Armin Kakas

Revify Analytics

Revify helps mid-market businesses ($10MM - $2B) move from data overload to profitable action. Our RGM-as-a-Service combines accessible, advanced analytics with expert Pricing & Revenue Growth Management advisory, providing a clear roadmap to unlock hidden margin leaks and drive revenue growth without enterprise-level complexity or cost.

Co-Founder

Revology Analytics

Revology Analytics is at the intersection of Advanced Analytics and Revenue Growth Management and specializes in impact and execution. If profitable growth, EBITDA expansion, and higher valuations are your goals, our strategies can help you achieve them.

We help mid-market companies ($10 million to $1 billion in revenues) overcome hurdles and elevate their business with pragmatic solutions focused on three critical areas:

1. Pricing & Revenue Management

2. Sales & Marketing Enablement

3. Commercial Analytics Transformation

Founder | Managing Partner

Pricing Lever

Consulting Partner for boutique Pricing Strategy advisory firm focused on Industrial Manufacturing and Distribution.

Consulting Partner

EBITDA Catalyst

Consulting partner for a specialized Revenue Management consultancy for middle-market and private equity portfolio companies. My advisory work focuses on three primary areas:

1. Margin Analytics & Optimization: Building 90/10 custom solutions for mid-market firms, primarily Manufacturers and Distributors, who want to augment their decision-making capabilities.

2. Promotion Effectiveness & Optimization: From distributors to retailers, provides crucial expertise to maximize ROI in this critical lever of profitability.

3. Sales & Customer Growth Analytics: Building on all-around analytics chops & deep understanding on the human sales execution factor, enables growth with both insights and Sales teams training & playbook development.

Reliancy

Senior Advisor for leading Sales & Marketing Enablement AI/ML advisory firm.

Senior Advisor - Revenue Growth Analytics

American Tire Distributors

I co-founded, built and scaled ATD’s first ever corporate analytics startup, driving incremental profits, valuation and industry profile for parent company ATD. Reporting to subsidiary CEO, I steered the data monetization strategy and execution of customer-facing ML-enabled SaaS solutions, growing the business from 0 to over 2,500 retail locations and manufacturers as customers. Additionally, drove ATD’s analytics transformation by prioritizing and building internal enterprise analytics solutions that augmented organizational decision-making capabilities, shifting the business to a data-driven culture.

A few key accomplishments in this role include:
• Forged key strategic partnerships with 10 of the 15 largest Point-of-Sale (POS) providers in the automotive aftermarket industry. Opened new revenue streams and paved the way for monetization of syndicated, anonymized POS transactional data.
• Led 15-member commercialization team (data translators, business development and sales ops managers) and influenced 50-member technical team to build innovative SaaS solutions that solved key customer pain points in competitive market and pricing insights, inventory management and optimization and profit / sales mix optimization.
• Realized substantial revenue and EBITDA growth for parent company in 3 years after conceptualizing and launching advanced analytics products across supply chain, revenue management and sales. 
• Represented analytics startup at industry conferences and served as trusted advisor and AI-translator to both ATD senior executive team and key clients within tire industry.

Vice President, Advanced Analytics Commercialization: Chief Customer Officer of Analytics Incubator

I was brought on to transition the revenue management function into a data science-driven department. I shifted the department to a Lean framework and expanded pricing capabilities by creating the company’s first in-house machine learning-enabled pricing solution that improved cash flow and liquidity using R, Python and Google Cloud SQL. 

Key accomplishments in this role include:
• Through architecting and deploying clearance price optimization platform, unlocked $300M in liquidity and $15M in gross profits from unproductive inventory despite difficult market.
• Developed and deployed descriptive and diagnostic price and margin analytics dashboards companywide using Tableau.

Director, Advanced Analytics: Head of Pricing and Margin Analytics of $5B Enterprise

Wells Enterprises

Recruited to transform administratively focused pricing team into strategic revenue growth management (RGM) group with analytics and strategy foundation for top 5 manufacturer of frozen desserts. Built RGM function from ground up, delivering volume and profit growth and providing actionable performance insights that optimized decision making. Shapeshifted business strategy and culture by establishing four key capabilities: 1) pay-for-performance mindset for promotions; 2) value-based pricing for private label business; 3) advanced analytics driven pricing architecture; 4) dynamic scenario analyses and optimization.

