Abstract: 

Born out of FedEx, a pioneer that ships roughly 17 million packages a day and manages endless threads of information, FedEx Dataworks was launched as a new organization in January 2020 to answer the question: how can FedEx harness the power of our rich data ecosystem to drive better decision making, improve the efficiency of supply chains, and unlock new opportunities for our network, our customers, and their customers?

The organization’s growth journey happened in near parallel to the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted global supply chains and fundamentally changed the e-commerce landscape. What began as a small group of about 10 curious team members functioning as a “start-up” within FedEx, has since grown into a cross-functional organization of nearly 400 data scientists, platform engineers, designers, and product managers.

In this presentation, Tony Kreager, SVP of Data Science & Data Engineering at FedEx Dataworks, talks about the team’s approach to problem solving, how they’ve quickly scaled solutions through a platform-mindset, and the many lessons learned along the way.

Bio: 

Tony Kreager is Senior Vice President of Data Engineering & Data Science at FedEx Dataworks—an organization within FedEx Services focused on harnessing the power of the rich FedEx data ecosystem to revolutionize global commerce and transform the digital and physical experiences of customers. In this role, Tony leads a multidisciplinary team responsible for building and leveraging large-scale cloud operations, complex data platforms, and advanced AI to create differentiated insights that help optimize the FedEx business and create value for customers.

Since joining FedEx in 2008, Tony has played a key role in digital transformation efforts across the enterprise, gaining experience in product management, design thinking, big data platform engineering, Data and Decision Science, and leadership excellence. Prior to his time in FedEx Dataworks, Tony served as a director of IT, leading the strategy and delivery for FedEx’s online and native mobile customer experience, including fedex.com and customer-facing mobile applications.