Executive InterviewsLatest
Meet Bren Hennessy – How Spark is Helping Organisations Navigate Through The World of Contextual Data
Today we have selected Bren Hennessy to take his interview. He is the Founder of Spark.
First of all, how are you and your team doing in these COVID-19 times?
Covid has been something that the team has adapted to in their stride, and because we are a remote-first company, we were very well set up to ensure we had the support mechanisms in place to support our people globally.
Tell us about you, your career, how you founded your company?
I’ve worked in many industries and gained experience in enterprise sales, technology resourcing, and building product teams to deliver best-in-class digital products. I founded Spark and my two Co-Founders, John Clark and Steve Bell, when we saw a massive opportunity in the market where customers are looking to have a technology partner they could trust and have aligned goals to ensure maximum business value achieved.
How does your company innovate?
We specialize in building contextual data solutions and platforms that enable organizations not just better to understand their data in a world where most data is not utilized correctly, but also whereby they can use their data to gain a competitive advantage in understanding their customers and how they can leverage their products and services.
How the Coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?
Covid has, in a strange turn of events, given rapid growth to Spark’s business as most of our customers have relied on us even heavier due to the need to digitalize and connect with their markets and consumers in a remote selling world. At Spark, we have a global workforce.
We make sure that the team remains connected by meeting up in different locations quarterly to not only speak about what we are building but also to connect on how people are feeling and what more we can do to ensure they feel like they have the support systems in place for not just inside working hours but outside of working hours also.
Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?
We operate with a strong accountability model in Spark, which allows us to confront difficult decisions head-on and, most importantly, learn from our successes and failures as a team. We have learned as an organization that when you allow people to take ownership of things, the results from this empowers people to deliver and build better solutions for our customers.
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?
We are a technology agnostic environment, so the tools and software we use and build differ from project to project. However, some of the internal communication platforms we use are essential to ensure everyone is on the same wavelength and expectations are known. We also recognize how important it is that our tools allow people to “switch off” and ensure online burnout isn’t something that occurs.
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
We compete in a global market with many innovative companies looking to help businesses build more scalable and efficient software. We feel Spark has a strong competitive advantage because we create an environment to allow our elite technologists to be bold in building cutting-edge solutions that have a massive business impact on our customer’s bottom line.
Your Final Thoughts:
If the last year has shown us anything, it to continue to invest heavily in our people as they are the ones who will create the new innovative solutions that will allow us to gain a global market share in building best in class contextual data solutions for organizations to grow well into the future. We have a slogan and methodology in Spark that we truly embrace, “Think Build Deliver,” and if we commit to this, we are sure the future is bright for our customers and us.
- Spokesperson: Bren Hennessy
- Company: Spark
- Website link: www.spark-hq.com
