Coffee break with Jon Castellano

Sep 5th, 2019 | By FCT

You may have heard about our commitment to technology and data to enhance the real estate transaction experience for all the parties involved. This week we’re chatting with Jon Castellano, the director of data strategy at FCT. He has been in this role for the past two years and is responsible for overseeing all the data strategy group initiatives.

Jon’s team works to leverage data to improve effectiveness and build new products and services to better serve our customers.

1. What does your role look like on a daily basis?

I’m currently involved in the management of our data infrastructure and how it impacts our business decisions. These business decisions include internal data efficiencies across each line of business, and external strategies to build new products, which I am responsible for developing and supporting. As part of this process, I have to identify opportunities in the marketplace to close any data gaps.

2. How did you get on this career path?

I actually started my “data” career path in the recovery space, leveraging data solutions to purchase and resolve outstanding consumer debt. Once I got a taste of how large this market was, and it continues to be, I decided to start my own business providing data-driven solutions such as analytics, modeling, and cleansing to a broader retail sector. These experiences taught me a long lasting lesson—data is a business and should be treated as such.

3. What is your favourite part of the job?

My favorite part of this job is the opportunity to be part of the re-invention of how we view the real estate and financial marketplace. FCT is in a prime position to offer one-of-a-kind, best-in-class data and digital solutions to connect our major stakeholders. And we have the full support and leadership from our executive team to do so.

 4. Which accomplishment at FCT are you most proud of?

I wouldn’t say that I am most proud of a single thing that I personally have accomplished. Rather, I am proud to be a part of an organization that has been so agile in quickly pivoting to address a changing market and economy; one that demands greater access to data and technology. As an organization, I believe we have embraced this challenge and change and we are fully invested and committed to being an enabler of that change.

5. How will FCT’s data strategy impact our customers in the near future?

Over the last couple of years, we have spent significant time with our customers to understand their gaps, successes, demands and desires in the data space. From these conversations, I personally believe that there are three pillars that we continue to address to positively impact the customer experience:

1. Single source of truth: We are committed to breaking down the barriers of disjointed data sources by being the largest aggregator of data in Canada.
2. Redundancy: We want to provide data solutions that eliminate manual rekeying of data to reduce redundancy in our customers’ workflow.
3. Authentication: We are focused on providing data that maintains the highest integrity and confidence to empower our customers’ data-driven decisions.

 

Do you have any questions for Jon? Share them in the comments!

 

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