Delighted to announce that Sophie Neary is part of The Next Women business mentoring and advice scheme.

Read their interview with Sophie here.

The NextWomen's goal is to advise, inspire & connect a global & local community of ambitious entrepreneurial women specifically on their business needs - online & offline. 

It's not every day you can say that the Chairman and CEO of Visa is your warm up guy, but this week I can!  Peter Ayliffe gave a brilliant overview at the Beyond Analysis breakfast seminar last week.  Diana Hunter the new CEO of Conviviality PLC was also on hand to share her thoughts - after only being in her role for eight months Diana has led the float of Conviviality (AKA Bargain Booze) on AIM and also acquired Victoria Wine.  

After that impressive warm up, the audience then got me, which hopefully wasn't too much of a let down.

Here are a few key messages from my presentation.

1. Analysis Paralysis is a 21st century disease when it comes to big data and retail.  I often find that the more data thrown at a problem, the less common sense is applied to resolve the issue.

2. Data does not, can not and never will supplant killer retail instinct.

3. The obvious isn't always apparent, and actionable insights from data can help with that.  

4.  The mere fact you can measure something, divide one number by another or report on something regularly does not make it useful. Bring everything back to the four quadrants of retail improvement.

5. Manage by measuring - you can not optimise what you do not measure.  Think big, start small.

6. It's not just about why customers DO buy, it's about why the DON'T buy too.

And finally...

7. Done is better than perfect - i.e. A Good Plan today is better than a Perfect Plan tomorrow!