DoorDash’s VP of Analytics & Data Science, Jessica Lachs on Leveraging Data to Delight Customers Despite a Challenging Supply Chain

Michael Jordan once said that players win games, and teams win championships. In this episode, Cindi interviews Alfredo Colas, Senior Vice President of Data and Analytics at Procter & Gamble. Together, they explore the importance of fostering a data-driven culture and digital fluency, while delving into strategies for overcoming challenges in data culture. They also discuss the company's rich history of data innovation and the evolving impact of technology on data access and processing. From key insights on investing in data and AI fluency to discussing the role of the AI factory in accelerating machine learning processes, Alfredo and Cindi cover it all. 

Key Moments: 

• Building a data-driven culture and data fluency [9:48]
• Overcoming challenges in data culture and adoption [10:16]
• Investing in data and AI fluency across the organization [19:55]
• The AI Factory and accelerating machine learning processes [20:16]
• Addressing fears and human oversight in AI [27:50]

Key Quotes: 

As part of that also, we believe we need everyone in the organization to understand data, to understand analytics. So we are heavily investing in the digital fluency of the full organization and not just the IT function.

Michael Jordan said that players win games and teams win championships, I agree with him. To me, it's not about one trait. It's about having a diverse team where everyone brings something different. 

If we want to be here another 100 years or another 183 years, we need to be training the new generations so that they can be successful in the future.

Mentions: 

• AI Factory 
• chatPG 
• Generative AI

Bio: 

Alfredo Colas is the Senior Vice President of IT for Data & Analytics, and Digital Go-To-Market. He leads an organization of more than 850 P&G IT professionals and over a thousand partner resources.

Data and Algorithmic solutions are a key engine of P&G’s Integrated Growth Strategy. Through a combination of Enterprise Data Lake platform, data pipelines and machine learning workbenches, this team is creating cutting-edge capabilities across all dimensions of the business.

As part of his Digital Go-To-Market role, he is accountable for developing new capabilities to help P&G win by unlocking the full potential of P&G’s Sales organization. He oversees the digitization of the company’s sales processes and powering them with analytics. He also leads P&G’s Salesforce Platform Team.

Alfredo joined Procter & Gamble in 1996 in Spain and, over the years, led various local, regional and global organizations across the U.S. and Europe, including Italy, Russia, Spain and Switzerland. In 2005-2006, Alfredo participated in a Manager-On-Loan program, where he worked in PC business operations at Hewlett-Packard. He has extensive experience in transforming and enabling the sales organization at P&G, and has led commercial and supply chain redesigns, e-commerce initiatives and the integration of multiple acquisitions. Most recently, he led IT & Shared Services for North America, P&G’s largest region.

Alfredo thrives at the intersection of business and technology. He is motivated by applying technology to transform the business and create significant value. He also has long-standing experience working in external forums to identify opportunities and impulse efficiencies that improve the end-to-end value chain and ultimately benefit consumers. He started working with GS1 Spain (AECOC) more than 20 years ago. He has been in the board of GS1 US since 2016 and actively participates in key industry initiatives such as Verified by GS1 and the migration from product barcodes to 2D codes.

Alfredo resides in Cincinnati, Ohio, with his wife and his two younger children. His eldest is a freshman in engineering at Purdue University.

Get even more insights from data and analytics leaders like Alfredo Colas on The Data Chief. 

Giving ABC’s more meaning, in this episode of The Data Chief host Cindi Howson, engages in a captivating conversation with Nisha Paliwal, the managing VP of Enterprise Data Technology at Capital One. Nisha dives into her multifaceted role as a tech leader, visionary, and advocate for STEM education. The discussion traverses topics ranging from the impact of technology on younger generations to the future of work in the era of AI. With insights into Nisha's unique ABC leadership framework and Capital One's innovative culture, this episode offers a rich exploration of data leadership and human-centered tech strategy.

Key Moments:

The impact of technology on younger generations [3:05]

Nisha’s leadership style: The ABC Framework [5:02]

The future of work and AI’s impact [15:56]

Mitigating risks and building trust in AI [20:20]

The importance of data in AI [25:22]

Capital One’s culture of innovation [31:18]

Key Quotes:

“Let's just be who we are and bring the best in others too. So all the people who I work with, bring their best self to work and are comfortable with whoever they want to be.”

