The annual Information Crew Awards showcase how totally different information groups from throughout the globe are delivering options to among the world’s hardest issues.
Almost 300 nominations have been submitted by corporations from numerous industries and areas throughout six award classes. The competitors was stiff because the pool of nominees was narrowed right down to 29 finalists. Lastly, solely six winners have been chosen. Their exceptional tales of information and AI innovation are value sharing.
Congratulations to the 2023 Information Crew Award winners:
Unified Lakehouse Award: Condé Nast
Condé Nast is a worldwide media firm producing award-winning journalism, content material and leisure for each platform in the present day and operates in 32 markets worldwide. Recognizing the immense worth of information in in the present day’s digital panorama, the information crew launched into an formidable journey to centralize all information in Databricks Lakehouse, eliminating the necessity for different information warehouses, together with cloud choices like Redshift and Snowflake. With a unified view into over 3PBs of information, they will deal with any analytics or ML workload on one platform whereas additionally saving them $6M in infrastructure prices and $2.6M in information engineering productiveness. But it surely’s not nearly IT affect; they’re additionally delivering worth to the enterprise. 2000 ML fashions are serving predictive analytics to drive options in areas like segmentation, personalization, and subscriber churn, and over 200 enterprise customers are accessing stories by way of Databricks SQL, with all information entry securely managed and tracked with Unity Catalog. The info crew at Condé Nast isn’t stopping there — they’re waiting for understand extra price optimizations with Serverless deployments of Lakehouse elements and speed up extra worth to the enterprise by leveraging Lakehouse information.
Finalists: Epsilon, Mercedes-Benz, Siam Business Financial institution, and Texas Rangers.
Information Crew Disruptor Award: JetBlue
By leveraging the facility of LLMs and Databricks Lakehouse, JetBlue is deploying AI & ML merchandise with the objective of optimizing operations, rising new/current sources of income, lowered delays, and enhancing effectivity. They started by shifting their information and AI platform off a highly-constrained multicloud information warehouse (MCDW) to the extremely versatile Databricks Lakehouse, which may mesh information from numerous sources after which quickly experiment and iterate on ML fashions and options together with LLMs. With their groundbreaking BlueSky operational digital twin and embedded LLM chatbot launching in phases, JetBlue is empowering decision-makers with invaluable insights, enabling them to offer market-leading Buyer experiences whereas reaching vital price financial savings and operational efficiencies — from real-time climate to components availability, to crew scheduling and extra. The constructive affect goes past conventional functions of AI & ML. Utilizing Databricks, JetBlue is seeing enhanced ROI throughout numerous AI & ML merchandise and a decrease whole price of possession financial savings. These monetary advantages proceed to offer ample TCO runway for added industry-leading merchandise additional solidifying their place as an {industry} disruptor. JetBlue’s trailblazing strategy is setting a brand new normal for the {industry}, shaping the way forward for air journey for the higher.
Finalists: Bread Monetary, Burberry, Kelly Providers, and the U.S. Division of Veterans Affairs.
Information Crew Democratization Award: Nationwide
Nationwide is on the forefront of spearheading transformative change throughout the insurance coverage sector. Their main goal is to develop custom-made insurance coverage options that cater to particular person necessities. It locations a robust emphasis on safe information protocols all through the group and has chosen Databricks Lakehouse as its go-forward information warehouse supplier. Nationwide seeks to rework the insurance coverage {industry} and supply policyholders with larger worth and personalised experiences via the efficient utilization of information.
Finalists: Barilla, GSK, HealthVerity, and Rivian.
