Bhavik Davda, Chief Customer Insight and Analytics Officer, AS Watson, Europe

My career began as a Management Accountant, where I provided financial analytical support, which helped me later in my career to focus on creating value from data teams, but also securing investment from the business. I firmly believe that by doing different roles, you can bring cross functional knowledge, which all contributes to my current role. My journey has involved running a loyalty programme, building a small mobile phone network, and leading strategic development functions. I have also focused on implementing business side some of the initiatives that insight functions that I have led – for example, store segmentation. The common thread here is that each role used data, analytics, and insight extensively and allowed me not only to lead by example but understand how to generate value as a customer of a data and analytics team.