“The leader in CLEAN Data”

W Daniel Cox III, CEO of Ascention is a proven global authority on Data Governance & Management and drives the vision of Ascention to deliver world-class outcomes in Enterprise Performance Management for clients turning 'Data into Profits'. Dan grew up on a large farm while learning many leadership and life lessons from his father, an ex-Army Captain and helicopter pilot. He was just 12 years when he started managing up to 100 employees in different jobs. He needed to gain sufficient knowledge of his employees, such as their jobs and responsibilities, to demonstrate the processes, correct them, and even terminate them. This learning process provided the ability to sift through tasks and prioritize while keeping the vision and outcome constant.

Dan’s parents taught him entrepreneurship, dreaming, focus and responsibility during his high school days. He has maintained these lessons throughout five distinct careers or phases in his professional life. From this solid personal base, Dan’s career saw him enjoy various corporate roles in data and analytics to the launch of Ascention, which has become a thriving organization focused on data management consulting. Ascention broke the AU$10 million mark in the financial year 2019/20 and was ranked #2 in the CRN's Fast50, which is a tremendous accolade. Dan explained that every day brings new challenges, and the experiences, achievements, and lessons learned from the Farm have always supported him throughout these different work lifecycles. At Ascention, the team is looking forward to expanding into New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Gaum, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

"Ascention collaborating with the Northern Territory Government had a herculean task on their hands, associating individuals with a wide assortment of aliases across several agencies and operational systems, from the Attorney General to Corrections, Police, Transportation and other departments.”

According to Dan, organizations can become fixated on data for the sake of having and being able to suggest that they are data-driven. They are forgetting the why or the reason for needing data. Ascention, the market leaders in CLEAN Data must also remember and remind clients that it's about “Turning Data into PROFIT.” If an asset isn’t productive, the organization sheds unprofitable assets; the same should be valid for data. Data should be a profitable functioning segment of an organization. This is why Ascention developed their “CLEAN Data Methodology” starting with “C” caring for the reason why, the story and outcomes needed by the organization, executives, business unit managers, team leaders, etc. Once they understand and usually help clients fully understand, hone in, and focus on their real goals and needs, they have put a data program to meet those goals and outcomes. This may include going through our 4 Pillars Readiness Assessments: Data Strategy, Data Governance, Data Architecture, and Data Culture, ensuring they continue to apply the CLEAN Data Methodology.

The four pillars essentially serve as guide rails to businesses, offering them a sense of direction as they pursue their business objectives. The merits of such business-critical capabilities can be observed through a recent engagement between Ascention and the Northern Territory Government, Australia.

The Northern Territory is an enormous land area with a deficient population of people, roughly around 290,000, and comprises large groups of Aboriginal and Native Australian habitants, which presents a unique set of problems to the governing authorities. Many of the Aboriginal people have at least two aliases for differing seasons of a year. Adding to this predicament is that a large percentage of the population tends to migrate, and many do not have birth certificates. As a result, identifying individuals is nearly an impossible task for civil service organizations. When individuals are provided services such as benefits, welfare, emergency responses, or hospitalization, the service provider may be unable to identify who the individual is, what their health records are, and the kind of medication they could administer.

Ascention collaborating with the Northern Territory Government had a herculean task on their hands, associating individuals with a wide assortment of aliases across several agencies and operational systems, from the Attorney General to Corrections, Police, Transportation and other departments. Ascention had to ensure that each of these departments was integrated with a master data set that could verify the same individuals across different interaction channels while abiding by the relevant legislation and segregation of appropriate access and visibility of personal data. Taking the challenge head-on, Ascention successfully created a ‘Golden Group’ for each individual, such that any entity providing civil services could not only understand who the person is but also provide them with the most appropriate service consistently.

Ascention has won many awards and accolades over the years, but they still consider their biggest wins when they see their clients winning. “We have clients that reduce processes by weeks, clients that reduce costs for manual workflows through automation in the millions and clients have better awareness of opportunities taking that competitive advantages into the tens of millions,” says Dan. IE