Diana Schildhouse, chief knowledge and analytics officer at Colgate-Palmolive, describes herself as an information storyteller – however what does that imply when it comes to day-to-day supply?
“To achieve success in roles like this, you have to have a deep reference to the enterprise and perceive what you’re attempting to resolve, what their questions are, after which devise options,” she says.
“These options may use superior analytics. Generally, it’s about creating easier options. However success is all the time about fixing that enterprise want.”
Schildhouse joined Colgate-Palmolive in April 2021 as chief analytics and insights officer. She was beforehand at Mattel for eight years, latterly as senior vice-president for world technique, insights and analytics. Schildhouse has additionally labored for Westfield, Merrill Lynch and Disney.
“Most of my expertise has been in consumer-facing corporations,” she says.
“When it comes to my profession, I’ve all the time been in capabilities like superior analytics, insights and technique. After I noticed the chance with Colgate-Palmolive, I believed concerning the breadth and scale of the corporate. It was an thrilling alternative for me to return in and construct from the bottom up, whereas leveraging the dimensions of the enterprise.”
Schildhouse joined the corporate in a newly created function to develop an analytics and insights technique for an organisation that operates in over 200 nations and territories globally. After proving her success on this function, she assumed her present place in June 2025, the place the breadth of duties elevated to incorporate oversight for knowledge and synthetic intelligence (AI).
“I had already been operating a few of these areas, however it made sense for us to convey all the things collectively,” she says.
“You’ll be able to’t construct and scale all of the thrilling, superior analytics options and all the things with AI except you may have knowledge foundations. Many corporations are on this journey. They recognise that gaining worth from all this data-enabled expertise will depend on key components like knowledge technique, knowledge governance, and a sequence of associated matters.”
Supporting development
Schildhouse stories to Colgate-Palmolive’s chief development officer. Her friends embrace executives accountable for digital transformation, provide chain, innovation, analysis and growth, world advertising and marketing, technique and sustainability. She says the organisational construction makes it simpler to tie knowledge to long-term goals.
“The farther away you might be from the enterprise, the tougher it’s to make connections and drive impression,” she says.
“What appealed to me right here was the truth that analytics and insights have been a part of the enterprise and development space of the corporate. I believed that might place me properly to drive worth by way of the work that I’m doing.”
“You’ll be able to’t construct and scale all of the thrilling, superior analytics options and all the things with AI except you may have knowledge foundations. Gaining worth from all this data-enabled expertise will depend on key components like knowledge technique, knowledge governance, and a sequence of associated matters”
Diana Schildhouse, Colgate-Palmolive
Nearly 5 years into her work with the corporate, Schildhouse says it’s been an thrilling and satisfying experience.
“We’ve had plenty of success in what we’ve performed with our analytics and knowledge transformations right here,” she says. “It’s fulfilling to see that my wonderful staff is driving a variety of that success.”
Becoming a member of the corporate in a brand new function meant she had a clean web page for analytics and perception technique. She started by asking the enterprise about its main challenges and exploring the potential of expertise to assist clear up these issues. As a part of her efforts, she tracked and traced efficiency to make sure success.
“That’s one thing I’m obsessive about, as a result of if we are able to’t present the worth and impression we’re getting, then we might be constructing probably the most sensible options and passing them over the fence to the enterprise, but when they don’t truly use them, then we didn’t obtain what we have been attempting to do,” she says.
Whether or not it’s for pricing analytics, income technology, value optimisation, or mental property creation, Schildhouse has developed frameworks that make sure the options her staff creates may be scaled globally to ship worth. She says the overall path of journey for data-led transformation at Colgate-Palmolive is about giving the folks within the enterprise instruments to make higher choices rapidly.
“We wish them to have info at their disposal,” she says. “A number of the issues we’ve constructed internally can compute billions of eventualities. So, it’s not only a matter of adjusting the place groups spend their time. A number of the issues we are able to do now, you couldn’t have accomplished just a few years in the past. Our work is about serving to enterprise groups use knowledge and analytics in predictive, diagnostic after which prescriptive methods to make quicker, extra knowledgeable choices.”
Embracing AI
Schildhouse’s staff conceptualises, builds, deploys and embeds AI-enabled options, together with machine studying fashions and predictive and prescriptive analytics, throughout Colgate-Palmolive globally. One instance consists of income development administration (RGM) analytics, which covers key issues akin to pricing and commerce promotions.
