Whether you’re a pet owner or not, you’ve more than likely heard of Pets At Home. Far from a start-up, this well-established retail company was founded back in 1991 and specialises in pet care products and services.

So you might be wondering why their former Chief Data Officer is on The 'Start-Up' Diaries podcast...

Joining the business in 2018, with huge ambition for how they could use their data to better serve their customers, Robert Kent joined as CDO.  His aim was to cultivate a start-up mentality with the data function and win the hearts and minds of the wider business as to the pivotal role that data could play in the evolution of the business. 

In this episode, Robert dives into how he built a multidisciplinary team across Data and Analytics and what these teams need to thrive. He also discusses challenges he faced surrounding buy-in from other leaders in the business.

Robert also covers his risk based approach to Data Governance, how he built his team to 70+ people and finally, he debates the pros and cons of having the Chief Data Officer sit on The Board.

Questions Asked:

1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your journey to Pets at Home
2. You’ve built a multi-disciplinary team across Data and Analytics - what functions do these teams need these days and how are those needs evolving?
3. When you joined Pets at Home, they were already an established business but did not have a Data function. How did you invoke a Start-Up culture within the Data team in a business that was already doing well?
4. How did you win the hearts and minds of the wider business when doing this and what challenges did you face - potentially from other leaders in the business - and how did you overcome them?
5. You grew the function to circa 70 people from scratch and within that made some really key hires. What did you look for specifically in key data hires?
6. Data governance is becoming increasingly important – you mentioned you took a ‘risk based’ approach to it – how did you do this successfully?
7. As CDO at Pets at Home you currently sit on the board, but you also mentioned that you’ve previously operated as CDO without a seat on the board - what do you think are the benefits to having a CDO on the board? 
8. What has been the biggest challenge in your career to date?
9. And finally, what one piece of advice would you give to a business who is thinking about building a data function for the first time?

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