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Dean Smith

Dean Smith

Chief Technology & Product Officer at Credit Benchmark, previously Chief Architect/CTO at RELX PLC.

Jul 30, 2026

9:42
You tend to just jump to the solution or even just like throw a tool at it before really taking a step back and saying, but what's the end experience? And how does that experience align to delivering value to our end consumer? It also helps get away from doing things in silos because when we have these use cases or these questions documented, then you can start to see patterns on how you can serve different departments of the business and create more show where those processes are building trust and maybe even come up with some universal trust signals for quality.
10:17
So I think, I mean, this is not a new idea, but at the heart of every business these days should be the business data set.
10:25
business you are.
10:26
You need to have accurate data about every facet of your business, how it operates, sales, marketing, operations, everything.
10:33
And that should all be in one place.
10:35
And in my head, I'm a big fan of the democratization of data.
10:39
Yes, there'll be small pockets.
speaker_3ADVERTISER
13:01
That's M-O-D-O-P dot com slash AI.
1:55
I know it's still a pretty tight jobs market, but maybe it's sort of getting ahead of a problem.
2:02
Well, here's the problem.
2:03
If you take the last nonfarm payroll numbers that we got and you break it down by sector, you see where the job slowdown is really coming from a handful of sectors.
2:14
It's coming from construction, it's coming from hospitality, and it's largely coming from government.
2:20
Okay, so the construction of hospitality slowdowns are really coming, are really being driven by the so-called self-deportation of something around 1.5 million undocumented workers.
2:32
They've gone back below the border and lowering interest rates isn't going to bring them back.
2:38
Okay, that's an entirely separate phenomenon and a cut in the Fed funds rate is going to do nothing to bring those workers back and have them pick up hammers and get back to work in the hospitality sector.
3:37
Tell me about that.

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