Category: Conference Updates

I’ve just spent the day at Shopper Insights and Behaviours conference chairing the afternoon session and speaking in the morning session.

Theme of my presentation:
If organisations are going to transform using data , they need to be clear, unambiguous and aligned around an agreed vision , strategy and execution plan to be successful. All pointing together towards True North.

1. I laid out the what and how of transformation.
2. I talked through examples of how organisation have delivered transformational improvements to The Customer Experience , Customer Communication and Understanding of the Customer.
3. I then talked through my experience of how to deliver transformation in retailers, and how suppliers and retailers can work together to drive change. 

Other Key out-takes from the sessions :

Great case studies on solving strategic problems from

1. Gary Seaman (RB) on developing environmental brands in cleaning.
2. Chris Wrighton and Daniella Basain (Premier Foods)on turning around a declining MrKipling Brand
3. Gizem Donmez (Nelsons) on starting with customer understanding in developing an omnichannel approach for Rescue Remedy
4. Scott McPherson (Nairn’s) and Giorgio s Argyropoulos (Pepsi) on How Insights around missions need to be applied in the Convenience channel.

Panel Discussions with James Brett (Twinings) Maxime Dassonville (BIC) Neil Bellamy (General Mills) Sean McKee (Schuh) Daniella Bassein (Premier Foods) Dev Mukherji (PostOffice)  David Harrison (Coop) Caroline Walsh (Musgrave)

Key uptakes from the sessions and the panels

A. Deep understanding of shopper Needs: many techniques exist to deliver a deep understanding of customers ( with lots of technical suppliers in Martech specs). Nothing really beats watching customers first hand in stores , but using all the different techniques starting it’s important to start with clarity on the problem you are trying to solve first.

B.Technology Suppliers know their stuff but aren’t clear what problem their product solve – they don’t know how to sell or make it easy to buy. “There is a myriad of Tech companies but there is no technology to help me understand customers in store” James Brett.

C. Insights being split into two types of work: Strategic and tactical.

1. Strategic deep view of understanding customers : longer term projects where spend time thinking about the problem as well as how to solve it. Look at triangulation or longer term trends, qual, quant.
2. Tactical view quick response using panels, Skype groups, observations in store.

D. Insight Leaders becoming agnostic about mechanic, bigger focus on understanding the problem and then working on the solution. There needs to more of a focus on howdo you get clear on problem you are trying to solve. There is a recognition that retailers aren’t totally clear and aligned on the problems, and there isn’t alignment between suppliers and retailers.

Really understanding the problem and creating alignment around a solution is the challenge

F. Insight into Action: insight leaders need to be commercial as well as customer to align the organisation around change.

G. Understanding Retailers and Partnering with them. There was a consistent message from many speakers and participants that this was a key issue for suppliers: Understanding How CPG work with retailers to grow categories was an interesting panel session Good case studies and discussions from Premier Food (Chris & Dani) Dev & Giorgos  and David from Coop. Neil Bellamy From General Mills recommendation was to get clear on a message and identify and work with multiple stakeholders in retailer. Dani recommendation was to start with customer and see how that also aligns with retailers’ strategies Dev suggested focusing on Missions and integrating from prestore to purchase.

Building a consistent story and presentation that drives sales was a challenge many suppliers had with retailers: best solved by having a supplier and retailer perspective underpinned with a razor like focus on a commercial customer focus.

I have just spent a day at and spoke at the DataIQ Summit.  David Reed organised a broad church of specialist data leaders who shared their experience of transformation in data led organisations

I shared the stage with leaders from amongst others UK Government, Open Data Institute, The Guardian, Channel4 , Barclaycard Europe Npower as well as the inspirational Alan Mitchell and Inma Martinez

Whilst each speaker shared a different technical solution, there were several consistent themes

• Customer First: around being given access to customers’ data is a privilege, so be innovative, be clear, bring the business along with you, put customers in control
• Getting the full potential from data is a Cultural Transformation programme, start with People, Behaviours, Process and then systems and methodology.

I shared learning around how data is not difficult, and the challenge for organisations is improving data literacy. To gain permission and build confidence, you need to find the sweet spot of combining three different areas: be clear on the commercial imperatives, develop customer propositions that solve customer solutions that deliver against those commercial imperatives, and then align the technical teams ( IT, Analytics, developers) to develop the customer solutions that solve the commercial imperatives.

I used case studies from best practice examples how organisations developed through a Crawl, Walk and the Run methodology: (Disney, Sainsbury’s Obama and Trump, Starbucks, 7-11, British Gas, London Transport & Strava)

(check out detailed stories on my blog http://www.andrewmann.me)

In summary other speakers:

Sue Bateman at Government Data services talked through how we don’t just need a data strategy, we need a SMART one to avoid haystacks

Jenni Tennison at Open Data Institute: talked through Open Data is good, use it to innovate and grow. Give customers control, Be clear and add value.

Openness and transparency is at the core of Julia Porter @Guardian strategy for handling personal data.  Being given access to someone’s data is a privilege: Be clear open honest and put customers in control.

Making Viewing more individual and personalised at Channel 4 Sanjeevan Beta explained how they evolved the customer value exchange using data driven approach to building an engagement ladder.

James de Sousa from Post Office talked through how they are on the journey to create a data driven organisation that is 350 years old and deliver on their purpose: we help you get life’s important things done.  He talked through 3 points to accelerate the change:

• Push the customer agenda breaking down the product silos,
• Development of an Agile Scrum process to drive rapid change,
• Focus on commercial value to take people with you.