“I think AI might not be for everybody to start with. I think it's okay to wait and watch. I think it's okay to let it bake because again, these things are not cheap either, right? These require a lot of investment upfront.”

“Data is the king these days, we have a lot of investment in data, we have about 1000 plus people and I'm here to serve them, to serve the organization, serve our product – I care about what we build.”

Mentions:

• Databricks 
• IBM
• Hyperautomation
• Generative AI
• The Secrets of AI Value Creation

Bio:

Nisha Paliwal is Managing Vice President of Enterprise Data Technology at Capital One, where she has held a variety of leadership roles over more than eight years. An accomplished leader, visionary technologist, and passionate change agent, she has been a relentless advocate for leveraging technology and data insights to create true business value for more than 20 years.

At Capital One, she also actively contributes to and holds leadership roles in the Women in Tech and Origins business resource groups (BRGs). Nisha has a big heart for her associates and desires for them to feel valued, engaged and psychologically safe.

With a passion for introducing young girls to technology, she also mentors others and supports several STEM-focused non profits, with a long-term vision of bringing more women into the ranks of technology leadership. Nisha volunteers her personal time with three non-profits - Boolean Girls, CodeVa, and WingsForGrowth, which focus on STEM education for K-12 and education for women in leadership-related topics.

Nisha is an avid learner who made the jump from microbiology to the tech world after teaching herself C# programming. She continues her life-long pursuit of learning by reading, listening to podcasts, and participating in internal and external speaking engagements.

Nisha has recently co-authored a book “The Secrets of AI Value Creation,” published by Wiley, in her pursuit of learning and sharing those learnings with the community in the form of this book.

Order Nisha’s new book, The Secrets of AI Value Creation now.
 

Hear more from Cindi Howson here. Sponsored by ThoughtSpot.
 

On this episode of The Data Chief, Katie Russell, Data Director at OVO Energy shares OVO’s transformative journey to become a sustainable energy leader, emphasizing the shift to Google Cloud Platform and a data mesh strategy. The discussion covers OVO's innovative use of generative AI, measuring success through customer savings, and the ongoing challenge of fostering a data-driven culture.

Key Moments: 

• OVO’s mission and data support [1:05]
• Data transformation [7:37]
• Technology modernization [11:17]
• Data discoverability and data mesh [17:28]
• Measuring business contribution [22:03]
• Generative AI and data privacy [27:56]
• Data-driven culture and trust [30:51]

Key Quotes: 

"We chose Google Cloud Platform as our underlying data platform with BigQuery then as the data warehouse. The thesis being that they practically invented the technology and so should be good at it." 

“My job is to represent my team, make sure that we're working on the right things, and then, build  trust with the leadership community that we're doing the right things with data for the business.”

"I'm thinking that there might actually be a bit of a full circle on data privacy and sharing. I think with ChatGPT being so easy to use with its really human-centered design and with social media ups and downs over the last few years, I'm wondering if there's going to be a revolution in data privacy and data sharing and personal data." 

Mentions: 

• SQL buddies program
• Python program
• Google Cloud
• BigQuery
• Monte Carlo
• Generative AI
• ChatGPT

Bio: 

Katie Russell is the Data Director at OVO Energy, leading teams of Data Scientists, Data Engineers and Analysts who are transforming OVO’s data capability. As part of a technology led business, leveraging data using artificial intelligence keeps OVO truly innovative, delivering the best possible service for our customers. 

Katie joined OVO in October 2017 having spent 5 years at ONZO - an energy analytics startup  - as Head of Data Science. During that time she was chuffed to be awarded Big Data Hero by techUK in June 2016 and helped ONZO win multiple awards for their innovative solutions for utilities. Prior to that Katie worked for another analytics start up in the water industry, got a PhD in Mathematical Physics and holds a BA and MMath from the University of Cambridge. 

You’ve heard the term data science, but have you heard about decision science? Juergen Kallinger, VP of Data and Insights at HP, shares valuable insights and reflections from his 22-year journey at HP. In this episode, Juergen dives into HP’s pivotal shift from solely reporting, to the dynamic realm of decision science and how it’s aligned their data team.

