Designing a marketplace of help for vulnerable people, with Simon Hopkins

Fibonacci, the Red Olive data podcast

Hello and welcome to Fibonacci, the Red Olive data podcast, all about data and analytics where we hear from leading specialists and get their take on the industry. We are joined today by Simon Hopkins, Director of Resources at Blind Veterans UK. This provides free support and services to vision-impaired, ex-Armed Forces and National Service personnel.

Simon has previously held a variety of roles in the third sector at CFO, CEO and COO levels and started his career in professional practice, qualifying as a chartered accountant with KPMG in London.

Simon is a regular columnist for Charity Finance magazine, publishes and speaks regularly on subjects ranging from financial sustainability to digital disruption.

Here are the main topics of conversation with their timecodes:

• Learning how to rethink the relationship between money and data when moving to the charity sector (3m)
• Understanding that the customer is more sophisticated and multi-layered in the charity sector than people think (4m 41s)
• Integrating data, and the idea of one platform going out of fashion (6m)
• How important it is for a single view of data at the top is in bringing an organisation with you (6m 52s)
• Simon’s work at Blind Veterans (10m)
• Formulating a data strategy (11m 28s)
• Connecting with other organisations to help the vulnerable (16m)
• Data-rich solutions that could connect multiple sources into a marketplace of help (22m)
• Thinking of the GDPR as an asset (27m 44s)
• Where a marketplace of help could emerge from (31m)
• A map of veterans’ needs and how it helps anticipate what their future needs will be (33m)
• Using data from patients’ smartphones to help determine when interventions are needed (34m)
• The skills that you need to enter a career in the data industry (40m)
• Working strategically with Red Olive (44m)