Last night the data community gathered at the iconic Grand Hall in London to attend the sold-out British Data Awards 2024 ceremony, hosted by Lucy Porter. And what a night it was!
The British Data Awards is an annual quest that sets out to discover and celebrate the UK’s data success stories. A record 321 nominations were submitted for the fourth edition of the British Data Awards, which meant that competition to be named a Finalist, let alone a Winner or Highly Commended proved to be especially tough.
Once again, the sheer range of individuals and organisations taking part underscores the strength and vibrancy of the UK’s data ecosystem. With entries from 14 FTSE 100 heavyweights, technology unicorns, innovative start-ups, government departments, pioneering not-for-profits, and everything in between, the British Data Awards is proud to be a platform that embraces organisations of all stripes that are united by a passion for data. The strength of the data ecosystem and the entries submitted was also a theme commented on during the Welcome Address which was delivered by Kinnari Ladha, Chief Data Officer at Merlin Entertainments and British Data Awards 2024 judge.
Jason Johnson, Co-Founder of Predatech and British Data Awards 2024 judge said, “With 42% more entries received this year compared to 2023, being named a Winner or Highly Commended really is a huge achievement. All our Finalists are flying the flag for the UK’s data ecosystem and should be very proud to be recognised for their data success stories on a national stage.”
For one last time, we’d like to extend our thanks to the British Data Awards 2024 all-star judging panel:
Neil Carden: President, EMEA at Blend / Dr Sophie Carr: Founder at Bays Consulting / Caroline Carruthers: CEO at Carruthers and Jackson / Dr Roxane Heaton: Chief Information Officer at Macmillan Cancer Support / Rob Holtom: Executive Director, Digital, Data & Tech at the Information Commissioner’s Office / Dr Johanna Hutchinson: Chief Data Officer at BAE Systems / Jason Johnson: Co-Founder at Predatech / Kinnari Ladha: Chief Data Officer at Merlin Entertainments / Sami Rahman: Director of Data at Hypebeast / Niresh Rajah: Chief Data & AI Officer at DLA Piper / Adam Ryan: Chief Data Officer at Calligo / Romit Sen: Head of Data Science at British Airways / Dr Jo Watts: CEO & Founder at Effini
Some of the highlights of the British Data Awards 2024 ceremony
The winners of the fourth edition of the British Data Awards are:
Start-Up of the Year: Data Literacy Academy
SME of the Year: YourParkingSpace
Large Company of the Year: NATS
Data Vendor of the Year: Panintelligence
Analytics Company of the Year: Bays Consulting
Not-For-Profit of the Year: The Riverside Group
Financial Services Company of the Year: Snoop
Technology Company of the Year: Smartbox.ai
Consultancy of the Year: Audacia
Public Sector Organisation of the Year (sponsored by NixInfinity-AI): Network Rail (Wales & Western Region)
AI Company of the Year: Intent HQ
Data Management Solution of the Year: BAT
BI Solution of the Year: UK Power Networks (Winner) I Warwickshire County Council (Highly Commended)
Climate Change Initiative of the Year: Fathom (Winner) I British Airways (Highly Commended)
Rising Star of the Year (sponsored by Domo): Dawn Carter, BAE Systems (Winner) I Rachel Dickinson, Lloyds Banking Group (Highly Commended)
Data Leader of the Year (Supplier): Siz Mahleka, Merkle
Data Leader of the Year (sponsored by The Dot Collective): Sarah Barr Miller, British Airways (Winner) I Duncan Ross, Times Higher Education (Highly Commended)
Data Team of the Year (sponsored by Calligo): Ministry of Defence (Winner) I Superdrug (Highly Commended)
Best Place to Work in Data: ElectraLink (Winner) I Cynozure (Highly Commended)
Data for Good Consulting Initiative of the Year: Bright Data
Data for Good Initiative of the Year: RNLI (Winner) I Better Outcomes through Linked Data (BOLD), Ministry of Justice (Highly Commended)
Data Transformation of the Year: Education Authority (Winner) I Creative Informatics, University of Edinburgh (Highly Commended)
Education Initiative of the Year: Data Education in Schools (Winner) I Admiral Insurance (Highly Commended)
Innovation of the Year (sponsored by Exponentia.ai): Geolytix
Alongside announcing the Winners of each category, highlights from each of the winning entries were shared during the ceremony. We’ve shared highlights from four of the most competitive categories below.
