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Daniel Hodgkiss, VP Global Data Science, Ralph Lauren

Daniel Hodgkiss, VP Global Data Science, Ralph Lauren

Describe your career to date

I began my career building customer RFM propensity models for a retailer only to eventually come full circle more than 20 years later to data science that, while almost infinitely more sophisticated, is fundamentally based on the same philosophy.

I started at Arcadia Home Shopping in an era when we analysts could afford to set a programme running and have time to chat, go for lunch or go away for a long weekend, leaving the SAS to leisurely tick along through the hundreds of thousands of customer records to finally stutter to its conclusion, while praying one had not forgotten a vital semi-colon.

Over the years I’ve had the absolute pleasure of helping some of the world’s largest brands, agencies, and consultancies to embrace data and analytics, and put the customer at the heart of decision making.

I have always tried to lead with empathy and pragmatism and build strong personal relationships, cutting through ambiguity and politics, to drive real change.

I am currently putting everything I have ever learned to good use at one of the world’s most iconic luxury brands and processor of a vast amount of data. I am building, mentoring and leading large teams of some of the industry’s most skilled individuals, and working on making sure Ralph Lauren remains and thrives as a customer-first leading global luxury brand.

What stage has your organisation reached on its data maturity journey?

For the last 50 years, Ralph Lauren has been a top luxury lifestyle brand by leading with creativity and an intuitive understanding of what their customers want. It is sophisticated from a data point of view and remains restless for innovation in the exciting and exponentially evolving world we live in.

Tell us about the data and analytics resources you are responsible for

I lead a multi-disciplinary team of data scientists, analysts and engineers across EMEA, APAC and the US which is aligned to the marketing organisation. We have adopted a business partnering approach to drive customer data fluency throughout the organisation.

What challenges do you see for data in the year ahead that will have an impact on your organisation and on the industry as a whole?

Covid was transformational for our industry. It finally ended any lingering doubts that consumers were not willing to buy online and those who were unable to offer alternative to bricks and mortar were left with seasons of unsold stock. Many luxury consumers are now comfortable and demand seamless, omnichannel experiences, which provides an incredible opportunity for customer data science to inform and lead innovation and business strategy.

Have you set out a vision for data? If so, what is it aiming for and does it embrace the whole organisation or just the data function?

Our overall vision encompasses the whole organisation but it is phased, respecting the organisational structure, strategies, differing levels of market maturity and relative return on investment from our activity.

Have you been able to fix the data foundations of your organisation, particularly with regard to data quality?

Like all organisations, this is a job that will never truly be finished – technology, culture and the needs of our customers move just too swiftly to ever get to a finished product. And why would you want to? If you’re not evolving, you’re dead in the water.

Daniel Hodgkiss
has been included in:

100 Brands 2023 (EMEA)