• Achieved 5% and 3% EBITDA growth in FY16 and FY17 despite relatively flat industry. Employed strategic price increases, restructured rebate programs across all channels, implemented rigorous pricing council reviews, and optimized price pack architecture.
• Brought order to chaotic pricing structure process by selecting team of 8 to create and implement standardized pricing strategy and processes and right size price and product positioning based on perceived price-value maps.
• Drove 13% in total Gross Profit $ in FY16 (+11% in unit volume and +2% in GP$ per unit) for anchor brand via tiered pricing strategy and optimized promotion plans that maximized in-store display and advertising support.
• Orchestrated launch of Tableau server and promotional data warehouse migration in MS Azure. Enabled self-serve descriptive and diagnostic price and margin analytics companywide. 
• Harmonized shipment and sellout data to produce macro- and micro-level promotion effectiveness platform that raised ROI from 80% to 92% in 1.5 years.

Director, Revenue Growth Management: Head of RGM and Advanced Analytics of $2B Consumer Goods Co. 

Best Buy

Accelerated dynamic pricing capabilities as lead of data science team in pricing and merchandising strategy analytics. Masterminded strategy and blueprint for pricing strategy across 1K+ stores. Engineered algorithmic framework to implement dynamic pricing for physical and online stores. Led global team to develop innovative solutions that drove business growth.
•	Designed pricing science roadmap, authored descriptive/predictive analytics capabilities, and directly contributed to the evolution and adoption of human capital/resources.
•	Cut 70% of budget by insourcing strategic planning and implementation function enterprise wide. 
•	Produced 30+bps jump in gross margin after introducing adaptive pricing techniques / capabilities.
•	Won Leadership Award for personal impact based on transformational strategies within pricing function.

Head of Price Analytics & Modeling: Building and Implementing Dynamic Pricing for $50B Retailer

MillerCoors

Collaboratively led a talented, tenured team of analytics professionals responsible for all aspects of revenue management for 500+ distributors and approximately 4k Walmart/Sam’s Club stores.

♦ Drafted an organizational roadmap for retail chain revenue management capabilities. Realized category and margin growth with the use of advanced price analytics.
♦ Successfully delivered unique and specific insights through a combination of integrated data and machine learning methods. Improved the quality and sustainability of newly presented insights.

Manager, Pricing Analytics and Strategy: Head of RGM for $700M Walmart / Sam’s Club Business Unit

GE Capital

♦ June 2011 - June 2012: Sales Force Effectiveness (SFE) Leader
♦ June 2008 - June 2011: Experienced Commercial Leadership Program (ECLP) Participant/Graduate
- 3rd ECLP rotation: Marketing Analytics (GE Capital Retail Consumer Finance - now Synchrony Financial)
- 2nd ECLP rotation: Marketing Analytics & Strategy (Vendor Finance - now part of Wells Fargo)
- 1st ECLP rotation: Price Analytics & Strategy (Equipment Finance - now part of Wells Fargo)
- ECLP Internship: Corporate Finance

Commercial and Consumer Finance Analytics and Strategy (various)

Revenue Growth Analytics advisor to executives in charge of growing Net Revenue, Gross Profit, and Sales Productivity | Posts and articles about Revenue Management + Machine Learning insights, methods, and processes.

As the founder of Revology Analytics, I have the privilege of offering mid-market businesses unparalleled expertise in advanced Revenue Growth Analytics & Management, focusing on three core advisory areas: Pricing & Revenue Management, Sales & Marketing Enablement and Commercial Analytics Transformation efforts. 

Beyond my advisory work, I am the creator of the Revology Analytics Insider, a bi-weekly newsletter offering readers unique insights into the world of Revenue Growth Analytics. You can catch the latest issues on LinkedIn and our website, revologyanalytics.com/articles-insights.

To learn more, please visit revologyanalytics.com

Revology Analytics is a Revenue Growth Analytics consultancy for middle-market companies in the Manufacturing, Retail, and Distribution industries.

We are an impact- and execution-oriented advisory firm founded on Outcome-Based Analytics™, with focused specializations in AI/ML-enabled Margin Analytics & Optimization, Sales & Customer Growth Analytics and Promotion Effectiveness & Optimization.

