James Kirk

Big week - months of whiteboards and testing to design one of our most innovative products have paid off: Free Phase is live! Perfect timing too - it’s been windy, prices are low, and UK renewables continue to contribute nearly 50 % of our electricity generation in the UK with wind doing a lot of the heavy lifting. When the grid is green, power gets cheaper - and now customers can simply make the most of it - spreadsheet optional. 🌬️⚡ Find out more here and try it for yourself! https://lnkd.in/eB8-vfyZ #CleanEnergy #Innovation #FreePhase

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You don't have a time problem.. You've got a data problem. The time wasted in spreadsheets, wrangling data, calculating figures, formatting reports, double-checking the numbers... That's time that could be spent on decision-making & other high value tasks. Most businesses dont get this. But once they do, it's like a new world of possibilities opens up. AI isn't going to deliver what you're looking for anytime soon.. I can promise you that. What you're looking for, is to minimise the gap between business operations and your eyeballs. The time-gap. And the accuracy-gap. Making that gap a thing of the past is what ADP does best.

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If you are not solving the real pain points of the individual, organisation or work horses,then all those hype around AI is just a fuss. This lazy sunday turned out to be an interesting one. One of my friends working in Railways as SSE had a real problem in managing the outline of tender documents from different enterprises.It had folder of documents where the no of pages can be anything.He approached me to get any sort of help I can offer. The real problem was to maintain the TOC of each document and combine things together.The person assigned,under him,use to do things manually. Merging document through open source app where the data leakage is a serious problem and making toc manually spending a man day work behind it. Though his problem was solved, I gave him a piece of code which solves his problem and within "A minute" he use to get the desire output and no data vulnerability going forward. Main learning was to understand the requirement from him and help him set up the environment (he have no coding background ) so that he can run code without any further interference from me. It helped me to learn how to communicate commands,to him, like run this cell,install this library, here is the output in layman terms. Thanks Google colab.It was really helpful sharing the code and making him implement the same way. #ProductiveSunday #solving #OriginalVersion ps : #Chatgpt didn't wrote my post.

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I call myself a data engineer, but that only tells part of the story. My work at NimbleStax sees me working with clients across all sectors on open-ended engagements where I provide expertise spanning across: Architecture & Platforms: Building data models optimised for business insights while remaining flexible as needs evolve. Designing and owning data platforms across major cloud providers, underpinned by reliability, scalability, and extensibility. Structuring data from CRM and SaaS tools for downstream analytics and AI use cases. Governance & Quality: Developing metric-driven frameworks for managing data quality and lineage, building trust and consistency across the organisation. Sharing opinionated architectural recommendations for data governance strategies that align with an organisation's security posture. Enablement & Coaching: Coaching cohorts of technical and non-technical data professionals, in structured programs and informal settings, on data best practices. Enabling data engineers, analysts, and scientists to embrace software engineering practices in their work. Advisory: Helping teams select tools, SaaS products, and architectural approaches, weighing trade-offs against current and future business requirements. Leadership Support: Providing a sounding board for data leaders. Breaking down limiting beliefs about what's possible. Helping them see light at the end of the tunnel. The list goes on, but fundamentally, it's all driven by one motivation: helping businesses become truly data-driven. And that starts with solid data foundations. Though, I'll admit that it's rarely a perfect greenfield. More often, I'm inheriting years of tech debt. But with carefully designed migrations, technical uplift, and coaching, it can be transformed into a well-oiled, trustworthy data platform.

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Data contracts are: 1. a technical artefact 2. a governance artefact 3. a change management artefact 4. a communication artefact Did I forget something? Probably lots. ❤️ Data Contracts

