About us
I started Data Understood because I wanted to build the kind of Data and AI consultancy I would want to work with: experienced people who take the time to understand your objectives, your data, and how decisions actually get made before recommending anything, and who leave your teams more capable than they found them. That is still how we work with clients across Scotland and the UK today.
Inez Hogarth
Meet Inez
I have spent my career around data in complex organisations, usually at the point where an ambition meets the reality of the systems and people underneath it. What I noticed, again and again, was that the technical answer was rarely the missing piece. What was missing was agreement, and someone willing to say plainly what the work would involve.
So the way I work is fairly simple. I start with the objective you are accountable for, not the technology in front of you. I spend time with the people who live with the data every day, because they usually know where the problems are. Then I set out the sequence of work, the trade-offs and the parts you should keep in-house, and I tell you if something is not worth doing yet.
I believe consultancy should leave an organisation more capable, not more dependent. That belief shapes how we staff engagements, how we document decisions and how we hand things over. It also means I would rather recommend a smaller piece of work that succeeds than a larger one that stalls.
Enterprise clients tend to work with me directly because they want a senior view they can challenge, in language their board and their engineers both understand. For me, success isn't simply delivering the work. It's seeing it being used and making a difference after we've gone.".
How I prefer to start
A thirty-minute conversation, no preparation needed, about the outcome you are working towards and what is genuinely in the way of it. If we are not the right people for the work, I will say that too.
Our philosophy
These are not values on a wall. They are the reasons we make particular choices about scope, pace, staffing and honesty once the work is underway.
A platform, a model or a dashboard changes nothing until people use it to make a different decision. We plan for adoption from the first conversation, which usually means slower agreement on the outcome and faster progress once the work starts.
The hard part is rarely the engineering. It is getting the person accountable for the objective, the people who own the data and the people who build the systems working from the same understanding of what good looks like.
We would rather leave an organisation able to run and extend the work itself than be needed indefinitely. Skills, documentation and ownership transfer while the work is happening, not in a handover at the end.
Strategy earns its place when it tells people what to do on Monday. We keep recommendations short, sequenced and costed, so leaders can act on them rather than admire them.
If the data will not support the ambition yet, we say so and explain what has to be true first. Clients tell us that clarity early saves considerable money later.
We sit with the teams doing the work, learn how the organisation actually operates and adjust as we understand more. It is a quieter way of consulting and it holds up better over time.
Why clients stay
Each theme below is described in the clients' own words, taken from independently verified reviews of work we have delivered.
Engagements are set up as a shared piece of work rather than a supplier arrangement. Clients describe a genuine sense of partnership, and it is the reason most of our work continues beyond the original scope.
“The sense of partnership. At no point did it feel like a purely transactional relationship.”
We spend real time learning the strategy, the commercial pressures and the people before proposing an approach. It is slower at the start and it is why the recommendations survive contact with the business.
“Data Understood push to learn the nuances of the company, its overall strategy, its people and thus deliver solutions that benefit the company to its core and lay the foundation for a strong future in data.”
Advice arrives with a structure, a cost and an order of work attached, so leadership teams can make a decision rather than commission another review.
“They provided costed structure and solutions to create an ongoing credible data management capability.”
Technical detail is translated for the people who have to act on it. Boards, operational leads and engineers all get a version of the same story that makes sense to them.
“Data Understood's deep understanding of our problems and ability to communicate with non-technical teams in a very positive manner is impressive.”
Our people work inside client teams, in their meetings and their tools, for the duration of the engagement. Clients say it feels less like hiring a consultancy and more like adding colleagues.
“The empathetic and supportive approach, quick understanding of what we were trying to achieve, and patience in supporting us through the process.”
The measure of a finished engagement is what the client can now do without us. Direction, skills and ways of working stay behind.
“Data Understood immediately understood what we were trying to do, both in terms of the technical aspects of the data and the implications and possibilities for the business model.”
Thirty minutes, directly with our founder, on the outcome you are working towards and what stands in the way of it. Free, and with no obligation.
