Currently on a 12 month secondment (Aug'23 - Jul'24) working on the OU's Campus 2030 business case.Strategy & Planning Manager role summary: Driving strategic change within MarComms and across the OU; responsible for identifying, mobilising and delivering high priority strategic growth initiatives. Concurrently studying for my MBA.Lead the annual planning process for MarComms. Accountable for delivering the unit business plan (3-year horizon), KPI monitoring and reporting and stakeholder engagement, both within and external to MarComms.Utilise insights and identify opportunities for growth (design and agree process) that will offset any upcoming challenges.Partner with MarComms Senior Leadership Team to provide strategic vision and direction to their operational plans. Partner with external companies for value add; procured Unibuddy (a P2P marketing platform) and a reputable HE data solution provider to deliver insight and analysis on cohort depletion which has been extensively used by senior management.

Summary: Responsible for combining complex insight and analysis with an understanding of the business to help plan and execute strategic initiatives and ultimately influence senior stakeholders to drive the business direction. SME on strategic projects such as “Invent the Avon Sales Model of the Future”; utilising insights to identify and evaluate opportunities for growth.Accountable for the design, preparation and facilitation of key business strategic workshops.Responsible for the facilitation and coordination of business review decks for Senior Executives.Ensure the voice of the Avon Representative (Rep.) and Customer is heard, by delivering actionable insights on their experience via regular satisfaction and retention tracking.Quantitative/Qualitative testing of propositions, opportunities and channel with Consumers and Avon Reps.Global and UK qualitative research project management and delivery (brief through to results).Identification of external trends, industry dynamics and competitor benchmarking analysis to provide inspiration and thought leadership to senior stakeholders as part of strategy formulation.

Summary: Responsible for providing action-orientated insights that help drive and influence the business direction.Global and UK qualitative research projects, including issue identification, briefing, agency selection, results facilitation and embedding insights into strategy. Close working relationship with external suppliers (e.g. Kantar, Euromonitor) to build annual category presentations, provide information for investor calls, business review decks, etc. Responsible for the delivery (insights and recommended actions) of quantitative projects; Rep. Satisfaction, Rep. Retention and Lapsed Reps.Set up process for holistic Rep. experience update. Compilation of insights and statistics on all parts of the Rep. journey.Compilation of regular commercial, competitive and consumer insight narratives.

Summary: Responsible for working with several country markets on designing and implementing their strategic agendas. Developed 3-year strategic plans for 10 markets across EMEA:- Active management of end-to-end strategic planning process- Situation assessment, including detailed competitor analysis- Designed, prepared and facilitated successful workshops in local markets- Developed mini business cases underlying and justifying each strategic initiative with clear accountabilitiesResponsible for working with markets across Europe on their Marketing Strategies, e.g. worked with the Spanish and UK Fashion & Home teams on defining, developing and implementing their category strategy. Developed as a competitive intelligence specialist.

Summary: Provided an understanding of business performance and key drivers to support senior management in directing Avon Reps. to achieve their maximum potential.Provided critical analytical support to Sales projects; analysed & interpreted results while recommending actions for future improvements and facilitating fact-based dialogue with UK Board to guide strategic decision making.Tracked Sales performance, providing outlooks to project longer term performance and communicating a consistent message to the UK Board, Regional Finance & Global reporting.Developed a key role in the UK Sales Leadership Strategy project, helping drive the "Compensation Framework" work stream.

Summary: Responsible for motivating and leading a team of Analysts to hit individual and team targets. Concurrently I continued to carry out the role of a Principal Analyst.Effective team leadership skills, managing a team of UK-based Analysts. Remote management of China and US-based Analysts on specific projects.Hiring and training Analysts to develop into Senior Analysts and progress towards management.Planned short and long-term programme of research.Successfully managed one of the largest accounts at IMS Research ($250K), having carefully built up a transatlantic client relationship over a number of years.International travel (Asia, America, Europe) to visit customers, attend conferences and conduct presentations. Managed a £50k travel budget for my team.Principal Analyst role: scoping, research, analysis, forecasting, report writing, presentation preparation, project management.