Data Testimonials
Our working world is becoming ever more digital, and it is our mission to embrace the opportunities opened up by new technologies. Because of our global reach and different divisions, there is an immense variety of projects around data at Bertelsmann. Find out more about the importance of data science in the context of an international media, services and education company.
Carsten Mönning
Bertelsmann Corporate
Why is data important for your division?
As a media and service business, Bertelsmann is in the fortunate position of creating and collecting massive amounts of valuable data on a daily basis. Although, as a member of the Corporate Head Office, my team and I are not directly engaged in any Bertelsmann business activities, hardly a day goes by without us working on or thinking about business applications of these vast amounts of data in cooperation with Bertelsmann business units and as part of company-wide data and analytics initiatives. This is simply due to the fact that the majority of our businesses are undergoing data-driven transformations of historic proportions, all of which require at their very heart the activation of the valuable Bertelsmann data resources in the most technologically and – most importantly –commercially effective way possible.
How is data being applied in your division?
We work with a wide variety of structured and unstructured data types, ranging from audio and text, to image and video data for the development of proof-of-concepts, showcases or minimum viable products. We do this in close cooperation with the data owners, i.e. the Bertelsmann business units, as part of cross-divisional initiatives, such as the Bertelsmann AI Expert Group. In this context, we also run expert knowledge sharing sessions and joint development activities such as Bertelsmann AI Hackathons or AI HackDays. We also operate group-wide accessible data science environments, making hands-on results and insights from these activities available to the entire Bertelsmann group.
What role does data play in your job?
There are three things at the very core of my job: Data – its meaningful processing for and application to Data Science and AI use cases – group-wide knowledge sharing, and evangelizing of all of this. In other words, data may only be another means to the overall end, namely the commercial success of the Bertelsmann group, but due to its complexity and rather interesting inherent challenges, working with data and its various use cases has come to dominate my working day. This represents a rather exciting and continuously motivating experience probably shared with the large majority of data and technology professionals working in today's data-driven world of the media and service business.
