This is a profile from the 2022 version of the DataIQ 100.
The latest list is available here.
Simon Prinn, head of data science and engineering, Walgreens Boots Alliance
What has been your path to power?
At University, my ambition was to work in environmental science. My first job was as a researcher for an environmental report in local government. This led to me picking up data analysis and GIS, but also facilitating action and stakeholder management at director level. I soon realised my interests were in analytics and when the Boots Advantage Card scheme launched, I was intrigued and wanted to find out more. I became one of the first analysts to explore the data.
I was always looking for ways to get more insight from our data and systems, leading to a role in IT, partnering the marketing function, developing the technology roadmap for all areas of commercial analytics. I returned to leading analytics projects, focusing initially on space and location optimisation and was asked to create a team to scale up our capabilities to allow us to land initiatives across WBA globally, including in the US, Latin America, Europe and the Far East.
The work really broadened and developed our expertise in data science and data engineering, and our remit (and team size) extended accordingly. Most recently, my remit has extended to include pharmacy, personalization and digital analytics, coupled with the development of a culture which embeds the activation of data into the strategic planning process.
What impact has the pandemic had on the role of data in your company/organisation?
Naturally, the pandemic created a lot of unplanned activity, but actually I think this also created the opportunity to further demonstrate the benefits of big data analytics, developed with agility, and deployed quickly and accurately. It’s been a tough couple of years, but it didn’t change my team’s plans, it just changed the ways of working for delivering them.
With our global remit, we were well acquainted with working remotely and so were able to make the full switch to it very quickly. I’ve always looked to recruit people who thrive on overcoming challenges, focusing on delivering “come what may” and I think this really helped to see us through. Lockdown did make some of our larger scale projects more difficult to navigate as some of the more ad-hoc (yet crucial) discussions were more difficult to initiate. We quickly realised this was a challenge and made a conscious effort to strengthen our internal project communication, planning and monitoring.
As many others have found, recruitment became “interesting” as it was all carried out virtually. I’ve recruited people I’ve yet to actually meet in person! As it’s been less possible to witness customer behaviour at first hand, data has become more important as a way to understand what’s happening, and to develop approaches to improve our offer in an ever-changing context. During the pandemic, customer behaviour was clearly driven by government guidelines and the analysis of large detailed data sets has been vital to pick out and quantify the often abrupt changes in shopping patterns.
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