Information Crew Transformation Award: Unilever
Unilever is without doubt one of the world’s largest client items corporations with a portfolio of main, purposeful manufacturers; an unequalled presence in future development markets; and a determinedly industrial focus as a sustainable enterprise. As suppliers of Magnificence & Properly-being, Private Care, Dwelling Care, Vitamin and Ice Cream merchandise, it has gross sales in over 190 nations and merchandise utilized by 3.4 billion folks each day. The Unilever Compass, its sustainable enterprise technique, is got down to assist ship superior efficiency and drive sustainable and accountable development whereas bettering the well being of the planet; bettering folks’s well being, confidence and well-being; and contributing to a fairer and extra socially inclusive world. Information and analytics play a pivotal half in strategic supply. With petabytes of information – together with regional and buyer information – at Unilever’s disposal, democratization is essential to the power to modernize information technique and rework operations. Unilever’s European in market Information and Analytics crew has undergone an formidable transformation utilizing Databricks Lakehouse to simplify and standardize European information. The Information Engineering crew created a strong information basis that harmonizes information throughout all European markets (39+ markets) into a standard, built-in and unified information platform. This has enabled cross Europe trade-offs and simplified the decision-making course of, making it clear and uniform throughout all enterprise models and markets in Europe. Enterprise customers are supplied with metadata-driven instruments that permit them to effortlessly deal with or herald further information to reply their particular enterprise questions with minimal help from the engineering crew. These instruments have been initially examined with 12 tasks throughout totally different capabilities in Europe, the place a whole bunch of latest objects have been created shortly and securely. The established framework in the present day empowers enterprise customers all through the group to be data-driven in methods not doable earlier than. Harmonized European information foundations, constructed on high of Unilever’s Information as a Platform information lake, have remodeled Unilever’s strategy to information and its capacity to democratize the supply of worth to the enterprise. With a consolidated view into exterior and inner information sources on a scalable, open platform, 2400 day by day customers in Europe now have a holistic view of efficiency throughout the area. This allows decision-making throughout each side of the enterprise to tell the granular development alternatives and Most worthy actions throughout Europe.
Finalists: Albertsons, AXA France, Humana, and IFC/World Financial institution.

Information Visionary Award: Jawad Khan, CDAO, Tufts Medication
For too lengthy, healthcare journeys have been disjointed, leaving sufferers and their caregivers with a irritating expertise that leads them to hunt care elsewhere. To deal with this, Jawad Khan, Tufts Medication’s CDAO, started to architect a contemporary information platform dubbed WIISE (Wellness Intelligence and Data Sharing Enablement) utilizing the Databricks Lakehouse to remove the disparities between data techniques and ship affected person information seamlessly to inner and exterior shoppers. Khan’s crew merged over 50 disparate digital well being information techniques from over a dozen distinct EHR distributors, giving information analysts, for the primary time, the power to make use of a single question to go looking three a long time of archives for over 4M sufferers’ information that had as soon as been unfold throughout totally different, proprietary databases. Revolutionary providers which have resulted embody WIISE Scheduler, an AI-based appointment scheduler matching affected person signs to applicable specialties, and persona-based dashboards and stories. Immediately, Tufts Medication delivers on the imaginative and prescient of frictionless care to sufferers. Its widespread information mannequin permits unprecedented entry to a long time of information, representing tens of millions of affected person information, throughout disparate legacy techniques and operational information shops.
Finalists: Jamelle Brown – CTO at First Orion, Tim Dickson – CIO at Generac Energy Methods, and Michel Lutz – CDO at TotalEnergies.

Information for Good Award: Australian Purple Cross Lifeblood
Australian Purple Cross Lifeblood is aware of that saving lives begins with the benefit of entry to organic merchandise, so life-giving donations can allow life-changing outcomes for Australia’s most weak. Their Efficiency and Analytics crew is utilizing information and AI to strengthen engagement and help communities by recruiting new donors, recognizing current donors and optimizing provide chains. Using Databricks Lakehouse, Lifeblood can effectively run granular and correct forecasts to know native dynamics. For instance, by processing real-time information inside their donor facilities, they will predict wait instances and cancellations, alerting donors of potential appointment delays. They search for alternatives to know what drives native donations, in addition to what donor items could enhance donation frequency via advanced segmentation and advertising and marketing attribution fashions. With Databricks Lakehouse’s unified structure, Lifeblood has made it simpler to draw extra beneficiant donors and strengthen bonds inside their group, saving numerous lives alongside the way in which.
Finalists: BlueConduit, CareSource, Inari Agriculture, and McKesson/Ontada.
Let’s Increase a Glass
Congratulations to our 2023 Information Crew Award winners! Keep tuned for the 2024 Information Crew Awards.