EPISODE 202: Marketer of the Month Podcast with Jonathan Daglish

Hey there! Welcome to the Marketer Of The Month blog!

We recently interviewed Jonathan Daglish for our monthly podcast – ‘Marketer of the Month’! We had some amazing insightful conversations with Jonathan and here’s what we discussed about –

1. AI-Powered Social Listening: Preparation for risks using AI.

2. Future Landscape of Decision-Making: Interconnectivity and data points shaping decision processes.

3. Effective Risk Detection with AI: Technologies like NLP and NER in risk identification.

4. Differentiation in Competitive Market: Partnerships with startups and tech companies.

5. Content Marketing Strategies: Snapshot posts, white papers, and event hosting.

6. Fostering Innovation: Collaborations and unrestricted product development.

About our host:

Dr. Saksham Sharda is the Chief Information Officer at Outgrow.co. He specializes in data collection, analysis, filtering, and transfer by means of widgets and applets. Interactive, cultural, and trending widgets designed by him have been featured on TrendHunter, Alibaba, ProductHunt, New York Marketing Association, FactoryBerlin, Digimarcon Silicon Valley, and at The European Affiliate Summit.

About our guest:

Jonathan Daglish is a Senior Manager and the Intelligence Services Centre Lead at Deloitte. He holds a Master’s degree in Terrorism, Crime, and Global Security and has extensive experience in intelligence and risk advisory roles, including previous positions at Dataminr and TorchlightGroup Ltd.

From Data to Market: Deloitte’s Intelligence Services Center Lead Jonathan Daglish on AI’s Role in Strategizing

The Intro!

Saksham Sharda: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Outgrow’s Marketer of the Month. I’m your host, Dr. Saksham Sharda, and I’m the creative director at Outgrow. co. And for this month we are going to interview Jonathan Daglish who is the Intelligence Services Center Lead at Deloitte.

Jonathan Daglish: Great to be here. Thank you.

Don’t have time to read? No problem, just watch the Podcast!

Challenge yourself with this trivia about the exciting topics Jonathan Daglish covered in the podcast.

Launch Interactive Quiz

Or you can just listen to it on Spotify!

The Rapid Fire Round!

Saksham Sharda: Let’s start with the rapid-fire round. At what age do you want to retire?

Jonathan Daglish: 62.

Saksham Sharda: How long does it take you to get ready in the mornings?

Jonathan Daglish: About half an hour.

Saksham Sharda: Most embarrassing moment of your life?

Jonathan Daglish: Oh, I can’t think of one off the top of my head, to be honest. It’s, there’s too many.

Saksham Sharda: Favorite color?

Jonathan Daglish: It’s purple.

Saksham Sharda: What time of day are you most inspired?

Jonathan Daglish: Between 7:00 AM and 10:00 AM

Saksham Sharda: How many hours of sleep can you survive on?

Jonathan Daglish: Five and a half six.

Saksham Sharda: Fill in the blank. An upcoming technology trend is ____.

Jonathan Daglish: JCY is intriguing.

Saksham Sharda: The city in which the best kiss of your life happened.

Jonathan Daglish: London.

Saksham Sharda: The biggest mistake of a big career.

Jonathan Daglish: Not joining the army early.

Saksham Sharda: How do you relax?

Jonathan Daglish: I go to the gym.

Saksham Sharda: How many cups of coffee do you drink per day?

Jonathan Daglish: None.

Saksham Sharda: A habit of yours that you hate?

Jonathan Daglish: Energy drinks.

Saksham Sharda: The most valuable skill you’ve learned in life.

Jonathan Daglish: Empathy and communication.

Saksham Sharda: Your favorite Netflix show

Jonathan Daglish: Manifest.

Saksham Sharda: One-word description of your leadership style.

Jonathan Daglish: Inclusive

Saksham Sharda: Coffee or tea to kickstart your day.

Jonathan Daglish: Tea.

Saksham Sharda: Top priority in your daily schedule.

Jonathan Daglish: Organization.

Saksham Sharda: Ideal vacation spot for relaxation.

Jonathan Daglish: Caribbean

Saksham Sharda: Key factor for maintaining a work-life balance.

