Decision Intelligence Director

The organisation

Previously owned by LeasePlan, CarNext was acquired in 2021 by the UK-based Constellation Automotive Group. The combination of CarNext and Constellation’s other portfolio platforms creates Europe’s largest digital used car marketplace, selling more than 2.5 million cars annually for a combined value of €21 billion. With a focus on user-friendliness and trustworthiness, the mission of CarNext is to change the way people buy used cars. From a fragmented, offline market that is infamous for ‘selling lemons’, CarNext intends to transform the used car buying experience to one that is omni-channel, transparent and satisfactory for b2b and b2c customers alike.

“At Constellation, we have successfully and purposefully raised the profile of data analytics to Decision Intelligence. Data and technology is not a support function. It is of crucial, central importance to strategic decision making. In strategic discussions, one of the most impactful people at the table is the decision intelligence representative.” – Dene Jones, CEO at CarNext and Group Chief Marketing & Data Officer at Constellation Automotive Group.

The position

The acquisition of CarNext by Constellation Automotive Group created the largest online marketplace for used cars in Europe. The key to competitive advantage for this business is strategic intelligence through data. The new Decision Intelligence Director will help CarNext inform its strategy through next level intelligence from data and technology.

Tasks & responsibilities

CarNext boasts a team of 650 people, 300 of which are based at the Amsterdam head office. A key component of the headquarters’ staff is the data, product, marketing and technology teams. An analytics & insights team supports the marketing and product functions; a data science team lays the foundations for procurement and pricing decisions; and a business intelligence team ensures solid reporting. Currently these teams report into the CMO, CTO and CFO respectively. An important strategic step, based on experience from the Constellation Group, is rethinking the organisational design of these teams to create an integrated decision intelligence function that will be crucial for making strategic decisions – in all components of the business, from marketing through to vehicle selection and pricing.

The Decision Intelligence Director will design the functional strategy whilst bringing together all the relevant teams under one decision intelligence function of close to 50 people. The role reports into the CEO of CarNext and has a dotted line to the Group Chief Marketing & Data Officer. With this combined intelligence function, CarNext will unlock its unique competitive advantage in a market that is still largely offline and fragmented and does not yet have access to data and artificial intelligence. Crucially, this also involves the responsibility and opportunity to build the capabilities that are needed, grow and shape the team, select the necessary tools and data resources, and drive the decision intelligence mindset within the CarNext community. The Decision Intelligence Director will work with the Constellation Group and CarNext leadership from day 1 and create a plan to set up the new function in line with the company strategy. Once the Decision Intelligence Director starts to showcase the value coming from this team, the appetite from the business and from senior leadership will only grow and the business intelligence team, in turn, will get to expand further.

Candidate profile

This role is an exciting challenge for an experienced leader from an omni-channel b2c context, who inspires teams and helps them reach their full potential. The Decision Intelligence Director has extensive experience in developing innovative intelligence capabilities through bringing people together, remotely if needed. After all, part of the success of the Decision Intelligence Director is ensuring that the separate data and technology teams are combined into a new function of key strategic importance.

Whilst the Decision Intelligence Director of course has experience with data and artificial intelligence, it is even more important that they understand how to unlock commercial value using data and technology. The overall decision intelligence function will pro-actively feed the business with not only knowledge, but also initiatives and identified opportunities based on data insights. In order to create this mindset among the team, the Decision Intelligence Director is expected to have deep knowledge of the intersection between commercial strategy and advanced analytical approaches, tooling, cloud data processing technology and data science. They are also heavily experienced in digital analytics.

The Decision Intelligence function takes responsibly for data from the point of creation through to presentation either to a human in the form of a dashboard or a computer system in the form of an API. To do this the Decision Intelligence Director will need to develop a team with the following core capabilities:

• Analysis & Insights – Data Analysts that are embedded in each business function, responsible for identifying opportunities to add value to the business using data. They triage requirements from the business to be included in the backlog of the other Decision Intelligence teams.
• Data Engineering – specialist team members responsible for managing the transformation and loading of data from source systems
• Data Science – machine learning experts with deep statistical knowledge and experience of building and iterating sophisticated statistical models
• Visualisation & Reporting – convert data into self service easy to use graphical dashboards that allow internal and external customers to access the insights they need quickly and easily
• Digital Analytics & Conversion Rate Optimisation – Team of digital analytics specialists responsible for understanding online behaviour, work with product teams to optimise customer journeys to maximise sale conversion
• Data Platform – maintain the cloud infrastructure used by the rest of the team, in particular the ML Ops processes that allow models to be automatically retrained as needed (sometimes many times each day) and
• Delivery function – to oversee cross-functional programmes and projects, to bring all Team SMEs together, focus on the programme / project management aspects of managing change

People with these skills are in high demand across many industries and so the Decision Intelligence Director will need to develop a positive internal culture to maximise employee retention and progression.

Whilst this role provides an instant challenge in further growing the competitive advantage and the commercial performance of CarNext, it also ensures high exposure to the Leadership Team of CarNext and Constellation Group, thus unlocking future opportunities within these companies. Furthermore, the Decision Intelligence Director gets the opportunity to truly build and grow the team and capabilities for a new function within the company, and thereby showcase and further develop their leadership and strategy skills.

Candidate profile*

• >10 years’ data team leadership experience
• Extensive experience with the intersection of business strategy / data science / analytics / business intelligence / IT / statistics / data engineering / digital analytics
• Strong stakeholder management skills
• Preferably based in, or relocating to Amsterdam

* Research shows that while male candidates feel confident enough to apply when they meet about 60% of the requirements, female candidates only apply when they tick every box. So if this role has your name on it, but you’re not sure about the criteria, we still want to hear from you.

Interested?

You can apply to this position by using the link below. CarNext is working with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy.