strong stance on the early adoption of data and analytics in two key areas.

Firstly, driving the UK energy industry to transform in line with the energy transition agenda. I authored a cornerstone piece on how energy organisations can harness the power of Open Data to meet Net Zero targets. This became the catalyst for our Energy UK Conference sponsorship, where our CTO hosted a panel with industry leaders. Several common themes from my whitepaper emerged in discussions, such as the balance needed between collaboration and competition to promote shared innovation (certain to be a topic of regulatory focus and one that triggers a re-think of market mechanisms).

Secondly, applying data and analytics to transform the services received by UK citizens from public sector organisations. I played a lead role in delivering a major government client’s vision for the “Data Mesh”, with distributed modes of data analytics aligned to business areas rather than a central data department. This radically new form of enterprise data architecture challenged me to reimagine everything I knew about data governance. My work enabled the client to materialise their ambitions, through a pragmatic but innovative approach to data management and supporting the delivery of valuable data and analytics products on the new Mesh architecture.