Jonathan Daglish: My children.

The Big Questions!

Saksham Sharda: Well, that’s the end of the round. Let’s go into the longer questions that you can answer with as much time and ease as you like.

Saksham Sharda: The first one is what key insights do you plan to share with Vivatech regarding AI-powered social listening and its transformative potential for businesses, and data intelligence strategies?

Jonathan Daglish: Great question. So one of the big things is that you can’t avoid risk, but you can prepare for risks. And so using artificial intelligence and a number of functionalities, you are able to identify things before they become a real relevant risk. And so in doing that, you are prepared to mitigate, act, and respond.

Saksham Sharda: How do you see AI data intelligence that is shaping the future landscape of decision-making itself and decision-making processes for businesses, particularly in the realm of risk advisory intelligence services?

Jonathan Daglish: So I think as the world’s transformed over the last number of decades, we’re more interconnected. Being more interconnected means you need more data points to understand those connectivities and the implications of events. So historically, a small business might have a risk that would be one layer day, whereas now a business is interconnected across the countries in which it operates, it could be 10, 20, a hundred countries, the third party risks. And so to get that data is, is one thing, but actually to understand it, without technology and AI, you’re not able to ly look at that data. And so as we move forward looking at risk in particular, that data and that technology underpins it is imperative for the future.

Saksham Sharda: How can AI be used to use that data to effectively detect risks and increase the organization’s resilience?

Jonathan Daglish: Absolutely. So I mean there are a couple of detects. So we’re using a number of things like match language processing, and named entity recognition artificial intelligence to identify risks that could be in relation to a business, a regulatory change, or a geophysical event. And then once you identify that risk, you then use those technologies again to compartmentalize those risks into sub-areas. So thinking about maybe geopolitical, is it a change in government? Is it a change in a cabinet policy? You then go down to the next layer. We then overlay humans in that loop. But with machine learning what the humans are interacting with that data with, it becomes smarter over time. So the AI learns with the ML that actually what’s relevant, and what’s not relevant to an individual organization. And so that process of learning technology, that human interface always at the forefront of it, means that we can mitigate those risks and create that resiliency in their business.

Saksham Sharda: So besides human interface, are there any other ways that Deloitte ensures the accuracy and reliability of data-driven risk assessments? Especially considering the dynamic nature of threats in today’s business environment.

Jonathan Daglish: Yes. So I think one thing we always do with all of our data is we do like, what we call, a capture rate assessment. So understanding how accurate that data collection is. So it’s great getting lots of data in, but is it relevant to what you’re looking at? Is it accurate to what it needs to be and is anything missed? And so doing that analysis with technology, but also that repetitive niche that, so thinking about say a regulatory change has the data set against every regulator, against every regulation, and just validating that with technology, make sure it’s accurate. That is a key component of what we try and do to make sure that what we are delivering is relevant, timely, and accurate.

Saksham Sharda: And what about making critical business decisions? How does Deloitte use data to inform business decisions for their clients?

Jonathan Daglish: Yeah, I mean, good question. So I think there’s a big difference between data and intelligence. So data is the collection of data points and understanding what that is, but intelligence is that of that data into informative pieces of intelligence. So that could be leveling in different data feeds. It could be combining data feeds to understand trends, volume, and sentiment. And that is the difference that we try to impose within the data sets that we deliver to clients. So it’s not looking at mass data. They get the relevant data that has been synthesized for their decision making and then they are informed when they do that.

Saksham Sharda: Given the vast amount of data that is available, how does Deloitte ensure data privacy and security while leveraging data analytics to provide value-added services to clients?

Jonathan Daglish: Yeah, and a great question. So we’ve got a very robust security system within the firm. So everything is tested. We go through GITAM accreditation, all of our ISO 27,001. So everything is rigorously checked. We then compartmentalize the teams that are using that data as well. So it’s on a need-to-know basis. So everything is stored securely on the cloud and within the environment of each team. And then within those teams, each client gets their own client space as well. So there’s no interference or cross-sharing of that data amongst clients and outside the team that needs to see it.

