The Face of Analytics at Walgreens Boots Alliance

Tom Patterson is one of several highly skilled analysts within Global Insights at Walgreen Boots Alliance (WBA). With a strong background and keen interest in geospatial problem solving and analysis, Tom has been working as the Senior Geospatial Portfolio Analyst at WBA for just over 3 and a half years.  The primary focus of his role is to innovate, develop and champion datasets, tools and models that support the decisions of the Location Planning, Pharmacy and Property Teams in the UK, Republic of Ireland and a number of other countries.

Although Boots is one of the UK’s leading retailers, WBA now have a global reach across every continent; you may shop there, work there or collect your prescriptions from one of their local stores. You may even be an online shopper and get your goods delivered to you. In any case, you can be certain that you will be able to access the goods you need quickly and easily. But imagine all the planning and analysis that goes on behind the scenes to understand our behaviours and needs in order to deliver this consistently exceptional level of customer service, to make sure that stores are located in convenient places, that each store has the correct facilities and products to suit the needs of the local population, and that loyal customers are rewarded both online and instore…the list is endless.

Tom is one of a growing number of analysts who have to make sense of billions of records of data being collected across the global network, with the ever-expanding wealth of open data being incorporated to compliment and enrich this information. With a clear spatial element to Tom’s work, GIS is a key tool for harnessing and visualising the data, allowing users across the business to explore the relationships within these disparate data sets. The ability to perform spatial analysis also makes it easier to understand behaviours and trends that could influence future strategy and decisions involving the customer experience, store locations and delivery services amongst others.

To find out more about how Tom leverages the capabilities of GIS to make sense of vast amounts of data, join our Face of Analytics webinar