Martin Aylward, head of data and CRM, EDF

Describe your career to date

After a few interesting early roles at the Lord Chancellor’s Office and the Medical Research Council in London, and moving back from London to Brighton, I did what most people do in Brighton and got a job at American Express. I then moved to Royal & Sun Alliance, where I managed to get onto its global digital leadership initiative at the peak of the dot.com boom, which led to me getting a job in the fledgling ecommerce team and a lead role in the creation of More Th>n.

It was in this role that I cut my teeth on all things digital and data and set up the rest of my career. Then, a love of all things French led me to EDF Energy, where I headed up in first the acquisition and then the customer marketing teams, taking a lead role in relaunching the brand and building the direct and digital marketing capability.

I then led EDF’s smart metering programme which spanned digital, IT, data, operations, marketing and physical assets. EDF installed over 2 million smart meters during this time, building a key part of the UK’s net zero infrastructure. Finally, in 2021 I landed the role of leading all EDF’s data teams in a newly set up data and CRM centre of excellence, which has now transformed EDF’s data capability and the value delivered by data.