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This blog is written by Matt Dunn, GTM Managing Director at Experian. The Women in Sales Awards recognises the exemplary efforts of individuals in sales teams across Europe. Open by nomination only, the awards celebrate the achievement of women who go above and beyond in their career. It aims to promote the needs for greater gender diversity in sales and executive leadership teams across the corporate landscape. We place significant emphasis on helping and supporting women to reach senior roles, and I’m delighted that seven colleagues – Laura Webster, Kathryn O’Brien, Liz Clarke, Ivelina Mihaleva, Bally Ubhi, Clare Brown and Caroline McCrystal – were nominated as finalists at the awards. Even better, Caroline was named as the overall winner in the ‘2019 Best Woman in Inside Sales’ category. Not only that, Caroline was also the winner of the ‘Most Distinguished Saleswoman of the Year’ award too. In total, there were more than 1,000 nominations from companies in 22 countries, which goes to show what a remarkable and fantastic achievement to be recognised in such a way. We’re extremely proud of all their efforts this year and I’m sure you’ll join me in congratulating all of the nominees and Caroline on their outstanding success.

For many of us, the holidays are an exciting time filled with family, friends and a flurry of gift giving and receiving. Unfortunately, this time of year can also put a strain on finances and your financial health. In fact, we see many people start a new holiday season while they’re still working to pay off debt from the year before. Each year, our holiday spending survey takes a look at how people are feeling about holiday spending, how much they plan to spend and their financial goals for the new year. We found shoppers plan to spend 75% more this year on holiday spending than in 2018 with an average of $1,649, and 63% agree holiday expenses affect their finances negatively. We also found 38% of the people we spoke to are feeling stressed as the holiday season approaches. Getting a spending game plan in order now can help protect your financial health and keep your holidays merry and bright. Here are three ways to stay financially fit this holiday season and beyond: Create your holiday spending plan. Setting a budget is an important first step to ensure you’re not spending more than you can afford, but your holiday spending plan should include more than that. Think about who you need to shop for, where you’re going to shop and when you’re going to shop. Our survey showed the lure of a good deal can be hard for some to resist. In fact, one in five Americans said they would risk becoming a victim of identity theft for a good deal. Having a plan in place can help you avoid risky spending behavior while scrambling for last minute gifts. So, make that list and check it twice. Use credit as a financial tool. All year and especially around the holidays, I like to remind people that credit can be a financial tool, while debt is a financial problem. We know that about 44% of people plan to use credit to pay for gifts, and it’s important to do so responsibly. After all, the bills always arrive in January. If you’re going to use credit to pay for gifts, make sure you have a plan for paying your balances off to avoid missing payments and increasing your utilization rate – two critical factors that can have a negative impact on credit scores. Additionally, we found one in four shoppers plan to open a new credit card this season. Opening one or two cards to take advantage of in-store discounts or cash back offers can be a useful way to save money during the holidays, but don’t overdo it. If you take advantage of too many rewards offers, you may find you’ve saved yourself right into debt. Prepare your credit for holiday shopping and the new year. Getting your credit ready for the holiday season and the new year should be part of your holiday spending plan. That way, if you do plan to apply for new credit this shopping season or in 2020, your credit is ready to work for you. Get a copy of your credit report to ensure there are no surprises and catch up an any missed or late payments. This is also the first holiday season you can use free tools like Experian Boost to improve your credit scores if you’re paying your telecom and utility payments on time. We see scores improve for two out of three users with an average boost of more than 10 points. If you have a limited credit history or a thin credit file, you may see an even bigger boost to your credit score. We know almost have of those we spoke to for our survey will try to improve their credit score before the start of the new decade and Experian Boost is proving to be a valuable tool for consumers looking to do just that.  There's often the temptation to overspend, but the best gift you can give yourself is being financially smart. My hope is these tips can help boost your holiday cheer while preparing you for a financially healthy new year.   Happy holidays.

Technology revolutionizes the way businesses operate, but implementing change within a company is often challenging and company-wide support is vital to successfully undergoing a transformation. At Experian, we’re using technology and innovation to modernize an industry, and satisfy the real-time data demands of consumers and businesses.  The success of this transformation is one of the reasons why we’re proud that our Global CIO, Barry Libenson, has been named the CIO of the Year. The 2019 Dive Awards recognize the industry’s top disruptors and innovators. These executives, companies, trends, and breakthroughs are transforming the industry. Winners were chosen by the editors of CIO Dive based on thorough and independent research, reporting, and analysis. Other award winners include Google Cloud and VMware. In 2015, Experian began the daunting task of moving from a traditional computing architecture to the cloud. Specifically, we put in motion a cloud strategy centered on flexibility and the ability to operate in any cloud. Such transformations often start by centralizing data and implementing new processes that minimize overhead and speed time to market, like cloud and mobile computing. This is a monumental job with our massive digital infrastructure and significant global reach, but it enables us to provide customers with real-time access to data. To do this we pioneered the use of Hadoop to store massive quantities of data for consumer credit scoring. Today, we maintain Ascend, a platform of 250 million redacted consumer records that enables our clients do real time queries on consumer credit data rather than batch processing. This has worked to digitally transform Experian from a traditional credit bureau to a technology and software provider. For us to further evolve we began working on APIs for internal use rather than going straight to customer-facing features. Today, we use APIs to help our clients and consumers access and make use of key data insights. For example, Experian Boost, which has helped millions of people raise their credit scores, is a result of information being accessed through API calls. As a result of our digital transformation, our API hub is processing more than 100 million transactions a month and Ascend is now one of our most successful cloud computing architectures. This all represents business opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible with a traditional digital infrastructure. Success for the technology team at Experian is found in the financial performance of the company.  "What I tell my team is the biggest sign of us being successful is praise," said Libenson. "When the businesses at Experian tell us we're helping them or we're doing the right things, that's the best measurement I can think of, in terms of success." As one of the world’s most innovative companies, Experian’s business continues to evolve to deliver faster, better services for our clients and consumers. "The people and organizations that win the Dive Awards are trailblazers and leaders in their markets," said Davide Savenije, editor-in-chief of CIO Dive’s publisher Industry Dive. "Their achievements in 2019 are shaping the future of where the latest strategies and trends are going." While industry accolades like CIO of the Year are important, the truth is that any transformation isn't an endpoint, but a journey. To succeed, we are in it for the long haul to use technology to help deliver results for our clients.   Read the full article on CIODive to learn more about Experian’s digital transformation.