In this highly anticipated Season 2 opener, Nick Latocha, Andy Mason, and Andy Crossley dive headfirst into the murky waters of self-service analytics. The trio discusses its varying definitions, the challenges of implementation, and its real-world impact—or lack thereof—on decision-making within organisations.

Key highlights include:

• A lively debate on whether "democratising data" is a blessing or just corporate jargon gone rogue.
• Andy Mason's disdain for pie charts and his insights on why good data models are critical for analytics success.
• How ThoughtSpot is revolutionising search-driven analytics (and why Power BI needs to catch up!).
• Why bad data models, despite fancy tools, could lead to high costs and poor decisions.
• A thought-provoking "Would You Rather: Data Edition" game, where the team tackles hilarious yet realistic scenarios like prioritising clean data over executive buy-in or dealing with data breaches vs system outages.

This episode isn't just about analytics tools; it's a deep dive into how businesses use data to improve processes, empower teams, and justify ROI in an ever-evolving data landscape. Tune in for practical takeaways, laugh-out-loud moments, and hard truths about the challenges of being a data professional.

In this episode we speak to Matt Houghton, Data Architect at CDL Software. Nick is running solo for this pint, where he chats to Matt about what a data products is, how to build a data product team and briefly chat about all things AWS - there's probably a whole other episode on that! Finally Nick asks the 3 questions we ask every guest. If you found this episode intersting, please subscribe, like and share.

In this episode we speak to Gareth Parkes, Head of Data & Analytics at Sir Robert McAlpine. After a false start by Nick, we get in to how data disrupts industries and talk about how less mature industries can work together to improve their data maturity and share insights across peers. Gareth takes us through answers to our "3 questions we ask everyone" with an interesting answer for who he'd like to have a beer with!