The annual Information Group Awards showcase how totally different knowledge groups from throughout the globe are delivering options to a few of the world’s most difficult issues.
Over 200 nominations have been submitted by corporations from various industries and areas throughout six award classes. The competitors was stiff, and the pool of nominees was narrowed all the way down to 29 finalists. Eight winners have been chosen. Their exceptional tales of knowledge and AI innovation are price sharing.
Congratulations to the 2024 Information Group Award winners:
Transformation Award: Virgin Australia Airways
Virgin Australia Airways’ transition from an on-premises knowledge warehouse to the cloud-based Databricks Information Intelligence Platform marked a considerable leap in its knowledge technique. The aim was to construct a trusted, ruled central knowledge repository for organizational knowledge and allow improved collaboration, real-time reporting, data-driven decision-making, and self-serve knowledge functionality for analysts and operational reporting throughout the group. By integrating Databricks’ Unity Catalog for seamless knowledge governance, Virgin Australia Airways optimized its knowledge querying and analytics practices, which streamlined knowledge ingestion, analytics, and knowledge science into one cohesive platform. Virgin Australia Airways carried out new options, just like the near-real-time Baggage Reconciliation System, enhancing operational efficiencies and buyer experiences. Databricks adoption facilitated a 75% enhance in real-time knowledge availability, a 44% lower in mishandled baggage, and a 25% income enhance attributed to insights drawn from analytics. The transformative journey, underscored by a 90% sooner deployment of machine studying fashions and vital enhancements in analytical speed-to-insight, has propelled Virgin Australia Airways ahead out there whereas pursuing a tradition of data-driven operational excellence.
Finalists: Banco de Crédito e Inversiones, Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller, Mojang Studios, and the U.S. DoD Chief Information and Synthetic Intelligence Workplace, Advana Program.
Disruptor Award: J.P. Morgan Funds
J.P. Morgan Funds processes almost $10 trillion in funds day by day, working in over 160 international locations and over 120 currencies. To help processing, the J.P. Morgan Funds knowledge and analytics group spearheaded a complete venture to transition from legacy, on-premises platforms to a public cloud knowledge lakehouse structure. This structure transformation concerned integrating 50+ programs of financial institution and monetary information — totaling 3PB of knowledge — right into a production-ready format, accessible to over 3,000 downstream analysts. These similar analysts use varied analytical strategies and polyglot languages to extract priceless insights, inform purchasers of modifications, and optimize day-to-day workflows.
Finalists: American Airways, Capital One, Nationwide Australia Financial institution (NAB), and Unilever.
Information for Good Award: Disaster Textual content Line
Disaster Textual content Line is a nonprofit group offering free, 24/7, confidential text-based psychological well being help in English and Spanish by empowering a group of educated volunteers to fulfill folks of their moments of want. To help over 1.3 million conversations yearly and the ever-growing want for psychological well being help, the group had a transparent alternative to optimize its service by leveraging Machine Studying Operations (MLOps) workflows to handle world operations extra effectively. Disaster Textual content Line makes use of a mixture of Spark and Delta Lake for knowledge ingestion and transformation. Not solely does this assist its small engineering group help a number of platform cases globally, nevertheless it additionally permits for tailor-made knowledge pipeline structure to deal with varied worldwide laws for delicate knowledge therapy. Consolidating key knowledge property within the knowledge lakehouse permits knowledge scientists to concentrate on constructing fashions at scale reasonably than managing infrastructure, leading to improved operational effectivity. From higher supporting volunteers in coaching simulations to extra successfully sustaining the medical high quality of our conversations, such technological developments proceed to advance Disaster Textual content Line’s mission of making technology-enabled human-to-human connections at an unprecedented scale.
Finalists: E.ON Drive Infrastructure GmbH, Flo Well being, Sydney Water, and The Ocean Cleanup.
Information Intelligence Award: Ahold Delhaize USA
Striving for enhanced effectivity, Ahold Delhaize USA (ADUSA), a division of world meals retailer Ahold Delhaize, wanted emigrate from legacy programs to a extra streamlined and strong resolution. ADUSA adopted the Databricks Information Intelligence Platform as its enterprise knowledge platform for analytics, machine studying and enterprise intelligence throughout its U.S. areas. ADUSA helps many data-informed initiatives, together with buyer personalization, loyalty packages, meals waste discount, environmental initiatives, logistics, forecasting, and stock administration. ADUSA developed a self-service knowledge platform, permitting its knowledge engineers to construct pipelines that help knowledge science and AI/ML functions. They’re now analyzing promotions and gross sales efficiency at scale throughout totally different buyer segments, enabling the corporate to leverage real-time knowledge to make knowledgeable enterprise choices. This finally makes it simpler to help consumers at greater than 2,000 native model shops.
Finalists: Fraport AG, Mastercard, and Windfall Well being.
