Matthew Giunipero, head of data and analytics, Foot Locker

Tapestry was my first experience in retail and where I developed my passion for data and analytics. I held various roles within our Business Intelligence team culminating in leading our team responsible for our in-house customer data and analytics platform. During my time at Tapestry, I really began to grow and develop myself as a leader. I was given the opportunity, autonomy and support to push boundaries, stretch past comfort zones and develop my leadership style. 

At Estee Lauder, I led our global data and analytics capability within IT. Our team was matrixed into our chief data officer. Estee taught me how to run a large team at scale, deliver within a highly matrixed environment and the importance of executive presence. 

I joined Foot Locker near the end of 2021 to lead their global data and analytics capability. Three things attracted me to the opportunity, a chance to get back into retail, the challenge to transform a data and analytics capability and the culture and core values of Foot Locker. We have a very talented, diverse team of analysts, engineers, data scientists and architects. Our journey is just beginning, but we are expecting big things from our team as we help Foot Locker unlock more value from its data. 

What are your key areas of focus for data and analytics in 2022? 

We’re in the early innings of transforming our business at Foot Locker and data and analytics will be a key strategic enabler of that transformation.   

Our top priority is evolving our customer intelligence capability. As we diversify our businesses and product assortments, the need to better understand our consumer and how we serve them is critical. This will manifest itself in a variety of ways: new enterprise customer KPIs and segmentations, AI/ML driven scoring models that drive acquisition and retention and the sharing of data and insights with key strategic brands to drive product innovation.   

We recently pivoted our team to a product-oriented delivery (PoD) model to foster more internal collaboration, improve our business engagement and drive better product outcomes. As we mature that model and embark in our enterprise transformation, we’re also investing in our supply chain, merchandise, and finance data and analytic capabilities.  

Finally, we’ve just begun exploring how we solve the last mile analytics problem. We’re excited about the potential of augmented analytics and decision intelligence to help people on the front lines of the business make more, better data driven decisions. 

Tell us what leadership means to you in the context of your role as a senior data leader. 

Leadership is about leveraging the collective power of a diverse group of individuals towards accomplishing a common goal. My primary responsibilities as a leader are to establish a clear strategic vision, build a high performing team and deliver on our objectives. To be successful, you must have a firm understanding of who you are and what you value. Authenticity can’t be faked and is essential in getting a team to rally around you and the goal. 

For Foot Locker to leverage data as a competitive differentiator in the marketplace and be a change agent for good in the communities we serve, we need a culture, team and work environment that is nimble and flexible enough to keep the pace with a rapidly evolving business and macro environment.  

Within our data and analytics team at Foot Locker: 

• We aspire to create a culture of accountability, respect, innovation and fun.  
• We aspire to build a team that is diverse, has a growth mindset and bias towards action.  
• We aspire to create a work environment where everyone feels empowered and motivated to bring their best selves to their work, knows they have a voice that will be heard, has the autonomy to make decisions (and take some risks) and has opportunities to grow and develop themselves. 

And what about the skills of your data teams and of your business stakeholders? How are you developing data literacy across the company/organisation? 

Developing data literacy is a challenging problem at every organization and in my experience, there is no single answer or solution.  

At Foot Locker, we’re taking a three-pronged approach.  

First, we’ve re-organized our data and analytics team by line of business to enable, empower and drive standardization and consistency across each business unit we support. We’ve also created a separate team to focus on business enablement and ensure Foot Locker is getting the training, adoption and value out of our products and services. Additionally, we are engaged with C-level executives to help with strategy, prioritization and influence across the organization. 

Second, we are taking a persona-based approach to democratizing data and analytics. We recognize the needs of a C-Level executive are very different than a business analyst and that the solutions we offer should be as well. 

Finally, we’re looking at opportunities where technology can help drive standardization, better understanding/literacy and/or overcoming some of the barriers to enable more data driven decision making.