The Ministry of Defence took home the inaugural ‘Data Team of the Year’ award. The Defence Data Office has focused on eradicating silos to make data discoverable and accessible across all 20 organisations within the Ministry of Defence. Critical decisions are now informed by data-driven insights, leading to more accurate forecasts, optimised processes, and enhanced overall performance. Judges praised an entry with a “good focus on the team’s wider impact across the organisation.”
Data Education in Schools (part of the University of Edinburgh) was awarded ‘Education Initiative of the Year’ who have developed the National Progression Award (NPA) in Data Science qualification, giving secondary school learners the opportunity to study data skills and gain qualifications. Over 1,500 learners have taken this qualification across Scotland since 2021. In addition, over 35,000 learners have participated in their ‘Live Lessons’ (scenario-based, activity-led online lessons using game-based learning and interactive, immersive storytelling to spark learners’ interest).
After taking home ‘Education Initiative of the Year’ last year, Education Authority (Northern Ireland) returned to the stage to collect the ‘Data Transformation of the Year’ trophy. Their entry focused on an innovative approach to transforming 340,000 pupil records across Northern Ireland with the goal of enhancing data quality across disparate school sites to prepare for migration to a new centralised safety management system. Judges praised an “extremely impressive data transformation of pupil records.”
The final award presented on the night was ‘Innovation of the Year’ which was awarded to Geolytix. Geolytix MAPP is a serverless online mapping platform built on an open-source framework, which allows retailers, restaurants, councils, banks and landlords to view assets, competitors, customer data, demographics and other geodata anywhere in the world. It also features the ability to run a complex sales forecasting model in real time anywhere in the world, from any mobile device. Judges praised their “amazing tech and amazing data processes.”
This year our quest to celebrate the UK’s data success stories was joined by five category sponsors who are passionate about all things data, and we’d like to thank them all for their support:
Calligo: Calligo transforms data into your most lucrative asset and presented the ‘Data Team of the Year’ category. They combine great minds in data science, privacy, security and engineering with leading machine learning, data analytics and cloud platforms to support the operational, customer-centric and revenue-generation aspirations of some of the world’s most ambitious and progressive organisations.
Domo: Domo transforms business by putting data to work for everyone and presented the ‘Rising Star of the Year’ category. Domo’s low-code data app platform goes beyond traditional business intelligence and analytics to enable anyone to create data apps to power any action in their business, right where work gets done.
Exponentia.ai: An AI-Tech company transforming businesses through AI, ML and data analytics solutions presented the ‘Innovation of the Year’ category. They help organisations solve complex business challenges by combining industry experience, data and AI-first engineering practices, and their propriety technology solutions to achieve business outcomes at scale.
Nixinfinity-AI: Nixinfinity-AI is focused on data management transformation to ensure that you don’t get left behind. They do this by delivering data engineering and automation, which includes AI and big data technology, and presented the ‘Public Sector Organisation of the Year’ category.
The Dot Collective: A fast-growing tech consultancy passionate about data engineering, cloud and agile presented the ‘Data Leader of the Year’ category. Based across the UK and Eastern Europe, The Dot Collective bring you unique access to the best pools of data engineering talent in cloud-native technologies, enabled with their home-grown innovative accelerators.
All roads lead to 2025!
While it’s just hours since we announced our 2024 winners, we already have one eye on the fifth edition of the British Data Awards. If you’d like to stay up to date with our plans, you can follow us on LinkedIn or sign-up for email updates here.
