Flexing Analytical Muscle – a Gym Group use case
This article is originally published at https://www.mango-solutions.com
Mango’s ‘Meet-Up’ at Big Data London on 22nd September features guest speaker Premal Desai, Head of the Data & AI function for The Gym Group.
For the Gym Group, advancing customer retention and pricing strategies have been critical drivers to success. Their focus over the last few years has been to deliver value from their analytic investments and to develop a stronger analytical culture. You can read about their data journey in this short interview with Premal – the key successes and challenges they have overcome.
Introducing Premal Desai, Head of the Data & AI
Premal currently leads the Data & AI function for The Gym Group where he oversees a high performance team covering Engineering, Analytics and Data Science. Prior to this, Premal spent almost a decade with Thomson Reuters, leading Strategic Marketing & Analytics functions globally. He has previous experience across Europe working for Orange, and spent several years with PA Consulting in their Strategy & Marketing Practice. Premal is a 2021 Board Advisor for the Business of Data, a Seed Investor for a number of start-ups and outside of work, Premal is a passionate Liverpool FC fan + renowned for his desire of fast German automobiles!
Can you tell us a bit about your role at The Gym Group?
I’ve been fortunate to have a varied and interesting career over the past 20 years – spanning both client side and consultancy roles. I’ve worked across different sized organisations, covering Telecoms, Financial Services and most recently Health & Leisure. The two common passions for me are getting to grips with understanding numbers and customers! I currently look after the Data & AI team at the Gym Group which allows me to combine these passions – I have a small, but very capable team of Engineers, Analysts and Data Scientists who support the business to uncover insights and drive growth.
Can you tell us a bit about your journey with data at The Gym Group?
The Gym Group are generally a data-oriented business, which is fortunate given my role! Over the past 3 years, we’ve been on a mission to grow our capability across a number of areas – the depth and breadth of data used across the organisation, to improve the level of granularity and sophistication of data & analytics and to turn data into more of a strategic asset. As part of this, we’ve also expanded the range and skills of our people, how we consume data and grown the range of insight we’re able to provide.
How important has being data driven been as part of your recovery post covid?
During COVID, data was absolutely central to give the business confidence across a number of areas during a unprecedented period of time. For example, we wanted our customers to feel safe using our facilities once they opened – and so the company developed a capability showing live Gym Busyness via mobile – and we used various models to help us determine appropriate levels of Gym occupancy. As a business, it’s actually helped us to see data use cases more strategically and we’re delighted to have seen really positive business recovery since Gyms re-opened in April 2021.
Can you tell us about your talk ? what should we expect and what are the key takeaways?
The talk will be focused on a couple of really important commercial drivers for our business – Customer Retention and Pricing – and the data / data science journey we’ve been on in these areas over the past couple of years. For balance, we’ll talk about both successes and some practical challenges. In addition, we’ll also speak to the importance of culture and ROI, and some factors that I think have been important on our journey. In terms of key takeaways – I encourage you to attend the talk!
Keen to join us? Premal’s talk at the Data Science Meet-Up is featured as part of the Big Data LDN line up at 6-8pm, 22nd September , AI & MLOPs Theatre. Register here.
We hope to see you there.
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This article is originally published at https://www.mango-solutions.com
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