Our client is a major distributor of over 100 products to major retailers, managing end to end from the Warehouse to the shelves of 40,000 stores. As well as this physical process, they provide data insights into what products are performing best, in what stores, and during what periods of the month and are responsible for payments to all suppliers throughout the supply chain and so much more. The Business has a turnover of £500m and has ambitions to double in size to £1bn through offering other categories of products to these Retailers. To support and drive this growth, they are seeking an IS Director.
The IS Department is responsible for running and enhancing core systems and building new applications that manage their business end to end. Some systems manage the Supply Chain and Logistics and others provide vital data insights on sales performance for each product in each store, predicting trends and when to replenish stocks.
Legacy systems were built in Java and Oracle but are being migrated to .Net/SQL Server. All new application development is done in .Net and everything is moving to the Cloud. The Data teams use SQL and SAS and provide data analysis across their business and build applications that can churn millions of lines of sales data each day. The broader IT team cover Infrastructure, Service Desk and Cyber Security.
The role holder will have 2 main reporting managers in the Group Head of IT and Group Head of Data Analytics for a department size of circa 50. You will need to have experience of overseeing Software Development, Infrastructure, Security and Business Systems (ERP and Dynamics Business Central/365 nice to have), but the growth of this department and your key focus, will be driving the data analytics side. This will involve working with Senior Leadership to identify solutions that will mean scaling and adapting existing applications but also to build new ones that will incorporate machine learning, BI and AI.
A key part of this role is strong Leadership, and the other is to offer previous experience of implementing data analytics for businesses using BI and AI to provide sophisticated insights into how they are performing to assist them with making vital data driven decisions.

Skills and Experience:
*Strong leadership is key. They decided not to replace their retiring IS Director 2yrs ago so that the COO could review his team. Whilst people are very capable, there is a lack of strong leadership to support, mentor and develop staff members and other Leaders. This will be a key focus in the interview process.
*Broad IS department background as a Technology Leader covering software development, business systems, infrastructure and Security. It is expected that you have managed these areas previously, but this will be ticking over what is there and enabling the Team leads to get on with this.
*Experience of overseeing ERP (Dynamics nice to have) and integrations to other systems and pulling key data in and out is preferred.
*Not just Data Analysis but Analytics, data platforms and BI have been used in your previous role(s) to drive growth, and you have started to use AI and machine learning for systems to crunch data more effectively to enable data driven decisions.
*Overseen projects where SAS or other Analytical tools have been used. They use SAS here extensively but not essential. An example of a system they have built is SAS based, which provides 1million lines of data every morning between 07:30-07:45 from the previous days sales via EPOS receipts from all Retailers. This gives them key data on what is selling well, when and where and what changes they may want to make.
*You will be numerate and enjoy working with complex logic
*A strategic and problem-solving thinker, able to seek the opportunity to improve a process or system that will help them grow the business. You enjoy working with your peers to identify and work on solutions
*Likely to come from a Retail or FMCG background where there are multiple outlets and complex data management
The role is hybrid with 2 days working in Cambridgeshire which will be every Thursday when everyone is in, and then one other day which is usually Tuesday or Wednesday but that is flexible.
This is an exciting time to join an established successful business with exciting growth plans that requires this person to be a driving force to help enable this.