The Data Demystified Summit made its Berlin debut on 4 March 2025 at the InterContinental Hotel Berlin, bringing together 150 senior-level data professionals and 25 distinguished speakers from across the EMEA region. This inaugural event in Berlin served as a dynamic platform for high-level networking and in-depth knowledge exchange, focusing on the latest trends and technologies shaping the customer data landscape in 2025.
Summit Demographics – Top Attending Industries
The summit attracted a diverse group of data leaders from various industries, reflecting the broad applicability and importance of data-driven strategies in today’s business environment. Highlights of the attending companies are: Zalando, HelloFresh, Axel Springer, Vorwerk, Just Eat Takeaway, Ratepay, mobile.de, SumUp, Deutsche Bank, and Flix.
Summit Demographics – Attendee Seniority and Company Size
A significant majority of attendees held senior leadership positions, underscoring the strategic emphasis on data initiatives within organisations. Additionally, a substantial portion of participants represented companies with over 1,000 employees, indicating the critical role of data management and analytics in large enterprises.
Summit Agenda and Highlights
The summit’s agenda featured a comprehensive range of forward-thinking topics, including Data Governance, Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), Data Monetisation, Zero-Party Data, Business Intelligence, and Data Quality. These subjects were explored through various formats such as panel discussions, fireside chats, and keynote presentations, fostering engaging and insightful dialogues among participants.
Summit highlights
We had our opening session on the topic of Data Governance – A panel discussion on building customer data governance frameworks addressed the integration of compliance, data principles, and security measures to protect customer data while supporting business objectives.
An interactive poll question was conducted, asking, ‘What emerging trend will have the biggest impact on data governance in the next three years?’ The results below indicate a strong belief in the growing influence of AI-driven data governance trends.
During the panel, Artur Yatsenko, Director of Data Engineering at Urban Sports Club, shared a key takeaway: “Ensure you address the data governance aspect early on. It becomes more challenging as data architectures mature and the volume of data assets grows. Our organisation has over 800 data models. Connecting producers, consumers, data quality rules, PII tags, and metadata is a crucial cornerstone that should be a priority for any data leader.”
Carolina Matamoros Ferro, Data Governance Expert at BASF Agricultural Solutions, added: “Key components include empowering the customer to have its own leverage by establishing it as a domain, ensuring clear customer master data, and forming a dedicated focus/consultancy team for data compliance.”
We had a duo keynote presentation featuring a case study on Data-Driven Transformation and automation: How Viking Line utilised Avaus & Hightouch to boost revenue and efficiency at scale.
During this keynote presentation, Steven Biehl, Managing Director DACH at Avaus, and Leonie van der Sleen, Senior Solutions Engineer at Hightouch, shared their experiences in leveraging data and automation to enhance revenue and operational efficiency at scale. The discussion highlighted key challenges in Customer Data Platform (CDP) adoption and provided practical strategies to address them, including structuring data consumption workflows from both B2B and B2C perspectives. Additionally, the speakers discussed how organisations can ethically and effectively utilise consented data to ensure responsible and impactful data-driven transformations.
We also had a panel discussion touching on Data Monetisation. Panellists shared strategies for unlocking revenue streams through strategic customer data utilisation, focusing on leveraging data to create targeted in-app advertisements and analysing customer data to extract valuable insights for commercialisation.
Steve Buckingham, Head of Analytics at SumUp, provided a succinct summary of his thoughts: “Truly obsess over understanding your customers. It’s not enough to make accurate predictions—collaborate with your research teams to understand customers as individuals, gaining insight into their lives, goals, and motivations. If you can achieve a more comprehensive, 360-degree understanding of your customers, you’ll have a much better chance of turning that insight into successful actions.”
Irina Ioana Brudaru, Head of Data Science at Semrush, stressed the importance of understanding customers and products beyond segmentation, advocating personalised targeting through CRM and shifting from AB testing to lift testing. She highlighted tracking, measuring, and leveraging data maturity frameworks across departments, along with emphasising Change Management and company culture. Additionally, she advised adopting a strategic approach to AI that benefits the business while ensuring GDPR compliance.
This session also featured an in-summit facilitated roundtable discussion, allowing attendees to share their views and insights.
Key takeaways from the discussion included insights on how organisations are leveraging customer data to create new revenue opportunities. Participants also highlighted their biggest challenges in making customer data actionable for business growth.
- AI-Powered Refund Process: A customer data-trained AI system was developed to handle the refund process, achieving accuracy above 90%, resulting in significant cost savings by reducing fraudulent refund attempts.
- Data Integration Challenge: The biggest challenge is integrating data from multiple sources into a unified view. Without a clear, real-time picture, extracting insights that drive business growth becomes difficult.
- Personalised Subscription Service: By analysing customer purchase patterns, a demand for a specific product category was identified. This insight led to launching a personalised subscription service, boosting sales, enhancing customer retention, and creating a new revenue stream.
Future engagement
We sincerely thank all our partners, speakers, and attendees for making the Data Demystified Summit Berlin a success. Your invaluable contributions, engagement, and insights have been integral to fostering meaningful discussions and collaborations. We look forward to building on this momentum and enhancing the Data Demystified community further.
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We look forward to welcoming you at future events.
Our upcoming in person summit- Data Demystified Summit Manila, for other information please visit: https://datademystifiedsummit.com/
Stay tuned for updates!
By: Teddy Fung, March 2025
