I set up my company in 2006 to provide consultancy, training and data management services to clients in many industries. Here are 3 recent projects I have undertaken

1. Designed & delivered statistical training courses for nearly 100 people from the R&D division of an Asian food manufacturer. My first contract was for 3 days of training in Thailand in 2006. The feedback was very positive to the extent that I was asked to run more training in China in 2007.

2. Quantified the impact of changes in the price of crude oil on the financial bottom line of a major Cosmetics manufacturer. Crude oil is a major ingredient in the manufacture of plastic components and cosmetic ingredients. By using statistical thinking and methods I was able to quantify the relationship between oil & these ingredients and develop a tool that could be used to estimate the impact of any future oil price change and measure effectiveness of the company's buying strategy for reducing their exposure.

3. Delivered statistical proof that a drink's company marketing campaign had led to a 72% increase in sales during the Christmas period by analysing retailer store level data. I have advised the provider of the data on ways of helping the users of such data to more easily extract insights that add value to their business.

Provided statistical analysis & training support to a division of 800 people. Here are 3 examples of what I did in this role.

1. Advised on & analysed the results of a major consumer study to see if a company could launch a product currently sold in the UK on the European continent. The study asked consumers to compare the existing product against competitors and variants on the existing. I was able to develop a different way of segmenting consumers and showed that Continental consumers liked the UK product more than had been thought previously and that one of the UK variants was close to being the optimal product.

2. Designed, produced & delivered training courses called “Statistics for Consumer Driven Design” for product design scientists & engineers of a company, many of whom had little or no experience of statistics. The result was a series of practical & interactive 1-day courses that focused more on how to apply statistical thinking to product design issues rather than details of methods. These courses were rated on average 8.5 out of 10 for “Practical value of topics learned” and are regarded as a role model for training courses within the company globally.

3. Frequently consulted on the optimal sampling plan to verify the quality, legal & food safety attributes of food products. A good example of this was when poor weather reduced the quality of a key ingredient for a company. This led to the question of what was the most efficient sampling & testing regime so as to ensure that finished products were not tainted with undesirable flavours arising from this ingredient. My advice was that the current sampling regime was appropriate but the specifications were not well thought out.

I work with the UK snackfood sales, marketing & finance teams as a member of a 7-strong Market Information team where my role was

1. To report on the big picture view of the snackfood market, synthesising the category market reports from the other analysts in the team.
2. To make short & long term forecasts of sales & share trends for the snackfood market, its categories and new products.
3. To analyse the effectiveness of marketing mechanics including brand advertising and trade promotions.
4. To source, evaluate & validate new sources of market data.
5. To develop new business information systems
6. To deputise for the team manager as and when necessary.
7. To develop the analytical skills of my team through individual coaching and training courses.

One achievement of mine in this role encapsulates everything this role was about.

- Inspired a radical change in a company's marketing strategy by developing a model that quantified the relative influence of the key marketing drivers of innovation, pricing, availability & advertising on their market share. This model made it much easier for the company to decide where to invest its marketing budget. It was my construction of new marketing metrics which in turn required the building of a new database that made this work possible. I then developed a powerful but user-friendly reporting system for the other analysts in my team and trained them in its use. It became their most popular information tool due to the strategic insights it offered into their markets.

I supported the global commodity buyers with research & forecasts of supply, demand, stocks and prices that enabled them to make buying decisions. Key achievements include

1. Quantified the effect of global climate variations on the production of an agricultural commodity giving a 3 month lead time over traditional methods of forecasting production.

2. Designed, produced & delivered training courses on "Analysing Markets” for all buyers. I changed the perception of the course from that of a “boring and irrelevant economics” course to a practical & interactive 1-day course that demonstrated the key economics & statistical skills required to make business decisions based on an analysis of a market. Over 2 years, the overall course rating rose from 6 out of 10 to 8.5 out of 10 based on feedback by course participants who have also consistently noted that I have a rare gift for being able to keep things simple and easy to understand. This has been much appreciated by audiences whose first language was not English or who have been fearful of anything involving maths. These courses were seen as a role model for training courses worldwide within Mars

3. .Measured & verified commodity stocks through stock surveys, and analysis of supply, demand, import/export statistics. This has given me an excellent insight into the issues that affect the reliability of official & unofficial statistical data.

My role was surprisingly varied and included analytical support not only for traders but also for the company's processing factories. This role can best be summarised with the following achievements.

1. Designed & traded both technical & fundamental strategies for the cocoa futures market. The technical strategies were profitable or broke even in every year of a 5 year period. Of the fundamentally based trades, 90% were profitable over the same period. This 5 year period has turned out to be one of the quietest times in the history of cocoa prices which meant that most investors lost money during that time.

2. Designed many strategies for the purchase of physical commodities. One such strategy allowed ED&F Man to purchase double what it had originally planned, which resulted in that operation making the largest contribution to the company’s profits for that year.

3. Designed, managed & analysed experiments which demonstrated numerous biases in current methods of sampling & measuring cocoa bean quality. I also showed that such biases can lead to a 3% overestimation of cocoa products’ yields. My MSc project was based on one of these experiments and was described by Birkbeck college as "the gold standard that all projects should be measured against”.

4. Modelled cocoa bean fat yields as a function of easily measured parameters, resulting in a simple ready reckoner that could be used in the field by buyers to help them purchase the best beans thus avoiding the need for expensive laboratory tests.