Ines A.

From studying Maths at Warwick to leading the way by using analytics

My Maths teacher at school picked my Maths and Stats course at Warwick and I have never looked back. After university I joined Capital One in their graduate programme where I learned a lot of important tools such as SAS, SQL and Google Analytics. After 2 years at Capital One I was planning to go back to Europe (where I am from) so I decide to go and do an MBA at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. I enjoyed my degree very much and made lots of new friends but during that time my then boyfriend proposed so after graduation I came back to the UK and joined News Corporate (Rupert Murdoch's company). At this new role I learned a lot about IPad, Mobile and Web consumption but the office was very far so after 1 year at News Corp I moved to Harte Hanks which was a lot closer to home. Harte Hanks gave me lots of opportunities to grow and I quickly progressed from Senior Analyst to Lead Analyst to Head of Analysis. During my 7 years at Harte Hanks I worked with some amazing companies like Shell, Xerox, Cisco, Google, BMW, Sanofi and Abbvie. My experience at Harte Hanks taught me to think quickly on my feet, to identify and promote best in class analytical approaches and to always talk about analytics in a business context otherwise my analysis recommendations would stay underutilised and unnoticed. After 7 years at Harte Hanks I decide that I want to go back in-house so after some local research I decide to apply and join Mars Inc. as a Business Translator in the Advance Analytics Team.

I help the business grow using Advance Analytics

As a Business Translator I help the business by identifying areas where advance analytics and Machine Learning can be used to increase productivity, increase efficiency and help to grow the bottom line. My team is currently specialising in Supply Chain initiatives so I have been working with experienced supply and demand planners to review their current processes and identify area of improvement. Mars has identified that analytics is pivotal component to staying competitive so they are currently undergoing a series of Digital Transformation project to revamp Supply Chain and I am one of the Business Translators that is helping them to identify "the art of the possible".

I love when I make people realise that numbers can be fun

In my current role I am working with people that might have been doing the same task for many years and I love to see the transformation they go through when I talk to them on how advance analytics and automation can make their every day job much easier. I love to see them transform from understanding basic concepts to gaining confidence in analytics and then starting to push the boundaries on where else in the business advance analytics can be used. In addition I like when the business is planning to use machine learning and I can guide them on which mathematical model is best for each scenario and how different models should be interpret and used. Over all I love numbers and maths and like when I can introduce more people to the love for numbers

Find what makes you happy and make sure you do a bit of it every day

In every job there will be parts you don't like but if you make a little time every day for what you do like then your job will not feel like a chore. We spend so much time at our jobs that we should not be there if they don't make us happy. After having children I was debating if I should go back to work or not but once I did go back I realised how much satisfaction I got from doing what I love. Also I think too many women give up work aspirations after having kids but for me I found I was a better mother if I was satisfied and doing well at work. Hence if you are happy at work your whole life and family will benefit from that.

I was part of the team that helped launch KIND in the UK

One of the first projects that I worked on at MARS was to help the KIND team to launch the KIND bars in the UK and more specifically outside of London. The KIND team had tried to launch outside London before but have not been very successful so they wanted to leverage analytics to help them design a launch strategy. I was in the current job for only 1 month but I was eager to take the challenge on alongside 3 of my team mates. We leveraged free Census and Point of Interest data to predict potential sales outside London. The results were visualised in Tableau and the recommendation were very well perceived by senior management. Since then several MARS associates have enquired into the project and have shown interest into using the methodology for other new product launches.