Key Moments: 

• Balancing technical skills and business acumen [7:16]
• The analogy of being a great cook [9:24]
• Maintaining proximity to business stakeholders [16:55]
• Adjusting the language for different audiences [22:35]
• The evolution of data science and decision science [32:48]
• The excitement and potential of AI [37:19]

Key Quotes: 

“I talk a lot about extreme ownership. We're in the data world and we're at the end of a very long chain of things that have to work for us to be able to deliver high-quality data analytics and insights to our business users. We cannot assume that everything upstream always works and is always perfect and we just rely on the very last mile.” 

“Data is like water. It's vital for our survival in the modern business world." 

"The more tech buzzwords there are, the less I would use them with the business teams. I would more focus on the business outcomes and what we enable. It's important to talk about the implications of strong data governance, aligning to the same metrics, enabling specific insights, and guaranteeing higher data quality to build trust in the data."

Mentions: 

• Data warehouse
• Data migration
• Data quality improvement
• Decision science
• Generative AI

Bio:  Together with his team, Juergen is currently responsible for HPs Data, Business Insights & Analytics globally. His team of consultants, project managers, solution architects & developers is responsible for the design & delivery of data products, business intelligence and analytics solutions to HPs Commercial (Sales, Category, Operations), Finance, Supply Chain, Services, Customer Support & Digital Transformation teams globally. He joined HP in November 2001 as Project Analyst in Vienna, Austria and has held several regional and worldwide management positions since then. During his career at HP Juergen worked in a wide range of international roles where he gained deep insight into HP’s core processes and systems globally covering Marketing, Sales, Pricing, Category, Configuration & Quote as well as Finance and Sales Compensation. In 2022, Juergen has been appointed to lead the HP-wide Data, Business Insights & Analytics organization to introduce a more modern, consistent, and efficient Business Intelligence operating model, data & platform strategy. Before joining HP, Juergen has worked for BASF and a local tax advisory company in Vienna. Juergen graduated with a master’s degree in economics from the Vienna University of Economics & Business and completed an executive education program for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Stanford University. Together with his wife, Juergen moved to Houston, Texas in January 2014.

Gen-AI, Gen-AI, Gen-AI. The transformative technology has captured the imagination of everyone in the tech industry. Industries are shifting before our eyes, and the roles and responsibilities of data practitioners everywhere are going to shift again. The question is not whether an impact will be made, but what will the impact be? 

In this episode, Cindi sits down with 3 industry leaders to discuss how AI will impact our work and our personal lives in 2024. Sandy Carter shares how a severe injury in Brazil impacted her outlook on data sharing, and data verification in a world where AI can convince millions that the Pope wears puffy jackets. Jai Das sees a gap in educating technical workers if AI is too widely adopted. Prab Pritchandi shares how the financial industries will modernize in a heavily regulated environment. 

Industry Predictions: 

• There will be an intersection of AI Privacy and blockchain technology that will be poised to reshape the entire landscape of proof of ownership. And therefore, also revolutionize data sharing practices. We will go and move into a decentralized proof of ownership because of the increasing use of Gen AI and the fear of deep fakes. (34:15) - Sandy Carter
• Generative AI is going to get rid of a lot of the grunt work that we have day to day. Including some of the groundwork in data prep, some of the groundwork that analysts have to do, or even understanding reports and dashboards. I think the fear about [AI] getting really smart and destroying the world is really far-fetched. All of the LLMs and all of these GPT 5 and all of these models, they're great [but] they're not really reasoning. They're not right. They're great at getting some information and putting it in a new form. They don't come up with anything original. So I'm not actually fearful of [AI] replacing humans. (14:30) - Jai Das
• 90 percent of the data available in the world has been created in the last one year.And every year the amount of data is actually increasing. I could say data is really a good digital twin of your business [but] that itself is not a value unless you're able to convert this data to insights and then convert the insights to actionable insights. (1:06:00)- Prab Pitchandi

Key Moments

• Jai observes 2023 AI startups are missing profitable business models  (10:55)
• Jai identifies a gap in education. Developers are trained through repetition. But what happens when repetition is replaced by AI (24:53)Sandy breaks her femur and surgery is delayed by 48 hours due to data (34:54)
• Sandy says, Taylor Swift is Web 3.0 (46:30)
• Prab compares banking data and analytics to cricket (51:27)
• Prab wonders if Formula 1 can be driverless (1:07:00)

Mentions: 

• Microsoft CoPilot
• Google Gemini
• Midjourney
• OpenAI
• Top 10 data and analytics trends 2024
• The Year GenAI Comes to Fruition: 10 Enterprise Tech Trends Set to Define 2024

Description:
On this episode, Benn Stancil, Co-Founder of Mode Analytics and current Field CTO at Thoughtspot  shares his thoughts on who wants to use data to solve problems, and who just wants data to validate an opinion. He brings unique perspectives to how data excellence can be proliferated through an organization, whether shadow IT is a nuisance or a guide post, and how large language models will influence the future of data. 

