M&S Hires First Head of Data Science

British retailer M&S has hired former GroupM exec Mehdi Hosseini for a newly created role, Head of Data Science, including responsibility for recruiting for up to twenty new roles in the near future.

In 1998, M&S became the first British retailer to make a pre-tax profit of over £1 billion, although its progress has subsequently faltered. Last year, the firm announced that it would be closing more than 100 stores by 2022, in order to revive profits. Its current data sources include seven million Sparks Loyalty card members, eleven million M&S.com users, three million M&S Bank customers, and one million Ocado food delivery customers. In July 2018, M&S partnered with Decoded to create a Retail Data Academy, giving more than 1,000 M&S employees the opportunity to enroll on an eighteen-month, in-work data science skills programme.

Hosseini (pictured) joins from WPP-owned media investment management operation GroupM, where he was VP, Data Science and Product for the firm's [m]PLATFORM data, analytics and digital services suite of products. Before this, he worked for Sky as Lead Data Scientist, setting up the broadcaster's first data science function; and earlier he was a Research Scientist at the University of Cambridge, and a Machine Learning Researcher at Microsoft.

The new role forms part of Chief Digital and Data Officer Jeremy Pee's recently restructured leadership team, which is accountable for driving digital and data transformation at M&S. Commenting on the news, Pee said: 'Becoming a digital first business is core to our transformation and as part of this we are looking to build a new, world-class, data science capability that can be deployed to create value across the business. I am delighted that Mehdi, who comes with extensive experience, has joined M&S to build and scale this new team'.

Web site: www.marksandspencer.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.