The new GDPR is a hot topic for organisations. Christine Andrew from DQM discussed how best to prepare and gave her view on 7 actions to focus on:

1. Map data flows
2. Map the customer journey
3. Categorise and prioritise data by risk (not all data is equal)
4. Review your partners. If they can’t tell you quickly how they are prepared push harder that’s where the risk is)
5. Evidence your standards (lots will emerge from ICO, DMA etc)
6. Ensure you’re are properly resourced for change
7. Audit yourself to see how prepared you are.

Rob Kent talked through the Cultural Change Programme that the Royal Mail has been going through in the last 5 years. His learning was to focus on where you can create value to gain support in the organisation and at same time build a roadmap for new capabilities.

“the data to run our business would be the data to grow our business”

Rob’s 5 point plan for Royal Mail

• Set up the Governance (data is a sign off for all investment proposals)
• Understand data flows
• Create people process and culture (centralised teams with similar skills)
• Make efficiencies and invested in People & Skills
• Invested in Technology and mandated people to use it.

Payal Jain at Barclaycard laid out a calm and measured but very passionate story of her journey at Barclaycard that make the kitten into a Lion.  She laid out the 4 key components she used to deliver the Analytical maturity curve at Barclaycard:

• People
• Behaviour and Culture
• Data Capability
• Analytical Methodology

Big Thought: It’s not the size of your data that counts: It’s what you do with it.

Two Thought Leaders stood out for me with the questions they posed:

Alan Mitchell at Ctrl+Shift talked about shifting the dial on customer data: debunking Data Constraints and Myths (More data is better, single view of customer is nirvana, more data means you are closer, purpose of data use is to improve the organisation) and laid out a future for data use :

1. Safe by default,
2. Leveraging Trust to build a shared relationship,
3. Flip your data assets ,
4. develop more information services with the customer.

Certainly a thought piece for creating a different relationship with customers that industry leading organisations should be adopting.

Inma Martinez was an inspiration. She laid out the Brazilian idea of happiness everyday not compartmentalised and set the challenge: “Are you only trying to make sense of the present… what about the future?”

Data is worthless without contextual assumptions: She talked through her experience of creating transformational insight using data through mixing people in a team to randomly collide and increase creativity. The right People teams drove change.

Three tips:

• Don’t just analyse the present 2D predict the future 3D
• Accept messiness
• Uncover anomalies / deviations which will become trends

Inma is currently looking at the worlds Social Media (Disambiguating the present) to understand the sentiments that are driving people so that Data intelligence can be used to drive product innovation not just marketing. Watch out women control 75% of decisions!

One final point should go to David Reed chairing the day who is championing gender diversity in the Data industry: the speakers at the conference were equally spilt male/ female. A deliberate choice and we should all applaud David’s passion and drive to address the imbalance of women in data industry

 

 

Last week I was invited to speak at The Executive Network’s Multichannel Customer Journey Conference in Royal Garden Hotel London , with James McClure General Manager Airbnb , Tamsin Todd MD Crystal Ski Holidays TUI and Adam Wilson from TheO2 amongst others.

The over-riding theme from delegates and other speakers was around making change happen. There is reasonable clarity amongst leaders in what is required to deliver an improved Omni-channel customer experience that drives growth. The difficult challenge is the How to drive change in an organisation at the pace required.

I talked about driving change in an organisation starts by having clarity on the organisations purpose and goals, aligning internally first, telling the story through multi-layers of Me, We and Us to align leadership, colleagues and customers to all become advocates.

To tell the story effectively three key areas need to be aligned to deliver an improved Omni-channel customer experience.

1. clarity around the commercial imperatives that need to be delivered:
   • driving the bottom line by improving efficiency of the operation
     • by making it better for customer,
     • simpler for colleagues or
     • cheaper to run,
   • or driving profit by growing top-line customer numbers and L4L sales growth.
2. Developing customer solutions that deliver those commercial imperatives.
3. Aligning the Technical teams in Analytics, IT and development around an agreed customer solution that delivers the commercial goals.

Other delegates had examples that built on this theme:

James McClure from Airbnb aligned the organisation around a common purpose to “experience the world like a local”, working with partners renting space in their homes and using data driven analytics to improve the relevance for “renters”

Checkout my blog for more detail: https://andrewmann.me/2016/04/17/blow-up-bedrooms/

Adam Wilson from The O2 talked about how the whole organisation aligned around improving the customer experience because that drove repeat visits. The whole organisation focused on providing more information to visitors at key time. Data driven analytics and real-time data are used to continually make a visit better.

Abhi Chacko from Gatwick Airport had a challenge around limited capacity in a growth market that needed to be stretched. He talked through how they are using Open Data working alongside airlines like EasyJet to make the experience of visiting the airport better for customer by providing flight departure details on everyone’s phone app rather than searching for a departures board to find out when you have to go through, simpler for colleagues with Easyjet baggage dropping services and quicker which improved the capacity in a limited resource.

Tamsin Todd CEO Crystal Ski Holidays talked through how they improved the customer experience in an omni-channel environment, creating value for customers and driving incremental sales and efficiency.

Aligning organisations around the customer to deliver improved Omni channel experiences is definitely a challenge faced by many organisations and requires leadership on Exec board and beyond to drive change.

checkout my other blogs :

https://andrewmann.me/2016/03/16/use-storytelling-to-explain-your-companys-purpose/