Michael Fillios
Founder & CEO
IT Ally
Balaram Tidhi
Chief Data & Analytics Officer
Arterra Services
In this second engaging episode of the CDO Magazine interview series, host Michael Fillios talks with Balaram Tidhi, Vice President and Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Artera Services. The discussion delves into the complexities of balancing stakeholder needs across disparate companies, especially within a private equity-owned firm. Tidhi underscores the importance of aligning with business strategies and potential impacts on EBITDA, as well as keeping an agile mindset in managing the backlog. He also sheds light on the unique organizational structure at Artera Services, including the role of analytics engineers and their use of Agile and DevOps. Tidhi expounds on their approach to data management and governance, their initiatives in creating a data-driven culture, and the emphasis on regular feedback and direct engagement with senior leadership.
Michael Fillios
Hello and welcome to the CDO Magazine interview series. I am Michael Fillios, founder and CEO of IT Ally and a CDO editorial board member. And we are partnering with CDO magazine, MIT CDOIQ and the International Society of Chief Data Officers in a series of interviews. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Balaram Tidhi, Vice President, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Artera Services. Balaram, welcome to the program.
Balaram Tidhi
Great to be here. Thank you, Michael.
Michael Fillios
How do you balance the different stakeholders needs and meet them and prioritize them across these disparate companies? And furthermore, private equity often sometimes is not willing to make investments in these kinds of things. So tell me a little bit more about that dynamic. Given you are private equity owned.
Balaram Tidhi
From a headquartered level, what is our business strategy looks like and how much of this impact is going to have on our EBITDA, for example, and what initiatives are there, what exactly the board is envisioning for like one to two. So that gives a good grounding about what is operational versus what is nice to have as well as what is what. So then with our quarterly readouts that we are having with leadership, we show them this. So we want to constantly be aligned. If there’s any changes in strategy, we want to make sure we align it with deprioritize or prioritize. We have this agile mindset, so we manage our backlog in a way that is prioritized and people understand it. When you show the relative priority and you actually helping businesses like operating companies to think at holistic level, thinking this is what the high board level, this is what the goal as a company, we are doing and your project is one siloed versus how can we have projects that are creating multiple impacts. Sometimes one project of one operating company can have significant value for others. So we’re going to pick that and we’re going to spread it across, but ultimately keeping our eyes on our business strategy and can it help take a decision that would improve our EBITDA.
Michael Fillios
That makes sense. And you found that how active is your private equity owners in the day to day operational, prioritization and such?
Balaram Tidhi
So again, it’s a balance, right? So they give enough rope for us for me to have again, that’s where you build the trust to a point where they trust you and they tell you and you go to them unless until you really require, but being mindful about they have a lot of things to do. So that quarterly checkpoint is the main one. Like if there is anything, I have enough personal relationships that I would get immediately, I will get to know things. So that’s how we manage the time and the face time, I would say.
Michael Fillios
We probably should have started talking a little about your organization as well. Maybe just give us some context to your organization, Balaram, just so we can understand how you’re structured dealing with these different companies and whatnot. Maybe take a minute on that.
Balaram Tidhi
Yeah, sure. We are like an infrastructure services company. So the organization went with, the hub and a spoke kind of set up. So the central team, we have like a data scientist, they have something called analytics engineers. So we trained folks who are on the business like a business analyst. They have a good construction domain experience, have worked in this space, have some interest in the technology space. So we extended or provided that kind of training into it and vice versa. Heavy technical folks, more to the business side of the fence. So this is the new thing. Last year a word was coined like analytics engineer. So it’s a combination of both data engineering and business analysts. So we experimented. So that really worked out well. We got some great team members who really excelled in that. And that brings us very close to the business. We usually have the design thinking sessions like that. So we also have an offshore team India to support us. So we have this dynamic going. Yeah, so that’s how we manage. We use Agile and DevOps.
Michael Fillios
Very good. So let’s shift gears a little bit. Talk about your data, specifically some of the data challenges, whether it be governance, security, keeping that quality and accuracy going within the organization. So I’m sure you have some formalized process data governance mechanisms to do this. So maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
Balaram Tidhi
Yeah, so we started, as I said earlier, that we start like Moneyball project for data management. So the data management is a combination of data governance and data quality. So we created like a playbook of what falls into what bucket. So this playbook actually helps us to it’s like phase one of the Money ball was that and we share this playbook with the individuals and any data we delivered, any models, any reports we delivered. We use power bi. In Power Bi, we actually keep track of the utilization of that particular report. And in each report we show the quality rating of that particular report. Like with color coding. So you would know you will get some of the data. Might be not that great, but the first cut of the report went in. We don’t want to be too critical initially. So the quality, we’ll put green maybe for a quarter. And then there’s a lineage. We use Azure’s Purview. There’s a tool for data governance. So we use Purview and we check out the lineage and making sure that we also wrote in the back end. We actually write some scripts to do some basic checks of the data for the model, drifts and things like that. So all that is good enough to show an indicator about the quality of the critical data element that we are interested in the report. So by creating this setup, we could monitor now if it gets the color changes for the quality maybe some business process changed and nobody told us or data got degraded. It gives us like an indicators, the ones that we could find technically so that we can have a dialogue and maintain it. So that’s one mechanism that we did that sticking to the Crisdm framework having this data governance and also access management policies we work closely with our security team. We have something called Tenable which we keep track of our cloud thing so we use GraphDB just to make sure that the relationship find patterns in the data anything outliers. So the policy thing again the Moneyball is the first version we did we want to make sure we hard press it. You want to almost keep it in the simmer mode for some time, let that really settle in people getting more defined, the definitions a little bit more consistent, not like what the contexts are captured and need more buy in from the data stewards. We are having programs to recognize there this is like a double duty they do so recognize efforts and some benefits for doing it and creating some training modules for people to start educate them on data. What goes in comes out some of the things we take it for granted. So I want to make sure there is some training. You need to have certain level of trainings even before you get a report to access so that you can really use it. So these are all are in progress but The Moneyball phase one was our first step in the door to let people come and even ask us what is hell is this money ball and go watch the movie. So that’s how it starts and then we take them into the journey of enabling a data driven mindset in the organization. It’s a part of this change management that we are taking. Whichever works right, we push and pull and check. Okay, this is working in our culture, this is not working. It’s very multifaceted environment. So that’s what the CDs role I guess, right? We need to be creative in which works, which does not work.
Michael Fillios
Very true. Yeah, I think that’s a good point. You touched upon some of the way that you collaborate and stay aligned with your stakeholders. Is there anything else you want to add there in terms of making sure that data is present in decision making processes and is really being operationalized throughout the organization.
Balaram Tidhi
So one thing having that feedback loop back in had played a big role it can get lost in. You do something, it gets used and then it’s taken for granted very easily. So having a closed back loop and being intentional for asking my senior leadership and executives even talk to my team like a guest into my team meeting, just having such kind of face time, even for 10 or 15 minutes, just come. In as a guest and answer questions. It changes the way the impact that making to the business by what they’re doing in the team. Takes a huge booster for the team.
Michael Fillios
Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. It’s certainly always, I’m sure, very appreciative for them to have that type of conversation and exposure. Okay, terrific. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. And to learn more about CD magazine or to view more interviews, please visit cdomagazine.tech. Thanks again.
Balaram Tidhi
Thank you.
This podcast was originally posted on CDO Magazine
Business and Technology Ally for PE Firms
What We Do
About Us
Get business insights right in your inbox.
@ 2025 IT ALLY LLC | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Website designed and Maintained by Robben Media
ITAlly at the Cybersecurity Midwest Summit 2023: Everything You Need to Kno...