AND Introduction

At AND, we accelerate the development of digital capabilities. In practice, that means helping ambitious leaders and organisations build the teams, products, processes and even operational structures they need to close the digital skills gap within their organisation today, so that they thrive tomorrow.

Clients rely on our experience, agility and skills across technology and business strategy, software development and product management to address some of the toughest challenges facing their businesses.

We bring aboard thinkers, tinkerers, passionate software craftspeople and inspiring technologists to help us solve these challenges. Together, we’re united by a sense of pragmatism, purpose and a deeply-held belief that digital products and technology alone won’t transform a business or save the world: it’s the people that count.

AND Consulting

AND Consulting (part of the AND Digital family) offers our clients transformational advisory expertise, helping them solve their most complex, ambiguous and strategic problems in new, inspiring and innovative ways. We collaborate with our clients to build remarkable digital products and teams together.

Not only is AND is one of Europe’s fastest growing technology companies, it’s also a great place with an inclusive people-focussed culture and workplace flexibility to support it. This ambitious growth means this post offers a tremendous opportunity to influence the direction and proposition of the Data & Insight practice and AND Consulting as a whole, within a supportive and nurturing working environment.

The Role

The Practice Lead for Data & Insight is an integral leadership team member of the Consulting business unit, helping our clients accelerate their digital journey and helping to grow the AND Consulting business unit and develop our people.

The Consulting operating model is currently split into two geographic units (based in London & Manchester) with 6 interdependent practices in each - Strategy & Transformation, Product, Technology, People, Delivery and Data & Insight. Each Practice Lead is accountable for developing, maintaining and enhancing the practice propositions and client offerings, aligned to the overall Consulting proposition. They are responsible for the people in their practice, including recruitment and development, and for building a diverse and welcoming team culture. Practice Leads have ownership of a practice’s compelling points of view, and maintain a library of artefacts, templates and case studies relevant to the practice and drive the development of the practice and the client projects served by the practice.

The Data & Insight practice makes the promise of a data-driven future a reality for our household name clients. The scope of our work includes::

• Creating data strategies and vision - working with clients to assess their current data maturity and develop a compelling vision and the strategy to deliver that vision to get the most value out of their most valuable asset.
• Designing modern data platforms - alongside our Cloud and Club engineering teams, identifying the right architecture and outcomes for data platforms to solve the problems of siloed data or poor data quality.
• Driving action from insight - helping clients apply their data to drive actionable change, getting the data to where it matters most in an organisation.
• Improving products & services with data - delivering data-driven improvements through optimisation and experimentation.

In addition to building, running and maintaining the practice, the Practice Lead will also be expected to be involved in client delivery (up to 60%), business development, research & development and external networking / speaking.

What you will be doing

• Build, recruit, run and maintain the Data & Insight Consulting practice in Manchester
• Commercial ownership of the team, the practice and the key financials - revenue. GM, rates and utilisation
• Participate in key Consulting governance activities such as: scheduling, Ops meetings, etc
• Lead on business development activities for Consulting opportunities
• Lead on the research & development for practice - latest trends, innovations and points of view that makes this practice stand out from the crowd.
• A vital member of the Consulting leadership team, supporting the scaling and delivery of the consulting plan
• For client work:
  • Review, plan, lead and execute activities required to improve effectiveness of Data & Insight delivery for our clients - ranging from pure consulting engagements to large / complex transformation programmes.
  • Provide delivery leadership and manage / work closely with senior client stakeholders at all stages of the delivery lifecycle.
  • Lead the discovery, activation and shaping of new Data & Insight projects and client initiatives
  • Applying a commercial mindset throughout an engagement (e.g. supporting AND MSA contracts, statements of work, invoices, scheduling, expenses, leave approval etc.) while also developing further AND Digital opportunities and associated account plans.
  • Work closely with service leadership in our AND Clubs to ensure smooth onboarding and transition to a ‘build service’.
  • Delivering the right outcome, not just the agreed outputs - seeing the bigger picture in terms of the value the client is actually looking for.
  • Ensure the quality of the work delivered meets client expectations.
  • Get hands-on with the work, beyond leading and directing - producing artefacts e.g. workshop facilitation, creating data strategies, defining success measurement plans, designing operating models, assessing organisational data maturity etc.

What we'd like to see in you:

• Have occupied senior consulting or leadership positions either within AND or elsewhere.
• Breadth of consulting experience in delivering data & insight programmes and projects, implementing new techniques, technologies and ways of working in their area of specialism, ideally across a range of clients / organisations.
• Good knowledge of current data & insight trends and how these apply to solving business problems
• Breadth of knowledge across the data landscape, including demonstrable expertise in one or more areas such as data strategy design, data platforms, data engineering, data analysis, ML/AI, data-driven product optimisation, product analytics, data governance etc.
• Highly organised, strong in delivery, excellent communicator, with strong stakeholder management skills and experience of operating with mid level managers, senior and board level management team
• Enjoy leading, driving and ultimately landing the associated benefits for the client amidst a complex set of risks or issues .
• Inclusive leadership and management style that generates support, engagement and commitment from internal and client teams.
• Direct, nurture and coach your teams and perform career counselling
• Ability to lead, manage and direct teams of consultants to deliver high quality consulting work as it relates to the practice.
• Ability to work collaboratively with peers and colleagues from other consulting practices on multi-disciplinary opportunities / engagements
• Ability to build and foster relationships across parts of AND outside of consulting to enable consulting growth and impact