Premal Desai: 2021 Wrap-Up: Taking Stock of The Gym Group’s Data Strategy

Premal Desai, The Gym Group’s Head of Data and AI, shares some of
his key lessons from the past year and how the experience will
shape his team’s strategy going forward

Gyms have been among the hardest hit businesses through the
pandemic. Factors such as on-and-off lockdowns and social
distancing have tested businesses and left them with valuable
lessons.


In this week’s Business of Data podcast, Premal Desai, Head of
Data and AI at The Gym Group, talks about the challenges he’s
faced and what lessons he's drawn from them for the future.


One of Desai’s biggest takeaways during this time includes not
only relying more on organizational data but, most importantly,
pairing analytics insights with employee feedback to make the
most of the information at hand.


“The power of data comes when you mix the two – it’s the Holy
Grail,” he says. “We’re trying to merge the two as much as
possible because, while data gives you one perspective, it's not
always a holistic view.”


This feeds into the need for data literacy within organizations
such as The Gym Group, something Desai thinks will only grow in
importance over the coming year.


“I’d love to focus more on data literacy,” Desai notes. “It’s
something I’m passionate about; bringing different parts of the
organization up to speed and convincing others that there’s value
in literacy. It means creating an organizational standard of how
to use data and thus enable people to do better jobs, enabled by
data.”
Navigating a Tough Environment with Data

Having a flexible team and finding team members who are
comfortable with uncertainty has proved essential throughout the
pandemic.


“[When the pandemic struck] we were trying to predict things,”
Desai says. “There was a lot of planning needed around things
such as capacity and space utilization while maintaining health
and safety standards. It became important to take care of our
members using our data.”


But Desai considers The Gym Group’s ability to lean on data as
the thing that helped the company navigate the pandemic best,
answering the questions no one had answers to.


He says: “There were some things that needed us to dig deep into
our data landscape and there were things where we were lucky
enough to have the info readily to hand. This can be credited to
both luck and skill. But the fact that we were able to respond
and maintain some agility proved the case that there is value in
data infrastructure governance.”


While working with the data helped The Gym Group navigate 2021’s
tough business climate, Desai says that the need for agile team
members during this time cannot be understated.


“Data teams are used to operating in a stable environment, but
clearly you need to be ready for a topsy-turvy environment, too,”
he concludes. “There are people who can handle that challenge,
and those who can’t. This adds to the challenge of selecting new
talent as they should be able to deal with ambiguity and remain
flexible. These soft skills are proving to be almost as important
as having the core skills of a data analyst or a data scientist.”
Key Takea