Data Unlocked

Building a Cross-Functional Data Dream Team - with With Mayur Gupta, Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer at Gannett | USA Today Network

September 15, 2021 Simon Data
Data Unlocked
Building a Cross-Functional Data Dream Team - with With Mayur Gupta, Chief Marketing & Strategy Officer at Gannett | USA Today Network
Show Notes

πŸŽ™οΈ On The Latest Episode of Data Unlocked πŸ‘‰ Building A Cross-Functional Data Dream Team

❓ How do you build a team, culture and process that allows you to leverage your data to drive great marketing outcomes?

🌟 Mayur Gupta shares with Jason Davis his approach to building a world class team, culture and process at Gannett | USA Today Network.

"I'm a firm believer that the customer experiences that any business needs to drive at scale or a startup gold stage doesn't matter. It happens at the intersection of product, data, engineering, marketing, storytelling, finance. It can no longer happen in any of those areas in isolation. Now, many organizations create many different organizational models to drive it. Some companies have created growth teams, started by Facebook back in '07, '08. Some companies just hold core teams accountable and create pods.

At Gannett, we have created a concept of cross-functional pods that are focused on a very tangible and quantitative outcome, which is measured through tangible KPIs and key results. We use OKR, which is very common now across growth companies. Those pods are staffed, obviously, based on the outcome and the KPIs itself, but they are staffed cross-functionally, led by one pod lead. A pod could have 2 full stack engineers or front-end person, a data scientist and analysts; a researcher, probably staffed part time; a storyteller; a marketeer; a media buyer; a performance; or growth marketer."