Key Moments:

• How an internal analytics tool Benn built at Yammer led to starting Mode Analytics to serve the new breed of technical data teams (4:00)
• Why the urgency around BI consolidation in 2023 prompted conversations with ThoughtSpot (52:30) 
• The risks of shadow tools and lack of consistency; importance of a centralized data infrastructure (26:30)
• Using natural language search as an interface for asking novel questions and changing how people use data (44:00)
• Data teams need visibility into the business context; centralization for infrastructure but decentralization to embed in business units (23:30)
• How ambition plays an outsized role in the type of data tools selected in an organization (17:58)

Key Quotes:

• Courage, ultimately, is needed in making a decision that you have to own. [Unfortunately], data can be a punt. If you make a data driven decision, nobody made the decision. The data made the decision. There is like an abstraction there of who was actually responsible for it. 
• What ends up happening [in shadow IT] is you spend all this time just trying to figure out, like, which one do you trust? Who's right? Everybody has their different perspective
• Good Googlers are not people that know the, the exact syntax of weird Google searches. Good Googlers are the people who have some spider sense about where to go looking for things. And I think AI is probably going to be similar to that, where it's not the crazy prompt engineers that'll make it good. It’s like some of the next level spider sense skills that we don’t know yet.

Mentions

• R
• Shadow IT
• Microsoft acquires Yammer
• Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Mode

Bio

Benn Stancil is ThoughtSpot’s Field CTO. He joined ThoughtSpot in 2023 as part of its acquisition of Mode, where he was a Co-Founder and CTO. While at Mode, Benn held roles leading Mode’s data, product, marketing, and executive teams. He regularly writes about data and technology at benn.substack.com.  Prior to founding Mode, Benn worked on analytics teams at Microsoft and Yammer.

Personal Details:

- Enjoys playing baseball and is a Braves fan

- Favorite pump up song: "Labour" by Paris Paloma

- Grateful for opportunities to travel and gain new perspectives

Diana Schildhouse, Chief Analytics and Insights Officer at Colgate-Palmolive, discusses driving business value through analytics, ensuring executives are data fluent, innovating with AI, and her career path through iconic brands like Mattel and Disney.

Key Moments

• Listening Tours: How 100’s of one-on-one conversations helped to narrow in on which business problems could be solved with data and quickly lead to business value (4:50)
• Working to benchmark the company against its industry helped to establish the business impact and value of data (6:41)
• Transforming from pockets of excellence to uniform excellence. Spreading data excellence as a way to increase data transformation (8:00)
• Increasing data literacy via its own data education and recognition program, Data Literacy and Analytics Academy. (9:52)
• Because product development lifecycles are so long, data plays a massive role in understanding consumer trends and what consumers will want in the future (19:46)
• Use case driven innovation drives business value fastest.  (22:46)
• Data Clean rooms and partner collaboration is the key to generating useful 1st party data (25:06)
• How a center-led hybrid enabled global teams to improve data utilization at Colgate-Palmolive (31:21)
• Co-Creation helps create both nuance for specific teams and applicability for broader teams (33:21)

Key Quotes

• The approach of let's take five years and invest in data and get it to a perfect spot and then we can start doing analytics and showing that value is just not one that any company has patience for.
• That co-creation is so important to us, because..if the business doesn’t understand what a solution is supposed to help them do, it won't be adopted.
• We try to be laser focused on what we think will move the business versus starting with the data. We're not trying to boil the ocean. It's hard to show value and progress when you're not delivering tools that can actually help the business make a decision today or tomorrow.

