Wonderflow interviews newest member of the team Lidia Palmi, as the new Head of Business Intelligence.

We interviewed Lidia Palmi, the newest member of Wonderflow to gain more insight into who she is and what she brings to the table. Lidia Palmi is the new Head of Business Intelligence and we look forward to seeing what she will add to Wonderflow.

How would you describe yourself in 5 words?
Curious, stubborn, honest, kind, impatient 

What is your favorite aspect of your career?
My international expertise, I have worked across various different countries covering global roles

What are some of your hobbies, favourite foods, sports?
I love nature and animals of all kinds and, in particular, my red cat Isidoro. I enjoy my spare time practicing yoga, hiking and reading – a lot – mostly novels but also some non-fiction. I also like to travel and discover new places, it doesn’t matter if it’s on the other side of the world or somewhere close to home that I had never visited before. I am also a member of a non-profit association that works with companies to help them develop sustainable business models. My favourite food is pizzoccheri, a traditional dish from a mountain area in the north of Italy called Valtellina: the best ones will always be those that my grandma used to make!

Could you tell us about your background and some of your accomplishments before joining Wonderflow?
I have a career of 13 years in the field of Insights and Market Research, having covered several roles across Marketing and Sales in companies like Red Bull, Tetra Pak, Kantar Worldpanel and Daemon Quest (now Deloitte). I’m originally from Italy and after graduating from university in Psychology I moved to Spain where I ended up spending 6 years – I definitely appreciated the Spanish lifestyle!! There I first worked in the market research department of a consulting company and I then managed to join one of the leading market research agencies, Kantar, quickly growing from junior executive, to senior executive to client manager of the biggest customer. 

Once I was tired of the Spanish sun, I decided to move to a tiny village in the Austrian Alps and enjoy a few meters of snow every year. There I joined Red Bull, a company that gave me wings in many aspects, allowing me to lead first the global shopper insights position and then the global consumer insights role, having the chance to define the strategic directions for the brand. I also spent a couple of years in the global marketing department of Tetra Pak, taking care of the several consumer research projects developed to support the customers’ needs and building their e-learning program on consumer intelligence (which allowed me to partly fulfill one of my childhood dreams of being a teacher, along with being a hairdresser, a truck driver and the owner of a fruit and vegetable store).

What are the skills that a Head of Business Intelligence must possess in your opinion?
I think the main ability is being able to connect the dots, taking different sets of data and information and make sense of them, creating a story out of it. I also believe that it is fundamental to always keep open eyes and mind: observe what happens around you, read, listen, talk to people…everything serves as a source of information to know what happens in a market, what the trends are, what people are interested in, what brands are cool etc. And finally, I believe it is important to have a mind that can constantly switch between the attention to the details and the big picture; working with data you have to be able to analyze every single number but also put those numbers in the right context and perspective.

How important do you think the role of a Head of Business Intelligence is in a company? Why?
I’m confident that this role will be key to further accelerate Wonderflow’s growth and expansion into other industries and to position ourselves as the industry experts, working with our customers as true partners.

Can you share with us any examples you witnessed where learnings from customer feedback majorly impacted the business strategy of a company you worked for previously?
Having always worked in the field of market research, my main focus has always been in using customer feedback to help define the business strategy of my company or my customers.  For example, deciding the right product to launch or the right ad to air, defining the most relevant target group to focus on, determining how to address an emerging competitor and so on.

What are some challenges you faced in being a Head of Business Intelligence?
Nowadays we are dealing with an overload of data and information, and in order to deliver actionable insights you have to be able to identify what is relevant and what not, but also what sources are credible and sometimes be able to reconcile conflicting information. Being able to select what information you need and tell a meaningful story with it is the challenging part, having data is easy.

Also, one of the main responsibilities of this role is to deliver results, analysis and insights to your stakeholders (internal or external) and this implies sometimes having to tell them something different from what they’d like to hear, but it’s important to always stick to the truth of what consumers say.

What drove you to want to work at Wonderflow?
I believe that Wonderflow is a young and growing company, operating in a very dynamic industry that offers a lot of opportunities, which I want to help seize. I am also very attracted by the idea of working with data to discover and deliver insights, not just numbers but real insights, to support our current and future customers to continuously improve their businesses.

What does this new opportunity at Wonderflow mean for you?
It means having the opportunity to continue expanding my expertise in the field of insights and market research, moving into a new and growing area, exploring new methodologies and technologies. It also means going back to working with customers, which is something I mostly did at the beginning of my career and I enjoyed. Being able to use the knowledge and expertise gained in the past years to help clients better understand their consumers and develop successful growth strategies.

What are you most excited to work on at Wonderflow and what would you like to achieve?
I’m very much motivated by the fact that this role is an entirely new role that offers me the opportunity to create and mold it from scratch, along with all the challenges that it will also bring. In this role, I hope to be able to contribute to the company expansion, growing into new areas of expertise while positioning ourselves as industry experts and as partners for our customers.