VIDEO | Former Petco Sr. Director: We Have Data Champions for Different Business Domains

(US and Canada) Kiran Kanetkar, Senior Director of Data Engineering, BI and Analytics, Petco, speaks with David Mariani, CEO, AtScale, about the organization’s transformation journey, the role of data champion, and partnering with the business side.

Concerning Petco’s digital transformation journey, Kanetkar says it used to be a brick-and-mortar type retailer in 2017. But today, it provides omnichannel capabilities with the best of both offline and online worlds. The goal is now to provide the power of data to all partners, whether they are in a store or corporate, to make good day-to-day decisions.

When asked about the roadblocks to making data-driven decisions, Kanetkar points toward putting together a process around technology and making people follow it. He stresses that a good balance of people and process capabilities is mandatory to be successful. It ultimately boils down to the organization’s overall culture.

Sharing his experience on the issue of driving data literacy, he says that a key landmark was creating the role of data champions. Petco has data champions for different business domains. They need to collaborate and have to be literate in their area.

Kanetkar elaborates that many of these data champions were people who were already performing the role. Still, they did not know they were their area's data champions. For the rest, he had to work with senior business executives to identify them.

Speaking about partnering closely with the business side, Kanetkar mentions that a major responsibility is to meet their analytics demands. Given the limited resources, he says, prioritization becomes extremely important, requiring collaboration across teams to overcome the issue.