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At PizzaExpress we have had a well managed and governed data architecture for a number of years. Our operators and head office utilise our bespoke Qlik dashboards daily and head office teams can drill into dozens of datasets at incredible granularity on the fly. However there remains a gap, the prescriptive repeatable structured datasets which select individuals need. Not as visualisations, not as a SQL script; just raw data they need to facilitate their jobs. In the AI era we're in, we often think that driving business value requires the most complex, cutting-edge technology. In reality, simple access to data can be the shot in the arm to ROI. When a stakeholder or department has to wait three days for a data engineer to pull an ad-hoc report, that’s three days of stalled decision-making. That is why this week, my team is incredibly proud to launch DataExpress! DataExpress is our custom self-serve portal built directly within Snowflake using Streamlit. It provides our stakeholders with instant, repeatable, and prescriptive datasets through a clean Python-powered frontend. By focusing on high-quality data accessibility, we are solving three critical business problems: 1. Eliminating the 'Data Bottleneck': Moving from a 'request and wait' model to self-serve. Giving the business direct access to the data they need means we can reclaim hours of productivity for both the data team and our stakeholders. 2. Closing the Security Gap: Sending files over email is a legacy risk we have to eliminate. DataExpress is governed by our company AAD (Azure Active Directory) groups, Snowflake roles and IP whitelisting. Access is tightly controlled, and security is baked into the UI. 3. Establishing Absolute Trust: Ad-hoc queries are prone to logic drift and human error. DataExpress pulls directly from SQL views which have defined logic, managed through change control and fast to execute. This ensures every user is looking at a single source of the truth, eliminating confusion of conflicting numbers. The data and analytics industry is often distracted by all things AI and it is easy to overlook the value of a well-oiled data delivery system. But high-quality, accessible data is the foundation of everything we do. By simplifying how our business interacts with our data, we aren't just delivering a mechanism to access data, we are enabling faster, more confident decision-making. The launch of DataExpress this week marks a major milestone in how we support the business. Supported by our data partner Ometis Limited. We didn’t set out to build the most complex tool; we set out to build an effective one. Lauryn Dunford Ben Atkinson David Tomlins #DataEngineering #Snowflake #Streamlit #BusinessIntelligence #DataGovernance #ROI #DigitalTransformation #AI #DataAccessibility

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Some days, the data just blurs. I’m three versions deep into the same logic, juggling twelve open tabs, and still not sure what I’m even chasing. That’s data fatigue. And it hits harder than most people realise. In a data-heavy role, the pressure to be right is constant. Every number feels like a missed opportunity. It’s draining. Here’s what’s helped me stay grounded: - Zoom out: Pause and ask, “What decision am I actually supporting here?” It brings instant clarity. - Cut the noise: Not every metric deserves attention. Focus on what actually drives outcomes. - Say it out loud: If I can’t explain it clearly, I’m probably overcomplicating it. Talking it through always helps. - Reconnect with purpose: I’m not here to just analyse data. I’m here to give people the clarity they need to move forward with confidence. That’s the part that matters the most and keeps me going. If you’ve hit that wall, you’re not alone. Breathe, reset, and keep moving. #DataFatigue #Analytics #WorkWithClarity #PurposeDriven #DataRoles #ProfessionalGrowth

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Balancing costs play a crucial role in maintaining grid stability by matching electricity supply with demand in real-time. 🔒But what are the factors driving these costs? They depend on a range of drivers linked to both system and market conditions. ⬇️ 🔎 The costs of balancing Britain’s electricity system: https://lnkd.in/epbMbqng

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Integrations are like good plumbing, you only notice them when they’re wrong. I’m sharing what great looks like in a short, practical webinar 👇 #NoBlue2 #Integrations #CFO #FinanceTeam #ERP #Integration #BusinessGrowth #SmartScaling #DigitalFinance #DataMatters #NetSuite #Automation

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💭 Is AI Really a Threat - or Just Incompetent / Ego-Driven IT Heads & Managers? Let’s be honest - sharing a SQL query, Python script, or DAX formula with an AI tool is not sharing confidential data. That code isn’t your organisation’s secret sauce. It’s a piece of logic that any decent engineer could write, read, or reverse-engineer in minutes. What’s actually confidential is when you’re building something unique - a proprietary algorithm, a patented model, or a feature that defines your company’s edge. Not a SELECT statement. Not a for-loop. Banning AI tools under the name of “cybersecurity” doesn’t make you smart - it makes you irrelevant. It’s like banning calculators because someone might cheat on math. AI isn’t the threat. The real threat is leadership stuck in fear, ego, and outdated thinking. It’s time more companies start trusting their engineers instead of their paranoia. #AI #Innovation #Leadership #TechCulture #DataAnalytics #DigitalTransformation

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We seldomly see updates for Google Tag Manager, but this is a big one. Container UI, gtag, preview mode, they're all being updated. There's no need to panic though (if you know where your towel is). Dan has already outlined some of the most important ones for you.

