Describe your career to date
It’s been a fantastic journey driven by data-driven marketing, from my early days of CRM, leading global accounts like Jaguar Land Rover, Samsung and Citi Cards, to driving growth through data-driven strategies for Merkle. All of this drove me to the role I have to today, leading more than 5,500 employees across EMEA, focused on data, digital and customer experience transformation.
What key skills or attributes do you consider have contributed to your success in this role?
The skill is an unrelenting focus on the customer; their motives, attitudes and behaviours. And the ability to put those together to drive meaningful engagement from acquisition to loyalty.
What level of data maturity do you typically encounter across your client base and what tends to hold this back?
Clients are very much in the data game; they are focused on customer knowledge and engagement. The challenge is the ability to activate in most cases. The maturity varies and is mostly activated by channel, despite the potential ability to drive it across all channels. So it’s as much about the technology and ability to activate. Otherwise it doesn’t matter how much you know if you can’t activate it. It’s a two-sided coin.
What trends are you seeing in terms of the data and analytics resources your clients are demanding from you?
It’s about engagement and speed, and technology is taking the lead here, not marketers. AI is exploding, with the likes of ChatGPT and Dall-E being game-changers. However, they are using data to be ’good enough’ and that’s a challenge for the industry as many clients need content – and the data to drive it. They might, or maybe should, pick speed over perfection.
What challenges do you see for data in the year ahead that will have an impact on your clients and on the industry as a whole?
The challenge is focus; focus on the outcome you’re trying to drive and the data you need to get to do it. I’ve said this for years, you only need the data that you need. But you don’t know what you need unless you have a clear customer strategy, and defined business outcome and the infrastructure to deliver it correctly and quickly.
How are you developing the data literacy of a) your own organisation and b) your clients?
Watch your own behaviours. We are our own data learning centre. Really watch what you, your family, your kids are doing online. What they are accessing, what data they are willing to give away to get what they want. You’ve got to be a consumer of it, to understand it. Then just read one article a day. Force yourself. And not through your regular channels. Find what’s new, what’s being talked about and what excites you. It’s a never-ending learning curve, but present and watch.
How are you tackling the challenge of attracting, nurturing and retaining talent?
It’s all about culture. We firmly believe culture breeds competitive advantage. Be the place people want to work. Be innovative. Be active in diversity, equity and inclusion and have a great learning programme. Be the place you want to work, not the place where you work.
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