First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB)

Head of Customer Analytics & Intelligence at FAB

Lead AIB's Advanced Analytics function with responsibility for:

- Leading a team of Data Scientists and ML Engineers to deliver high value machine learning use cases at scale at enterprise level.
- Developing an MLOps framework on the cloud for Advanced Analytics to enhance scalability, standardisation and governance in Machine Learning.
- Enhancing the value of Analytics products across AIB through the establishment of a value framework.
- Developing a Customer Lifetime Value proposition, deepening customer engagements through data and analytics, and driving the Personalisation strategy for AIB.

Head of Advanced Analytics

Ulster Bank

Led Ulster Bank's Retail Analytics and Business Intelligence function.  

Responsible for:

- Driving analytics and commercial insights to create a data-driven stepchange across Ulster Bank
- Development of data strategy for the Retail Bank.
- Building high-performing teams in the fields of Advanced Analytics, Strategic Insights & Performance Insights. 
- Delivering data and analytics programmes on time, to the highest standard, and within budget.
- Development of machine learning models supporting acquisition and retention strategies, working across marketing, products, and distribution channels.
- Identifying and driving process improvements through innovation, automation and simplification.
- Adherence to data governance policy, delivering to BCBS239/ regulatory compliance standards. 

Key Achievments:

- Data Science/ Emerging Tech - Shortlisted to final 3 for the Analytics Institute of Ireland’s Analytics & AI Awards 2020 in the ‘Best Emerging Tech In IOT/ Machine Learning/ RPA’ Category

- Covid-19– Developed a customer income model during the Covid-19 pandemic to identify vulnerable customers, leading to proactive contact campaigns to offer payment breaks.  Independent research published in April 2020 showed that Ulster Bank ranked 1st for ‘proactive meaningful communication’ during the crisis. 

- Customer Decisioning – Developed a fully compliant, customer and commercially-focused sales attribution and decisioning model, optimising customer contact strategy. This model underpins entire multi-channel contact strategy and now drives 20% of Retail bank sales.

- Performance Dashboards – Developed suite of dashboards, providing drill-down functionality and performance insights vs a wide range of KPIs for the Retail Bank.  Covered stock, product, digital, lead gen, complaints, transactions, sales, share of wallet etc.  1st of its kind for wider NatWest Group.

Head of Analytics & Business Intelligence

Watch Portfolio Management (Ex-Grant Thornton)

Maintained overall control of financial and customer data for 16 UK-based blue-chip financial services organisations.  Was responsible for driving continuous improvement and automation in multiple areas of the business spanning treasury, operations, and analytics.

Key Achievements:

- Played a key lead role in management buy-out in 2013, helping exit and establish the new company (WPM).  Established new Treasury and Analytics function, and designed, tested and rolled out a new SQL Server database and .Net front-end for staff after 3 months, ensuring zero disruption to operations.

- Automated significant elements of the Treasury and decisioning functions, reducing costs by 75% and enhancing accuracy and quality of data capture and operational processing.

- Developed fully automated complex fuzzy matching models to enhance data match rates from 71% to 93% at a time of growing the book from 10 to 16 clients, supporting 100% revenue growth in year 1.

- Authored an auto-decisioning model for the business, removing the need for manual reviews of 95% of consumer IVA (insolvency) applications.  Built utilising decision-trees based upon IVA regulations and industry standards, the model looked at consumer application and transactional history data sourced both digitally and through OCR techniques, and ensured fair & impartial consumer outcomes in seconds.  This reduced error rates, freed up operational resource in the organisation by over 50%, and achieved full FCA compliance with regards to Treat Customer Fairly (TCF) guidelines.

- Introduced Tableau and oversaw development of a new suite of KPI dashboards identifying performance trends and strategic opportunities within existing portfolios, operations, and at a wider insolvency market-level, utilising both internal and external datasets. 
 
- Developed portfolio P&L forecasts utilising advanced analytics models identifying emerging risks, opportunities, and expected revenue generation.

Associate Director

Capita (BBC Audience Services)

Reporting to the Audience Services director & key stakeholders within the BBC and BBC Trust, responsible for co-ordinating and leading a team of BI Analysts through large scale organisational transition across two sites, defining and evaluating strategic direction for the team.

Key Achievements:

- Led multi-site (based in Belfast & Glasgow) Business Intelligence team through successful rebid for BBC Audience Services contract, developing new KPI reports against 65 new SLAs

- Developed daily BBC Audience Services feedback dashboard via Cognos used by senior management within the BBC, including the Director-General.  Became source for daily media briefings on audience feedback.

- Created and maintained a balanced scorecard for benchmarking and performance-based management of KPIs, for senior BBC and Capita management.

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