She says RGM was recognized as one of many areas the place her staff may have the most important impression when she joined the corporate. They developed an in-house diagnostic and predictive software that helped employees on the bottom perceive eventualities and make quicker pricing choices. That software was scaled globally. The staff additionally tracked utilization to make sure the expertise was efficient.
The staff used successes in RGM as a platform for developments in different areas. Schildhouse refers to promotion and calendar optimisation expertise, which enterprise customers instructed was an space that would profit from higher analytics. They piloted, examined and refined this software and at the moment are pushing it out globally to spice up pricing and promotions evaluation.
Schildhouse’s staff can also be exploring generative AI (GenAI) in product innovation. Guided by a business-first method, her staff assessed potential technological options. They mapped out how the corporate’s entrepreneurs create and take a look at new product ideas, and regarded how AI might be deployed to make that course of quicker, simpler and simpler.
Together with expertise accomplice Market Logic, the info staff created an insights hub. Entrepreneurs can use pure language to question knowledge and obtain on the spot insights from the hub.
“That was step one that helped us perceive unmet shopper wants,” she says.
As a second stage, they developed a software to assist assist the creation of product ideas that match these shopper wants. As a part of an innovation funnel, Schildhouse says entrepreneurs can take a look at their concepts quickly in a digital twin. Developed in-house, the dual permits professionals to check their ideas cost-effectively for particular demographic teams.
“This multi-stage method has been certainly one of our most profitable functions of GenAI to an essential enterprise space,” she says. “It’s about making certain there’s a human within the loop and serving to our innovation groups get to quicker insights and to develop many extra idea concepts.”
Establishing priorities
Schildhouse says certainly one of her staff’s principal priorities is to innovate in an space generally known as omni-demand technology, which she explains is an method that helps the corporate meet its customers with the merchandise they want. This work will incorporate progress in key areas, akin to RGM, plus media, advertising and marketing and e-commerce analytics.
“We’ve some thrilling issues deliberate there,” she says, referring to her staff’s goals. “Then I might simply positively say AI – so, continued experimentation, and transferring to scale on lots of the issues that we have already piloted inside that space.”
Schildhouse says her staff considers AI initiatives by way of a framework that explores each horizontal and vertical components. The horizontal components are the underpinning instruments and foundations that permit the corporate to scale its profitable AI initiatives globally and successfully. The vertical components, in the meantime, are the corporate’s precedence areas for GenAI.
“Our plans for the following couple of years are very carefully tied to that framework, however innovation all the time begins with our technique – that’s key in serving to us know the place to focus,” she says.
Over the following 24 months, her inside staff will proceed to deal with the info technique and governance foundations that she says are essential to scaling analytics and AI initiatives.
“We’ll be placing much more deal with knowledge transformation, and we’ve already made actually nice strides in that space, in addition to constructing and launching knowledge merchandise which might be reusable and ruled. We’ll even be taking a look at AI and what’s the following technology for us,” she says, together with growing data-enabled companies for the corporate’s clients.
“There’s all the time a portion of what we’re doing that’s centered on exploring these edge circumstances of what might be the following most impactful space for the corporate. We wish to create merchandise that delight clients, meet their wants and supply the advantages that they’re in search of.”
Studying classes
Schildhouse feels optimistic when she considers the way forward for the info chief function. There’s no doubting, she says, that info and perception proceed to be more and more essential for contemporary corporations. Nonetheless, she reasserts that knowledge leaders should guarantee their AI and analytics initiatives are constructed on sturdy foundations.
In a world the place corporations wish to get precise, tangible worth from all their analytics and AI options, in case your knowledge is just not in the precise place and it’s not organised, and also you don’t have the precise datasets, that slows down the entire course of Diana Schildhouse, Colgate-Palmolive
“In a world the place corporations wish to get precise, tangible worth from all their analytics and AI options, in case your knowledge is just not in the precise place and it’s not organised, and also you don’t have the precise datasets, that slows down the entire course of,” she says.
“One of many causes we have been in a position to scale the RGM analytics software that we constructed in-house is as a result of, similtaneously we have been creating that, we additionally began engaged on the info foundations.”
Schildhouse says her staff consolidated and harmonised knowledge from 500 sources in a world view for the RGM challenge. Classes discovered on this initiative have helped inform others. But, whatever the challenge, she says one factor stays fixed – knowledge leaders should be guided by enterprise calls for slightly than technological options.
“You need to have a enterprise lens,” she says. “Knowledge leaders must convey that focus and perceive how the work of their staff interprets to one thing significant for his or her organisation and their business. That consciousness is so key within the function, and that’s the place you see the extra profitable knowledge leaders after I have a look at a few of my friends.”
