As an Insight & Reporting Manager at M&S, Chloe’s journey into data was not a direct one. In fact, being such a people person, she actually joined the business on our Graduate scheme seeking a customer facing role - but quickly realised her love for data and analytics.
“Doing a lot of trials in stores (in continuous improvement), one of the important things to understand was if the one small change we made actually produced the results we saw OR whether it was due to one of the myriad of other variables that were happening in our stores every single day.”
“I then joined the M&S Decoded course on the first cohort and then shortly afterwards moved into my current role within Retail.”
Changing mindsets about the role of data
“One of the things that probably effects a lot of people who work in data is changing mindsets about how important data is in decision making,” says Chloe.
“For example, we’ve been doing a lot of adhoc requests across teams and so recently did a piece of work on trading hours. Our Post Implementation Review on this to see if it had the impact we thought it would. So far it’s looking like it has!”
“We want to make this into more of a rotational thing so that this becomes the way that we look at store trading hours going forward. Obviously it’s something that affects every store in the business.”
“There’s a lot of people who have rightly spent a lot of time in stores and that experience is invaluable when it comes to decision making, but I think there’s a place for data as well and it is making sure we find that balance between experience and what we can actually interpret from the information that leads to the best decisions.”
“Data, and digital in particular at M&S has come much more to the forefront of everyone’s minds. You’re so important and so valued in the company because of all the transformation that’s happening. Ultimately you can be a part of making M&S a more Data & Digital first place to be and making it a better for people who are going to come after you.”
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