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Richard ClaytonRC

Richard Clayton

Data, Analytics and Strategy Consultant

€984/day
Sheffield, GB
15+ years

Average response time: 1 hour

About Richard

I help organisations work out what to do next when data, analytics, or technology investment hasn’t delivered the clarity or decision-making they expected.

Clients typically come to me when they have plenty of data, reports, dashboards, or systems in place but decisions are still slow, contested, or driven by instinct. In my experience, the problem is rarely just the data itself! It’s usually a mix of strategy, people, skills, governance, processes, and technology pulling in different directions.

I specialise in data, analytics and strategy consulting, with a strong focus on diagnostics and decision support. My role is to reduce noise, identify where the real constraint sits, and help leaders focus on the few actions that will make the biggest difference before investing further time or money.

I combine senior advisory thinking with hands-on delivery where needed, and I don’t push tools, platforms, or long programmes.

Typical projects include data and analytics strategy reviews, decision and KPI clarification, BI and reporting rationalisation, diagnostic assessments across people/process/technology, and short, clearly scoped engagements to stabilise or simplify existing setups.
  • English

    Native or bilingual

Can work on-site
Sheffield (up to 50km)

Experience

  • Pilgrims Europe
    Head of Business Transformation
    November 2022 - June 2025 (2 years and 7 months)
    • ● Enabled 12% year-on-year revenue growth by transforming sales, customer contact, customer service and marketing teams through a customer-focused data strategy
    • ● Implemented a CRM, replatformed digital services and the deployed AI into contact centre operations to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction
    • ● Launched an innovative data-enabled digital subscription service that increased eCommerce revenue by 20%
    • ● Reduced data operating costs by 10% by implementing of a modern cloud data lakehouse
    • ● Delivered an enterprise-wide data automation platform that freed up 10% of the businesses FTEs, leading to a reduction in overheads
    • ● Consolidated over 200 fragmented reports into a single source of truth, accelerating decision making across 25 sites
  • Lifetime Training
    Director of Data
    January 2021 - November 2022 (1 year and 10 months)
    • ● Reported to the CFO of the UK's largest apprenticeship training provider, responsible for enhancing customer experience through digital, data and technology
    • ● Scaled the team from 2 to 12 people, overseeing all aspects of the data insight and customer experience strategy
    • ● Reduced data operating cost by 15% through the implementation of modern customer data, business reporting and customer feedback platforms
    • ● Launched a self-service analytics hub, cutting report turnaround time by 75%, and empowering 1,000 business users to make faster, customer-informed decisions
    • ● Improved data quality by launching the data governance team to standardise data capture and data processing, creating data policies and procedures
  • National Trust
    Head of Data (Programme Director)
    October 2016 - December 2020 (4 years and 2 months)
    • ● Led a major transformation programme within one of the UK's largest charities to restructure and centralise the approach to data, analytics and insight
    • ● Led and developed a high-performing centralised team of 25, improving business performance and deepening customer engagement, resulting in a 5% increase in customer retention and a 5x increase in cross-selling
    • ● Delivered multi-million pound project to replatform to a cloud data warehouse and customer master data management systems
    • ● Implemented modern data and insight platforms to boost productivity and enable faster, local decision making to 4,200 users across 500 locations
    • ● Established the Trust's first data governance team, introducing standardised policies, procedures and processes and ensuring compliance to these standards

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Education

  • Engineering Doctorate
    Loughborough University
    2012
    Engineering Doctorate

Skill set

Categories