How I work
Executives bring me in when customer data should be earning more than it is: a customer data asset to build and govern, a supplier insights business to design, a loyalty program that needs to pay its way, an analytics investment that has not yet changed a decision.
The work sits across three functions most organisations keep apart. I am technical enough to direct data scientists, commercial enough to sit credibly with trading teams and suppliers, and senior enough to take the outcome to a board. After 20 years of working across all three, engagements start fast and get to a decision sooner.
Supplier insights and data monetisation
Designing the proposition a retailer takes to its suppliers: the product, the pricing and commercial model, governance, and the operating model and roadmap to run it. The principle underneath is one I learnt at dunnhumby and have applied ever since:
‘Suppliers pay for decision support that improves how they trade. That revenue funds a stronger customer offer.’
Interim and fractional leadership
Commercial intelligence, customer analytics or insights leadership by the day or by the phase. Standing up a new function, steadying one through change or covering a senior role while you recruit for it.
Capability, operating model and AI
How the function should work: what to build, buy and partner for; how AI moves out of pilots and into the pricing, range, promotion and customer decisions it should be improving; and the operating model that makes it stick. That includes the governance, identity and access rules that let teams across a business trust a shared customer data asset.
Underneath those shapes sit the four domains I go deep in: loyalty and personalisation, category management, data monetisation (supplier insights and retail media) and AI in commercial decision-making.
Who I work with
I work with retailers and with fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and consumer brands on the other side of the same table. For brands, the work is category strategy and getting a return from the retailer data programs they already pay for. Engagements run under strict confidentiality. I am careful about conflicts. If one exists, I will tell you.
What an engagement feels like
You deal with the person doing the work. I work directly with executive teams and there is no layer of juniors underneath me. I agree scope in plain terms, price it by the day or by the phase and set a defined end point.
Current engagement: Supplier Insights Advisor for a major Australian home improvement retailer, designing its supplier insights capability from proposition to operating model.
If this sounds like your problem, email me: andy@avradvisory.com.au