This is a profile from the 2022 version of the DataIQ 100.
The latest list is available here.
1. Andy Hill, chief data officer, Unilever
What has been your path to power?
I’ve had a fabulous career to date. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing people at two outstanding companies and with lots of opportunities to go overseas, living and working in the UK, Italy and in North America and travelling to so many countries around the world as part of my job. I studied Geography at Oxford in the early 90s as I was always fascinated with the relationship between people, space and time and how they play out.
I joined dunnhumby in 1995 - an early start-up at the time, looking to explore how to use the first loyalty card data with Tesco - and I was intrigued with the possibilities. I spent 22 years at dunnhumby and was fortunate enough to move through the organisation in a variety of technical and commercial roles, helping to grow the company from a feisty start-up into the world’s leading customer science company. Notable roles were solutions director for the UK&I, chief operating officer Italy, and chief operating officer of dunnhumby North America, based in Chicago.
I left dunnhumby in 2017 to join Unilever as the global VP information and analytics, before being appointed as chief data officer for the enterprise in 2021. My ambition at Unilever is to help make us a truly data-intelligent company to deliver on our purpose of making sustainable living commonplace.
What impact has the pandemic had on the role of data in your company/organisation?
While data is of course critical to the effective running of all businesses, the pandemic has put increased demand on the need for further granularity of data and faster speed of information provision across our entire company. The pandemic has caused such disruption to how we live and consequently on the relative demands of every product that Unilever makes. Many of our products, such as hand sanitiser for example, saw unprecedented increases in demand, while others such as out-of-home ice cream or restaurant catering were significantly impacted by lockdown.
This volatility has put pressure on every facet of our business operations, from decisions about sourcing raw materials, the production and the transportation of our products, how we engage and sell to meet the rapidly-changing demand of our customers and consumers, as well as an increased focus on how we can use data to keep our employees and partners safe. For example, we modelled the initial spread of Covid-19 in Italy and China to plan how to allocate resources and shift production in our factories in Latin America where the pandemic hit later. The pandemic has really demonstrated the power of data and analytics in enabling our organisation to make better, faster and more forward-looking decisions to navigate through uncertainty as well as enable growth in the future.
DataIQ is a trading name of IQ Data Group Limited
10 York Road, London, SE1 7ND
Phone: +44 020 3821 5665
Registered in England: 9900834
Copyright © IQ Data Group Limited 2024