Data Strategy Consultant

We are a £300m turnover group operating across the UK & Ireland in a mature, competitive market. With ambitious growth plans through M&A and an urgent need to implement a CRM and BI platform, we are seeking an Interim Data Strategy Consultant to deliver clarity, direction, and a practical data roadmap. This short-term engagement will assess our current data landscape, identify opportunities, and produce a budget-aligned 12-18-month plan covering priorities, governance, and resourcing - enabling us to lay the right foundations for value creation across finance, sales, supply chain, logistics, and customer data.

- We are a £300m turnover group of companies operating across the UK & Ireland in a mature and competitive market. Our business is acquisitive, with a plan to expand via M&A.

- Our main ERP system is the AS400 (IBM), which is developed by our in-house JBA Developers. There is no scope to change this system, and we are currently running a project to convert the language from RGB to C#. One of our subsidiaries is on a legacy NetSuite operating system and will be migrated to the AS400 early 2026.

- We operate many 3rd party systems and software packages, which are fed by CSV extracts from the AS400 system. Many of these systems report similar information; however manual intervention is required to achieve a single source of truth. In addition, the AS400 sends many manual CSV extracts to departments each day to use in siloed excel reporting.

- Selection of 3rd party software is not formalised and largely left to the department to source and approve.

- We have been attempting to clean and improve our data over the last 18 months, and have recently set up a Data Committee to ensure we have more control over group data; however this is in its infancy, and no formal framework is in place.

- We have a pressing need to introduce both a CRM system and Business Intelligence platform before the end of the year. Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM has been identified by a member of the Board as a preferred option. PowerBI has been identified by the FP&A team as a preferred option following a period of testing.

- We want to get more value from finance, sales, supply chain, logistics, and customer data, but the right foundations need to be in place first.

- The initial requirement is for an independent data strategy consultant to come in to

• Assess the current data landscape.
• Identify gaps and opportunities.
• Advise on the right architecture and approach.
• Produce a 12-18-month budget-aligned roadmap covering priorities, governance, and resourcing.

This is not a build project at this stage, the focus is clarity, direction, and a practical plan we can commit to.

• Title: Interim Data Strategy Consultant
• Core skills:
• Proven experience delivering short-term discovery and roadmap engagements.
• Strong stakeholder management, ability to engage with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, advising at Board/Executive level.
• Experience in legacy-modern integration.
• Understanding of modern data platforms (Microsoft stack preferred) and governance best practise.
• Deliverables:
• Current state assessment and system/data flow map.
• Recommendations for architecture, tooling, governance, and people. To be independent and product agnostic.
• Assessment of current internal capability (finance, IT, data governance, analytics) against future needs, with recommendations on where to build in-house skills vs. where to outsource or hire.
• Clear, costed, budget-conscious roadmap with priorities and quick wins.

1. Short-term - length to be determined by Scope
2. On-site (hybrid) expected, therefore local candidates preferred.
3. Start date - immediate