Saksham Sharda: Let’s go into a more fun question. What is your typical day when you wake up look like, give us an overview of this schedule. You wake up in the morning and then,

Jonathan Daglish: So I spend two hours doing emails while feeding the kids in the morning before work starts. And then the journey of my day is interacting with clients, understanding their problems and how we can best help them, and positioning our team to go do that. So that’s working with our tech teams to, to our collection and understand the requirements from a data perspective, working with our delivery teams to take that data, synthesize it, and create those outputs for our client. And then just that loops back around and that not, not necessarily se sequential, it could be little bits here and there, but ultimately the forefront. Everything we do is the client’s concerns and making sure what we deliver to them is the highest standards.

Saksham Sharda: How much of this time has usually been taken up with meetings?

Jonathan Daglish: Far too much. I’d say probably like six, seven hours a day. So in the role that I do, it’s very much in that this development is client relationship space, it takes up most of my time. Luckily I’ve got some very capable people on the team that do the delivery and technology.

Saksham Sharda: And what advice would you have for job seekers looking to get into this field?

Jonathan Daglish: Great question. I think the biggest thing that we look for isn’t necessarily a particular skill set, it’s the willingness to learn, the openness to approaches, and the diverse nature of Deloitte. So quite often if you look at the job descriptions of Deloitte, it’ll list a whole bunch of things, but fundamentally it’s communication, the ability to learn, and the willingness to learn above all else.

Saksham Sharda: As the head of Deloitte’s Intelligence Services Center, what are some key elements of your marketing strategy to showcase the center’s capabilities and attract clients seeking intelligence and risk advisory services?

Jonathan Daglish: Yeah, great question. So a big, big part of what we try to do is eminence around our products. So we have a central marketing team that looks at different products that we offer clients, and we do campaigns around that. So that’s attending events like today. It’s going to networking events that help like others that are very specific to a use case, be it around compliance or third parties. And then creating that brand eminence through LinkedIn primarily and how we communicate our thoughts and feelings and express knowledge in the sector to our clients and interact with them in that way. And that’s shown some great traction over the last couple of years in doing that.

Saksham Sharda: So in an increasingly competitive market like we have today, what innovative tactics or channels do you utilize besides LinkedIn to differentiate Deloitte’s intelligence service center, and position it as a trusted partner for plan-seeking strategic intelligence solutions?

Jonathan Daglish: Yeah, one thing we’ve started to do recently is partner with smaller startups and small tech companies. So how we can use what we have within our team to influence and support their development, but conversely use their new technologies to influence what we do, working together and collaboratively, and that is one of the reasons why I’m here today with one of our key partners, Did you mind. So how we work together to create products for our clients is part of how we grow that confidence.

Saksham Sharda: So we heard that you were a finalist in the Isle of Man Innovation Challenge 2024! What innovative ideas or approaches have you and your team developed and how do you believe they can contribute to addressing, pressing challenges in the intelligence and risk advisory sector?

Jonathan Daglish: Yeah, so we got to the final with our product called intelligence as a service that has essentially taken all of the modular services that we’ve developed over the last eight years in the team. We combine that in a holistic risk platform. So at the enterprise level, you could do a multitude of things. You can do third-party risk regulatory risk, geo geographical risk brand and sentiment, and allowing clients rather than having a single service from a single provider, we can provide everything in one place. And the real difference in how we’ve innovated is the rollout of generative AI. So a lot of what we summarize with our outputs is done through gens of AI. To avoid this we use NLP NEI in the background as well as AI and ML. And the, I guess value add that Deloitte can bring is the SMA input. So every service that we deliver and modules of that, we give the option to then plug into experts across Deloitte, so our global network. So if you need a risk expert in a particular area, we can do that.

Saksham Sharda: So in general, how do you approach innovation within your role at the company and what strategies do you use to foster a culture, creativity, and experimentation within your team?

Jonathan Daglish: Great, really good question. So for innovation, I think I’ve already mentioned we partner with some smaller businesses and startups. I think that’s key because most of Deloitte is great, but most of the best things can be done by innovative new businesses. And so understanding what they’re doing and helping them, and then how we then foster that within our team is, we have a development team and their mandate is to make our product better. And that can come with round tables, interacting with vendors and clients, and generating ideas. There’s no balance of what they’re allowed to do. It is essentially the end goal is to make our product better, and they do that however they see best.