GenAI Innovation Award: Block
Block Inc., a world expertise firm with a concentrate on monetary providers made up of Sq., Money App, TIDAL, and TBD, confronted the problem of effectively managing its intensive knowledge assets to each enhance providers for patrons and streamline inner operations. Block’s main subject was an outdated and rigid knowledge structure that struggled to course of huge quantities of knowledge throughout functions. To pave the way in which for GenAI improvements, Block proactively standardized its knowledge infrastructure utilizing the Databricks Information Intelligence Platform. By leveraging Databricks’ GenAI capabilities, new companies can now onboard even sooner to the Sq. platform utilizing AI-powered set-up and knowledge import automation. They will additionally leverage GenAI to immediately generate content material for advertising emails, group bulletins, merchandise descriptions, web site copy, and extra. eCommerce sellers can select from greater than 50 type prompts and add hyperreal, AI-generated backgrounds to merchandise images, elevating their web sites and attracting extra prospects. With Databricks, Block achieved a 12x discount in computing prices, persevering with to redefine monetary providers within the twenty first century.
Finalists: Experian, Mahindra & Mahindra Restricted, OMV, and Workday.
Information + AI Visionary Award: Fox Company and Heineken
Fox Company – Melody Hildebrandt, Chief Know-how Officer
FOX, a frontrunner within the media business, produces and distributes information, sports activities, and leisure content material by way of its main manufacturers, together with FOX Information Media, FOX Sports activities, FOX Leisure, FOX Tv Stations, and Tubi Media Group. Melody Hildebrandt, CTO of Fox Company, is charged with strategizing how the corporate can leverage emergent expertise to attach the complete portfolio of FOX content material to audiences in essentially the most compelling and revolutionary manner potential. Her technical and business management has lately been seen within the growth and launch of Confirm, an open supply protocol for media corporations to implement guardrails in how their content material is leveraged by AI corporations and LLMs. Partnering with Databricks, Fox is on the forefront of revolutionizing media interplay, ushering in a brand new period of immersive digital engagement. By means of the Databricks fine-tuning API, they’ve educated a number of customized LLMs with distinctive type and tone, unlocking many Gen AI functions. Furthermore, FOX continues to innovate in extracting insights from video to develop novel video discovery and playback experiences.
Michael Cagnazzi, SVP, Digital Platforms, Fox Company accepts the Information + AI Visionary award on behalf of Melody Hildebrandt.
HEINEKEN – Ronald Den Elzen, Chief Digital & Know-how Officer
Ronald den Elzen, Chief Digital & Know-how Officer, goals to make HEINEKEN the best-connected, most related brewer for digital-age customers and prospects. Turning into the best-connected brewer requires an end-to-end digital transformation anchored in HEINEKEN’s total enterprise technique. Information is important and “connects all of the dots,” from customers to prospects, from staff to suppliers. By the top of 2023, HEINEKEN had carried out eB2B apps in 34 markets and launched a brand new eB2B model, eazle, in 9 markets. The eB2B platform linked 700,000 energetic prospects and achieved almost €11 billion in gross merchandise worth, a 28% enhance from 2022. HEINEKEN has linked over 4,500 machines in its breweries and picked up 180 billion machine knowledge factors from its proprietary IoT platform. Information administration, superior analytics, and insights enablement are important for HEINEKEN to win in right this moment’s and tomorrow’s worlds. The quantity of knowledge out there has moved from predominantly inner (transactional) knowledge to way more exterior knowledge, together with streaming knowledge from varied IoT sources. By means of its strategic collaboration with Databricks, HEINEKEN makes use of all this knowledge to extend client understanding, serve prospects, optimize advertising, and drive operational effectivity.
Jelle van Etten, Head of World Information Platform, Heineken accepts the Information + AI Visionary award on behalf of Ronald Den Elzen.
Finalists: Chevron Phillips Chemical Firm – Brent Railey, Chief Information & Analytics Officer, KPMG – Jodi Morton, Chief Information Officer, and Rivian Automotive – Wassym Bensaid, Chief Software program Officer.
Greatest All Round Award: Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller
The Auditor-Controller (AC) of Los Angeles County — tasked with managing important knowledge for the county’s funds, personnel, payroll, budgets, and extra — confronted challenges because of fragmented and outdated knowledge administration options, hindering the effectivity and accessibility of knowledge throughout its 41 departments. Recognizing this subject, the Los Angeles AC launched into a brand new knowledge and analytics initiative, by implementing Azure Databricks. This strategic selection supplied a safe, scalable basis for knowledge ingestion, curation, and consumption, straight addressing the ache factors of restricted entry, outdated info, and cumbersome guide processes. The combination of Databricks remodeled knowledge processes and enhanced the Los Angeles AC’s knowledge capabilities with centralized knowledge repositories, strong visualizations for government decision-making, and streamlined the event of analytics instruments. This profound transformation introduced operational efficiencies, together with real-time annual statistics reporting, vendor fee reporting, in addition to complete price range and expense reporting that beforehand required intensive guide time and effort. These efforts lay the groundwork for future expansions, together with extra knowledge evaluation and machine studying capabilities to profit county staff and residents.
Greatest All Round: This inaugural award celebrates the info group demonstrating innovation throughout all six Information Group Award classes, embodying the spirit of a really empowered knowledge group at scale.
Let’s Elevate a Glass! Congratulations to our 2024 Information Group Award winners!