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From October 1 2025, the UK saw a 2% rise in the energy price cap, as set out by Ofgem. The main cause of this rise is changes in the global wholesale market. While this cap applies to domestic customers, businesses aren’t immune. Volatility in wholesale prices can ripple through supply chains, influence operational costs, and shape broader pricing trends, all of which affect the bottom line. At TEAM, we help organisations prepare for these changes. For weekly insights into wholesale pricing and market movements, explore our Wholesale Market Review, updated every Monday. https://lnkd.in/exqg2Z4z #EnergyConsulting #WholesaleEnergy #UKBusiness #EnergyMarket #Ofgem #EnergyStrategy #Sustainability

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Over the weekend I was in Glasgow visiting my nephew who’s working on their PhD focused on performance optimisation in the ever more complicated electrical grid. They made me think about the importance of interconnected networks, and systems to make intelligence truly impactful. For a long time, enterprise data has been the same, it lived and still lives in silos, not by accident, but by design. Each SaaS platform came with its own analytics layer, reporting model, and storage logic. Marketing. Sales. Product. Finance. All with their own vertical data stacks that (supposedly) worked, until they didn’t. As AI moves from pilot to production, that model is cracking under pressure. While point solutions can tell you what happened in one domain, AI needs a canvas that connects how everything works together, the signals between marketing and demand, between operations and experience, between people and performance. That’s where the shift is happening, from isolated data stacks, to a single Enterprise Data Canvas. A connected foundation that supports AI workloads natively, lets intelligence flow across systems, and gives every function a shared view of truth. It’s less about dashboards, more about decisions that continuously learn and adapt. In this future, the role of the data team expands from integration partners to intelligence architects to not just to connect data, but to connect understanding across the business.

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Delightful Monday today as we ramp up deployment testing for 24R2. Todays problem… Lobby element performance has fallen off a cliff in this latest release thanks to the SQL Optimiser ironically choosing the least optimal solution for any query and IFS having a 10 second query timeout threshold! As well as the least useful error message on the page to tell you that maybe something somewhere is wrong but it can’t tell you because the vibe doesn’t feel right…

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A question landed with me this week — and it cuts right to the heart of where AI is taking us. I was asked how you keep data reliable at scale without slowing the organisation down. With AI accelerating everything, that’s becoming the pressure point. Unclear ownership gets exposed. Undefined quality kills pace. Low trust stops AI scaling. Regulated environments are all facing the same equation: move fast, stay safe, stay compliant and deliver value simultaneously. What are others seeing as the biggest blocker to making this balance work? #Leadership #DataStrategy #AI

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🇬🇧 New year, new conference season! 🇬🇧 I’m in London this week speaking at the Data Products & Platforms Summit taking place from 21–22 January. After many years working in the messy middle ground between platform and business teams, I’ll be sharing some hard‑earned lessons, like: 🔹 Does your team need more data-or just more clarity? 🔸 What happens when 'self‑service' becomes 'self‑survival'? 🔹 Does your platform need measurable ROI… or just better storytelling? Finding the right levers of influence across tech teams, operations, and strategic decision‑makers is always an adventure, especially when the business ask turns to 'do more with less'. I’ll be talking about how to make it work by: 🔸 Pulling real business context into platform decisions 🔹 Integrating input from non‑technical voices into technical discussions 🔸 Asking better questions to build smarter data products On a personal note, I’m so happy to see a full conference program embracing the perpetually complicated (but always interesting) world of data products and platforms, and I can’t wait to learn from the stellar speakers and sessions planned 🎉

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I’m delighted that today we have launched Titanium — our new I&C Billing platform. Technical debt in legacy supplier platforms limit agility, scalability and the pace of change so Titanium was built from the ground up on our cloud-native, event-driven architecture to help address those challenges. By bringing billing, pricing, energy lifecycle management, market operations and smart meter management together into a single platform, Titanium provides a modern foundation for the future of I&C energy supply. Utilising a highly scalable, API-first approach, it’s truly designed for whatever comes next …... Huge thanks to everyone involved in making this happen – exciting times!

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Most data leaders are known for just delivering dashboards - and they're pretty annoyed about it... Many are at a point in their career where they wanna be known for being strategic contributors, but their "brand" as technical support staff is majorly keeping them back. If you’re only recognised for delivering insights, I'm sorry to say, you’ve built the wrong brand around yourself. 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝗿𝗴 𝘀𝗲𝗲𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮𝘀: 📊 The data person 💡 Not a strategic partner Your job now is to REBRAND yourself. Rebranding isn’t about LinkedIn visibility or a new title or role. 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂: 👉🏼 It’s about speaking the language of growth, margin, and customer value, not just data accuracy. 👉🏼 It’s about showing up in strategic conversations ready to co-own decisions, not just report on them. 👉🏼 It’s about aligning your team’s work with the top three business priorities, and letting everything else fall away. That’s the shift I help data leaders make: from operator to trusted strategist. If you’re ready to rebrand yourself inside your own company, book a free 1:1 intro call with me to discuss here: https://lnkd.in/gwNChJVf ------- Hi, I'm Tris 🔥 and I help data leaders become strategic contributors.

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