Saksham Sharda: And so the development team works under your team or is it independent and it’s allowed to just cross all departments?

Jonathan Daglish: So it’s within our team, yes. So we’ve got our development team. They also then reach back into a larger development team within our parent organization.

Saksham Sharda: So let’s talk a bit about content marketing. Content marketing plays a significant role in establishing thought leadership. How does Deloitte’s intelligence services center develop and distribute content to educate and engage target audiences? And what types of content have you found to be the most effective in driving engagement and generating leads?

Jonathan Daglish: So there are probably three areas that we focus on. One is snapshot posts on LinkedIn, talking about a topic of the day and a service that could respond to that. The others are longer forms. We’ve done some long-written white papers in partnership, not just with our team, but broader team, in the business. And the other one is attending events where we are hosting. So speaking to a place like the Chamber of Commerce and startup events that we did last night and creating that eminence around a particular topic, not necessarily the whole package of what we do, but taking something say like operation resilience or third party risk, getting experts in the room and talking about the problems and really getting those thoughts from across the industry and understanding their problems and how we can support them more broadly.

Saksham Sharda: Do you have any interesting story about any particular content strategy that you have that comes to mind now?

Jonathan Daglish: Oh, not necessarily off the top of my head, no. To be honest with you, we’ve got some great events. I was told by one of my friends earlier that I was at the event and we had a video that was going to be doing a demo. It was supposed to be silent but because the actual sound of it was people talking about the demo in itself, I got on stage in front of about 500 people and the narration of like, click left, click right. What should we do at this stage was play over the speakers. And so that was slightly embarrassing. I managed to take it off quickly.

Saksham Sharda: So let’s talk a bit about your career. It has span roles in military and government intelligence, risk advisory, and leading the Deloitte Intelligence Services Center. How have these diverse experiences shaped your approach to tackling complex challenges and providing strategic guidance to clients?

Jonathan Daglish: So I think the foundation of that’s come from the military. So in the military, I was in intelligence and the first thing about the military is the harnessing of a team spirit and ethics. And that’s traveled through everything that I’ve done since then. And within those roles, I had tactical-level roles, but the latter half of my career ran strategically. So thinking about things from a bird’s eye view, not just necessarily what is happening, but what may happen, how that impacts those in proximity, and what we are looking at. I mean, that’s helped me through the latter stage of my career. And so those founding principles that the military gave me have really of course what we still do now.

Saksham Sharda: So how was the pivot from the military to this sector? Was it easy? Was it a bit tough? Was it interesting?

Jonathan Daglish: It’s interesting, I transitioned between roles at the tech company, which is helpful. So I, it is a business called Dataminr innovative real-time alert in business. And that was probably the biggest step in terms of moving away from the military that helped me set up myself in Deloitte.

Saksham Sharda: So you’re gonna talk about air public social listening. How do you leverage speaking engagement and industry events to position yourself and Deloitte’s Intelligence Services Center as thought leaders of the field?

Jonathan Daglish: Yeah, I mean, again, good question. So I think it’s really important in these events. I’ve found that having a stand is one thing that being able to speak and talk about what you see as the industry, how the technology, and how we can support clients is more relevant. You get more understanding, you get more interest in traction. I think this week alone, I’ve like 300 LinkedIn requests off the back of just to leave tech advertising in the session that we’ve got today. So it’s great for the EMIR building.

Saksham Sharda: So the last question for you is of a personal kind, what would you be doing in your life, if not this?

Jonathan Daglish: Look, I’d probably start my own business if I’m honest. If I was Deloitte. It’s something that I’ve thought of, but I’ve got a great role at Deloitte so that’s not on the cards at the moment.

Let’s Conclude!

Saksham Sharda: Thanks, everyone for joining us for this month’s episode of Outgrow’s Marketer of the Month. That was Jonathan Daglish who is the Intelligence Services Center Lead at Deloitte.

Jonathan Daglish: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Saksham Sharda: Check out the website for more details and we’ll see you once again next month with another marketer of the month.