The Back Room: Karl Bambury

Karl Bambury
Data manager
G2 Data Dynamics

What is your name and job title?
Karl Bambury, data manager, G2 Data Dynamics

What does your job involve? Is there a lot of pressure?
My role encompasses the design, creation and management of marketing databases to facilitate strategic campaign activity and insightful analytics. The pressure tends to vary depending on client requirements and deadlines. When there are tight time constraints, then the large quantities of data that we deal with can create additional demands due to the length of time required to audit the success of new processes.

Are you part of a team or do you work alone?
I feel very much part of a team both within data management and the wider company. There is a certain amount of skill-set commonality between the data management and analytics teams which I believe minimises the disconnection that sometimes arises between teams in larger organisations.

In what ways does your work see the light of day? How is it used by your company?
A lot of what myself and the team create eventually ends up in front of a “customer” – whether that means directly in front of a client or internally in the form of campaign strategists, analytical team members and other data managers. I feel this is very important because it adds an element of tangibility and allows us to see firsthand how our efforts support the business.

What is the best thing about your job?
That definitely would be the people I work with – some of whom have been colleagues for a considerable number of years. We spend a large amount of our lives together and I think it’s crucial on a business and personal level that our relationships are formed on friendship. I also gain a lot of satisfaction seeing how the end result helps support a client’s business.

What technique/application/piece of data would make your life easier?
Working with large datasets can introduce significant time constraints when developing new processes, so the obvious answer would be more powerful applications and hardware to minimise such an effect. However, obtaining quality address details for prospect records, particularly email, would be invaluable to shaping our existing clients’ strategic requirements.

What are your ambitions?
From a business perspective, I look forward to G2 Data Dynamics forming further productive relationships within Grey Communications and wider WPP groups. Similarly, I would like to see us continuing to form new partnerships with clients independently of existing group relationships. On a personal level, I would like to work more closely with clients helping them to design, create and manage business strategies to improve the effectiveness of their customer communication programmes.

You have a life – what do you get up to in it?
I have very active eight-month-old son who keeps me and my wife extremely busy, but we love every minute of it – although the occasional lie-in now and then would be fantastic. Aside from that, I love music and try (but probably fail miserably) to play guitar. Also, being Welsh, I’m a very keen rugby fan, although sometimes I find this can be more stressful than my occupation. I do love cooking Vietnamese food as well.