Tech consultancy AND Digital is expanding its data teams in Scotland after winning a string of contracts from Google, Nationwide Building Society, and British Airways-owner IAG.

Initially, between 10 and 15 of the 100 roles being created throughout the UK will be based at the company’s offices, or “clubs” in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The firm will be training around 75 existing staff or “ANDis” as they’re affectionately known, to increase its existing data capabilities, as well as hiring a further 25 senior members of staff to help lead the new data business unit. AND Digital aims to treble the turnover from its data work in 2024.

Tim Hatton (pictured above), the newly appointed head of data at AND Digital, said: “Scotland is a major focus for our new data business unit, and so we’ll be creating up to 15 data roles in two of our clubs north of the border.

The expansion of our data team will be driven by demand from our new and existing clients, and so we may end up with even more staff working on data projects in Scotland.”

He added: Our dedicated data staff will be supported by other ANDis from our team with a wide set of skills, from front- and back-end developers through to software engineers and product analysts.  

Our data projects draw on expertise from across our business, rather than treating data on its own in an exotic silo.”

Mr Hatton, who joined AND Digital in 2016 and moved into his new role in January, commented further: “Ten years ago, AND Digital disrupted the market for building digital products by introducing our agile way of working – and we’re now doing the same with data.

We use iterative steps, so that our clients can start using the core part of a project straightaway to help their customers, while we then add on extra features. We’re also helping to change the culture that surrounds our clients’ use of data – training is one part of the process, yet it also goes deeper than that.”

He went onto say: “We help our clients to develop openness and transparency around their data, making sure the data is accessible to the people who need to use it, and giving those people trust in the security of the data, so that they can use it to experiment with new ways of helping their customers.”

AND Digital has created an operational data platform for British Airways-owner International Airlines Group, which helps the company to react more quickly to changes to schedules, such as crew shortages or aircraft maintenance, by making real-time adjustments to help passengers to reach their destinations.

Google Digital Garage, which provides digital skills training to small businesses and organisations throughout the UK, brought in AND Digital to develop a series of training modules on topics including “Decision Making with Data” and “Telling Stories with Data Visualisation”.