James Walker
Senior Leadership
As a global analytics pioneer, James has over 25 years’ experience developing clients’ analytics capability and partnering with case teams using the most cutting edge advanced analytics.
James brings 25 years’ experience as a Strategy consulting leader and global analytics pioneer. He has held a mix of senior partner consultancy positions, acted as the board director in global advertising agencies and has led successful entrepreneurial analytics/ digital start-ups from inception to exit.
From a strategy perspective, James has served clients on a range of consumer topics such as Brand, Marketing, Customer loyalty and CVM, Pricing/Sku/ Promo, Forecasting, Sales Force, Cx, Ecom, Store performance/ segmentation/ location.
In the analytics space, James holds multiple US Patents as an inventor of Analytics tool and was an early pioneer pivoting from traditional analytics to AI, Machine Learning, and RPA. Recently he has also helped organisations to realise the promise of analytics via process design, organisational design and operating models and technology stacks.
Education & Prior Experience
- Booz / Strategy& - EMEA Head of Analytics
- Prophet – Global Head of Analytics
- KPMG Nunwood – Chief Strategy & Corporate Development Officer
- Accenture - Snr Partner; President of Accenture Marketing Sciences
- Successful start-ups such as Brand Science, Edge, Mofilm
- Previous leadership roles in advertising and media
- The London School of Economics, BSc, Economics
"Realising the promise of analytics and AI is now one of the key strategic challenges for our clients."
Related Publications
The new kid on the block - Blockchain
Blockchain seems a notch less hot than it used to. As per Crunchbase data, investments in 2019 are estimated to be $3.38 billion, which is significantly lower than the 2018 investment figure of $12.86 billion of blockchain venture funding
What’s in store for retail analytics?
At OC&C we’re increasingly deploying our big data analytics capability in Retail. As we support retailers with analytics, we’re looking at what’s new and what’s to expect in the next 12 months
7 step brand planning in a big data world
I’ve spent half my career working in advertising, and later brand strategy consulting. Brands were my first love. But how we think about building brand portfolios has changed
Rethinking CPG revenue growth management: A 21st century approach
A quick scan of the business pages will tell any consumer goods executive something they already know: consumer goods companies are trading within a context that is new, different and challenging
Managing CPGs for margin growth
There was interesting news this week that Unilever is attaining good revenue growth through upward management of prices, even though volumes have been flatter
7 surprising facts about grocery price optimisation
It’s common for grocery retailers to dwell on the topic of Pricing. Pricing is of course a massive lever on profitability. But there are some surprising truths about grocery price optimisation
Mend not end - designing the 21st century sales force
Big companies like Merck and Microsoft have been laying off thousands of sales reps. Even Harvard Business Review has carried articles titled “How to Downsize Your Sales Force.”
Putting the AI in retail (Yes, there's an a and I in retail)
Last week my two World’s collided when on Wednesday, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest society of computing professionals, announced three winners of the Turing Award for their work as pioneers in Artificial Intelligence
SKU cannot negotiate with gravity
“The odds catch up. Probability is like gravity: you cannot negotiate with gravity.”
Let’s get real about AI
There is an executive-level consensus on the potential competitive power of Artificial Intelligence; or as one of our interviewees put it “bigger than splitting the atom”