Mentions

• DataIQ 100
• Boston Consulting Group
• Mattel
• CDOIQ
• DataCamp
• Credly
• Revenue Growth Management
• Clean Rooms

Bio

Diana Schildhouse is Chief Analytics and Insights Officer at Colgate-Palmolive. She previously held analytics leadership roles at Mattel and The Walt Disney Company. Diana has an undergraduate degree in Business and Finance from USC and an MBA from Harvard.

Personal Details

• Favorite activities outside of work: walking her golden doodle named Bagel, spending time with family, movies, reading
• Song that pumps her up: "Who Run the World (Girls)" by Beyonce
• Grateful for close friendships with "personal board of directors" from business school
• Seen the Barbie movie 3 times and loved it

Description

As the world’s seventh largest retailer, Carrefour is using advanced analytics to transform operations, better serve customers, and pioneer the future of retail. Chief Data & Analytics Officer Sebastien Rozanes explains how the company is leveraging data and generative AI to drive measurable business value across merchandising, supply chain, marketing and more.

Key Moments:

• How a strong data foundation and data monetization mindset accelerated data maturity at Carrefour (5:46)
• Selling data to CPGs to improve collaboration and justify data investments (20:57)
• The "data supermarket" analogy to get business leaders invested in data quality (30:39)
• Reducing friction by enabling suppliers and retailers to work from the same data facts (32:33)
• Starting with imagination not limitations to identify AI opportunities (42:08)
• Leveraging ChatGPT to transform the ecommerce shopping experience (45:10)

Key Quotes

• “It's okay to be 5% wrong, but 95% right…[with the time you free up] you will make up much more value than trying to optimize the last 5%.”
• “The role of Chief Data Analytics Officer goes way beyond the technology. It's 10 percent about technology, 20 percent about data, but actually 70 percent about transformation and adoption.”
• “Generative AI is a game changer for efficiency and helping us focus on human creativity.”

Mentions: 

• Paris
• Google Cloud
• MIT CDO Forum
• Wharton School
• Data Lakes
• Data Catalogs
• Carrefour Links
• Generative AI
• ChatGPT

Bio

Sebastien Roznes is the Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Carrefour, a top 10 global retailer serving 80 million customers across more than 40 countries, including 8 countries with direct operations. Prior to joining Carrefour, Sebastien served as a Principal and Associate Director with the Boston Consulting Group with a focus in Digital, AI, and Data-Driven Transformations for Multinational Consumer Goods and Industrial Goods businesses. His educational background focuses on both Computer Science and Business providing him with unique insights on how data can serve the business. 

Learn more from Sebastien and how data is transforming retail on The Data Chief.  

It’s that time of year again. On this episode of The Data Chief, Cindi dives into three of the hottest book recommendations for data and analytics leaders and sits down with Dr. Barb Wixom, author of Data is Everybody’s Business, Vin Vashishta, author of From Data to Profit, and Asha Saxena, author of The AI Factor.

Key Moments:

• Introducing Dr. Barb Wixom (2:10)
• Barb’s desire to continue helping people in the data industry (2:57) (Barb)
• The different types of organizational leaders (8:21) (Barb)
• Creating value from data (10:50) (Barb)
• The selling framework (16:42) (Barb)
• A financial services case study (21:56) (Barb)
• Introducing Vin Vashishta (27:18) (Vin)
• The importance of companies having a single playbook (28:08) (Vin)
• Benefits of a value-based approach (32:52) (Vin)
• Starting with a problem statement (34:58) (Vin)
• When a lack of data literacy becomes problematic (38:46) (Vin)
• Driving culture change (40:30) (Vin)
• Introducing Asha Saxena (46:12)
• What is Women Leaders in Data and AI? (48:27) (Asha)
• The four-quadrant framework for deploying AI (52:11) (Asha)
• Case Study: How an Animal Shelter leveraged AI (55:44) (Asha)
• How to use AI ethically and responsibly (59:32) (Asha)

Mentions:

• From Data to Profit
• Data is Everybody’s Business: The Fundamentals of Data Monetization
• The AI Factor: How to Apply Artificial Intelligence and Use Big Data to Grow Your Business Exponentially
• Rita McGrath, Professor at Columbia University
• Satya Nadal
• Google PaLM
• OpenAI
• Jack Rockart
• Capital One
• Bill Schmarzo (former guest on The Data Chief)
• Lyft
• BBVA

Get even more insights from data and analytics leaders like these on The Data Chief. 

Mission.org is a media studio producing content for world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.