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Shona Heym, Analytics and Data Science Lead, Pret

Shona Heym, Analytics and Data Science Lead, Pret

Describe your career to date

It would be fair to say that my route to a career in data has been less than direct. Just out of my teens, and having decided that continuing a degree in economics was not the route for me, I found myself on a very different path from the one I had always imagined (however vaguely). Not keen on the idea of an office job, I landed myself a role in betting shop management, having never placed a wager in my life. It was a numbers and customer focused role and suited me well, although it came as a surprise to many who knew me. What was supposed to be a stop gap turned into the start of an almost two decades long, enjoyable and unquestionably educational, stint in the gambling industry.

While moving through varied roles in operations, compliance, finance, analytics and BI, I spent many of my evenings attending to my, hitherto rather neglected, further education, undertaking a degree in maths and statistics and then becoming a CIMA qualified accountant. While I enjoyed all my roles, it was when using data to tackle complex, and often previously unanswerable, business problems, that I enjoyed and accomplished most in my work.

Since (finally) leaving the gambling industry in 2021, I have been lucky to find a new home at Pret, where the people are talented and lovely, no two days are the same and data is a major strategic focus. We are busy building our data capabilities, and more importantly our team, and have big ambitions for the coming years.

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

The size of our team doesn’t yet reflect the demand within, and ambition of, Pret to become a truly data driven organisation. But we are growing. The analytics and data science team is currently just me and one excellent data analyst supporting the business globally. We are currently looking for a talented senior data analyst to join us, so hope soon to be three. As the only analytics function within the business our remit is wide, covering everything from menu changes to market share and commercial modelling to customer analytics and segmentation.

Tell us about any ambitions you have in terms of becoming a data leader

I have an aptitude for, and frankly really enjoy, leveraging data to drive business performance and solve complex problems. At Pret, we are still in the relatively early stages of our data journey, and I aim to be instrumental in navigating it. I envision a future for Pret where data is used not just to inform decision-making, but to drive innovation and growth. To achieve this, I aim to continue expanding my knowledge and skills, building and leading happy, high-performing and trusted teams, and fostering a culture of data-driven decision-making across Pret and beyond.

What key skills or attributes do you consider will be essential to your success in this role?

Data in isolation means very little, context is everything. I pride myself on being able to bridge that gap between the abstract of data and the real-world challenges that businesses face to truly add value.

How did you develop – and continue to develop – your current skills or attributes?

During the early stages of my career, many of my technical skills were largely self-taught, and honed, in relative isolation with no defined data team to call on for support. Fortunately I turned out to have good (data) instincts, so it wasn’t a disaster. I am lucky at Pret to be surrounded by a talented team with a wide range of skills from whom I learn new things daily. Things are moving at pace, both within the team and the wider business, so my skills are constantly having to develop to keep up. I try to approach this via a combination of research and learning and, most importantly, putting these in to action as soon as possible to turn it from theoretical knowledge to consolidated, practical skills.

And what about the skills of your data teams and of your business stakeholders? How are you supporting their data literacy?

Championing data literacy across the business is vital to the success of any data function. An organisation that embraces data in all its forms is empowered to succeed and we as a team are supporting Pret in its journey towards this goal.

The wider data and insight team at Pret comprises a range of specialties covering everything from data privacy to data governance, BI, reporting and analytics. As a result, we have a breadth of knowledge within the team that we aim to share both internally, via regular catch-ups and collaborative working as well as with the wider business through company wide data and insight showcases, where we share the highlights from our recent work.

Taking the time to talk through business problems with colleagues and helping them to explore the ways in which data can (and sometimes can’t) help to solve them is generally a more valuable use of time than writing code or building reports. Recognising that data is not created in a vacuum and ensuring you relate any findings back to your audience in a meaningful way helps to keep people engaged and may go some way to demystifying the lines of multi coloured code that people see when they look over your shoulder in the office.

How do you keep pace or stay in touch with your peer group? Do you see it as important to have an active professional network?

It can be easy to become so absorbed in the pace of change around you that you lose sight of what is happening in the wider industry.

Data, and the technology that empowers us to leverage it, seems to move at lightning speed and keeping up can be a challenge. Keeping in touch with past colleagues working in data and analytics gives me a degree of insight into how different organisations are tackling the problems they face, many of which overlap or share common ground with what we see at Pret.

In all honesty this is one area (of many) that I wish I could devote more time to, and hope that I will have the scope to do so in the coming months and years.

Shona Heym
has been included in:

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Shona Heym, Analytics and Data Science Lead, Pret

Join our membership network of over 250 global senior data and AI leaders.

The trusted global collaboration and intelligence platform for data leaders.

Join our membership network of over 250
global senior data and AI leaders.