Retailers face soaring costs, competition, and high customer expectations. Effective data utilization is crucial for navigating these challenges. Traditional retailers can learn valuable data strategies from modern e-commerce platforms. Stefan Kühn, an experienced data leader, shares insights on how traditional retailers can adopt agile data practices to drive innovation and growth.

Unlock the Future of Retail: Download the CDO Retail Post-Event Report Discover the key insights, strategies, and innovations that are shaping the future of retail. This report captures the most impactful moments from this year’s event, featuring a full audience breakdown, actionable takeaways for digital transformation and exclusive session highlights. 

Whether you're a Chief Digital Officer, marketing strategist, or tech innovator, this report is your gateway to understanding how top retailers are navigating the ever-changing industry, enhancing customer experience, and driving growth through strong data foundations. 

📊 What’s Inside:

• Highlights from keynote sessions and panel discussions
• A full audience breakdown including immediate investment priorities 
• First-hand testimonials from our attendees
• A rundown of the full speaker faculty and more!

Don’t miss out - download your copy now and stay ahead in the ever-evolving retail landscape.

Unlock the CDO insights every modern data leader needs.

In this exclusive CDO Chronicles Part 2 transcript, Chief Data Officers Loulou van Ravensteijn and Shruti Sharma dive deep into the realities of today’s data leadership - from redefining the CDO role to navigating AI governance, organisational maturity, stakeholder alignment, and the evolving relationship between CDOs, CIOs and emerging Chief AI Officer roles.

If you’re a data leader tasked with shaping strategy, driving culture change, or embedding enterprise‑wide intelligence, this conversation is packed with the hard truths and practical wisdom rarely shared publicly.

Download the transcript to explore:

• Why the CDO role is misunderstood, and how top leaders are reshaping it - Learn why today’s CDOs are strategic decision‑shapers, not dashboard owners, and how to articulate your value in the C‑suite.
• How to break the “paper‑tiger strategy” cycle - Gain actionable insights on aligning data strategy to organisational outcomes - and executing it with resilience.
• The truth about working with CIOs, CTOs and new Chief AI Officers Discover how boundaries are shifting -  and why thinking in terms of “shared intelligence ecosystems” is the future.

Packed with clear, honest reflections from leaders operating at both government and charity scale, this transcript is the must‑read resource for any CDO, CDAIO, or aspiring data executive navigating rapid change. Engage with more of these honest conversations at the highly anticipated CDO Retail Exchange. 

Unlock the realities of modern data leadership in The CDO Chronicles Composed: Data Governance as a bottle neck - an unfiltered, peer‑to‑peer conversation between Shruti Sharma (Chief Data & AI Officer, Save the Children UK) and Loulou van Ravensteijn (Chief Data Officer, Provincie Gelderland).

This snippet of the launch episode of The CDO Chronicles dives into the toughest challenge facing today’s data leaders: making data governance work in the real world.

Senior data leaders will gain practical, hard‑won insights on:

• Selling data governance to the board - including how to answer the critical “So what?” that unlocks investment.
• Building organisation‑wide accountability - from defining roles and responsibilities to embedding impact frameworks that make data ownership tangible. “Our policies say that all directors are actually data owners… but then how do we make that more strategic?”
• Operationalising governance at scale - including data catalogues, metadata standards, lineage, and role‑based access models that actually work. “If you don’t know what data you have, how can you hold people accountable?”
• Using AI to automate the ‘boring but critical’ foundations - and turning governance from a burden into an enabler.

This is essential readings for CDOs, CDAOs, and senior data leaders navigating first‑generation data strategy, organisational alignment, and the pressure to deliver AI responsibly. Download the full transscript to learn how two leading CDOs are transforming governance from plumbing into strategic power ahead of the CDO Retail Exchange UK. 

Unlock powerful insights from two leading voices in data and AI transformation in The CDO Chronicles – Part 3. In this snippet, Shruti Sharma, Chief Data & AI Officer at Save the Children UK, and Loulou van Ravensteijn, Chief Data Officer at Provincie Gelderland, dive deep into the real-world challenges and opportunities facing today’s data leaders.

Explore how first‑generation and second‑generation CDOs build data strategies from the ground up, establish governance frameworks, and drive organisation‑wide data literacy. Learn how they navigate the first 100 days, create non‑invasive data governance models, build communities of practice, and deliver quick wins that prove value fast.

This episode offers practical guidance on stakeholder management, data ownership, operating models, and the resilience required to lead data transformation in complex environments. Whether you're a new CDO, an aspiring data leader, or a business executive looking to understand the evolving role of data, this conversation delivers actionable insights you can apply immediately.

Ahead of the highly anticipated CDO Retail Exchange UK - there's no better reading to be done. 

Download the 2024 post event report for exclusive insights on industry investment priorities, audience breakdown, key themes discussed at the event, and much more!

The CDO Europe Exchange is pleased to release its 2025 Book List, specially curated for data and analytics professionals. Whether you’re looking to learn more about the latest concepts in data management, hone your leadership skills, or simply read for pleasure, we hope that some of the chosen books will make it onto your reading list for 2025.

Access the 2023 post event report here, and find out why you should attend in 2024!

