Jaguar Land Rover joins forces with Multiverse to deliver data skills training to employees

Published by

Peter Davison

Motor manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover is collaborating with tech start-up Multiverse to enhance the data skills of its employees as it accelerates its digital transformation and prepares for an electrified future.

Through its Reimagine strategy, the Warwickshire-based firm is at the forefront of the rapidly changing automotive industry with a focus on electrification, digital services and data.

Leadership in these areas is critical to Jaguar Land Rover delivering a modern luxury experience to its clients now and in the future.

The work with Multiverse is the first of many initiatives planned by the company to increase data capability and invest in employees’ skills to meet the needs of the business during its transformation and in the future.

The shortage of data skills is estimated to cost UK businesses £2 billion a year, with one in 10 jobs requiring data expertise and 100,000 data positions unfilled.

Multiverse is looking to fill this skills gap by building an outstanding alternative to university and corporate training through apprenticeships. It now trains over 8,000 tech, leadership and digital apprentices.

Through the collaboration, a Data Fellowship course, delivered by Multiverse, will be offered to employees.

The 15-month course covers topics including data modelling, analysis, Python, and Machine Learning, and will support thousands of Jaguar Land Rover's employees to make the transition from spreadsheets and desktop data work to working on the cloud.

The first 400 employees enrolled this summer, with additional groups launching each quarter.

Clive Benford, Chief Data Officer, said: “The automotive industry is rapidly changing to become digital and electric.

"The management and utilisation of increasingly high volumes of data in this new era will be central to Jaguar Land Rover’s future.

"We need to create a data-first mindset that will support our growth, enhance the customer experience, and increase the productivity and expertise of our teams.

“The business’ own digital transformation is already underway with software-over-the-air, which demonstrates the power of effectively harnessing data.

"The primary goal of our partnership with Multiverse is to empower all our employees to utilise data, gain insights from it and develop valuable solutions.”

Euan Blair, founder and CEO of Multiverse (pictured), said: "This ambitious and far-reaching programme is one of the largest data apprenticeship programmes ever launched in the UK, and will deliver world-class training in data to hundreds of people on an ongoing basis.

"Jaguar Land Rover's investment in apprenticeships shows the premium placed on data skills and the power of apprenticeships to deliver impactful new skills into a business through applied learning."

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.