The seismic shift triggered by the rise of e-commerce platforms has fundamentally changed consumers’ shopping behaviour and expectations. With online shoppers valuing speed and convenience more than ever, e-commerce retailers must optimise their online customer journey pathways accordingly. Download the article for insight into:

• How adopting techniques like predictive modelling and regression analytics can help retailers better understand their customers and provide tailored customer experiences
• Why omnichannel strategies are key to creating seamless customer journeys which can boost sales for retailers
• The power of word of mouth, and how retailers can harness online reviews and social media influence

This report from Informatica seeks to understand what strategies data leaders are adopting to overcome AI roadblocks. Download the report to find out:

• What percentage of data leaders are already capitalising on generative AI and how they are using it
• The top challenges data leaders face when implementing generative AI
• Data leaders’ plans for reskilling and upskilling to support future AI and data management strategies

As more and more businesses strive to establish a data-driven culture at all levels, many data leaders have started to examine how a data mesh strategy can help them to achieve their aims. As a decentralised data architecture, a data mesh allows easier access to data for end users, making data a shared responsibility rather than being managed by a centralised data team. This interview with Delivery Hero’s Director of Engineering Sean Gustafson covers:

• The benefits of using a data mesh and the results that Delivery Hero has seen
• Best practices for scaling a data mesh architecture
• Overcoming resistance to change when leaving behind established processes
  

With businesses increasingly recognising the importance of a solid data strategy to help them achieve meaningful growth, having the right individuals to drive data-driven transformation is critical. This article draws on the insight of four data leaders in retail who discuss how to hire and retain talent in data when competition for qualified candidates is so high. Download the article for insight into:

• How to refine your recruitment strategy to attract the right talent 
• The importance of company culture and job satisfaction for retention
• The importance of soft skills in data roles
  

An interview with Martin French, Head of Data Engineering at Sanne Group

How Public-Private Partnerships Are Creating New Pathways to Economic Mobility

Two years ago, employers and policymakers alike were grappling with the tightest labor market in fifty years. Conversations about the shrinking shelf-life of skills and the accelerating pace of technological change dominated the headlines.

As we continue to navigate these challenges and opportunities, it’s clear that demand for tech skills will continue to skyrocket. New investment, both from businesses and from the government, will continue to enter the system. As these programs continue to grow, the goal of this white paper is to apply the best of what we’ve learned through these efforts to help local and regional leaders across the country navigate their own community reskilling efforts.

The role of the Chief Data Officer presents an interesting paradox. Despite being one of the most sought-after positions in an increasingly data-led world, the tenures of CDOs are seemingly short-lived. Why is this? 

The explosion of data being generated, curated, and shared within organisations in recent years has brought with it unprecedented risks. As consumers and regulators alike are becoming more concerned with the misuse of data, the question of ethics and inherent societal bias in data has been thrust into public consciousness. High-profile data breaches have proliferated over the past few years, so it is crucial that organisations create ethical data practices in order to avoid the astronomical consequences of a breach, not just from a financial point of view, but also from a reputational perspective.

This panel discussed how to navigate the complexities of data ethics in order to foster a trust-based, transparent approach to data and analytics.

• What are the key risks that organisations need to be aware of regarding the ethics of data and AI?
• What metrics/procedures can be put in place to ensure that you can both understand and mitigate your risks?
• How can you ensure that customers have a transparent view of how their data is being used?
• How can you navigate the risk of unconscious societal biases?

Speakers on the panel:

• Sudip Trivedi, Head of Data and Analytics, London Borough of Camden
• Mahesh Bharadhwaj, Head of Europe Analytics, Funding Circle
• Dan Gilbert, Director of Data, News UK
• Nina Monckton, Head of Data Strategy, Advanced Analytics and Data Science, AXA Health
• Moderated by Robin Sutara, CDO, Microsoft
  

As data increasingly emerges as the currency for innovation and competitive advantage, it is essential to build a modern and agile data ecosystem that will support and augment business-decision making. A robust strategy that treats data as a strategic corporate asset is crucial to maximising its value across the business. But as digitalisation proflerates and the world becomes more connected than ever, businesses are grappling with an overwhelming volume and variety of data.

This begs the question: where should you begin in formulating a vision and strategy that connects the disparate parts of the data puzzle to unlock enhanced decision-making capabilities? In this session, Rob McKendrick shared how The Co-Op is building a strategy that places data at the core of the business to both drive internal operational efficiencies and foster improved customer outcomes.

• Moving from federated to centralised operating model to break down functional and data silos
• Aligning your data vision to the creation of customer value
• Embedding trust and ethics into your approach to data usage in order to build transparency

Rob McKendrick, Head of Data Governance and Management, The Co-Op

Tableau has developed the Data Culture Playbook to guide executives and data leaders in how to mature data usage across the organization in a way that ensures value is being created where and when it is needed most. The playbook lays out a phased approached to build, run, and expand your Data Culture.

Data virtualisation is the fastest and most cost-effective way to integrate all your data, making it easily accessible from one single abstraction layer

Together, Snowflake and HVR enable organizations to become data-driven. With its Log-Based Change Data Capture (CDC) feature, HVR can replicate high volumes of data from a variety of source systems into Snowflake. HVR is one of the only solutions on the market that can move data from SAP HANA into Snowflake using Log-Based CDC, with the ability to decode cluster and pool tables on the fly.

Most organisations are storing sensitive data, but often do not know where it is or which data it is. Moreover, some companies are storing data that they do not realise is sensitive, which may be either directly or indirectly sensitive.

Assuring the quality and provenance of your data is vital for both operational and analytic purpose. As we use data more and more, and especially as we increasingly automate the processing of that data, we need the assurance that the data is both accurate, timely and complete. 

• Data lake origins and challenges including hybrid data integration, multiple data source platforms, and lakes both on premises and in the cloud.
• Real-time integration, with change data capture technology that integrates live transactions with the data lake.
• Rethinking the data lake with multi-stage methodology, continuous data ingestion and merging processes that assembles a historical data store.
  Leveraging a scalable and autonomous streaming data pipeline to deliver analytics ready data sets.