Nigel Marriott

Nigel Marriott is an independent consulting statistician working with Thoughtcrew.  He has over 16 years’ experience of using statistical thinking and methods to solve all kinds of business challenges around the world.  The breadth of Nigel’s experience is highly unusual in any profession but particularly for a statistician, who tend to specialise in particular fields. 

He has worked with research, purchasing, finance, sales, trading desks, marketing, product design, quality, engineering, manufacturing, IT and science laboratories, so that Nigel is fluent in many varieties of technical English. 

Nigel defines how he helps organisations into three broad areas.

Ø      Consulting - There are two kinds of quantitative challenges that business face; maximising the insights from all the data that a business possesses and then making good decisions based on these insights and data.  Regardless of the problem, Nigel will always first seek to understand the larger business context that the technical issue fits into.  His goal is always to generate insights and develop decision making tools that can be understood and used by a wide audience and will endure in the organisation long after he is gone. 

Ø      Training - Nigel has 9 years experience of designing and delivering economics, statistics & IT training courses for people working within Marketing, Sales, Purchasing, Finance, R&D, Science & Manufacturing roles in the UK , Europe, China , Thailand and Australia .  Whilst working for Mars Inc, his courses were seen as the role model for training courses within the company globally. Feedback from course participants consistently notes his ability to make statistics exciting and relevant to their jobs.  At the same time his gift for keeping things simple and easy to understand is much appreciated by audiences whose first language was not English or who have been fearful of anything involving maths. 

Nigel doing what he does best, making statistics exciting and simple to understand

Ø      Data Management - Anybody who has used or designed business information systems will know the problem.  The users have a clear idea of what the system should be capable of but lack the skills to design such a system.  The designers have the IT skills needed but not the knowledge and experience to understand user requirements.  This is where Nigel’s ability to be able to talk and understand both audiences is especially valuable and in many instances, he is able to design and develop the system himself.

Nigel is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and was accredited by the society as a Chartered Statistician in 2003.  This is an assurance that he has significant practical experience in addition to professional qualifications.  He achieved his MSc in Applied Statistics at Birkbeck College , London in 1997 where his main project presentation is still regarded as “the gold standard that all students should aspire to” by the Statistics department.

Before taking the plunge as an independent consultant in 2006, Nigel worked for 3 organisations, ED&F Man Ltd, Mars Inc and Sense.

1991-1997:      Cocoa Market Analyst for ED&F Man Ltd

As the only statistician in a research team of 5 for one of the largest commodity brokers in the world, Nigel found his skills in demand in many areas.  During an exciting 5 years, his work included forecasting cocoa crops and prices, designing trading strategies for the futures market, developing sampling plans to measure cocoa bean quality and working out how to measure and monitor the company financial risk.

1997-1999:      Commodity Economist for Mars Inc. 

Here Nigel applied what he had learnt at ED&F Man Ltd to support a global team of 6 commodity buyers with research & forecasts of supply, demand, stocks and prices that enabled them to make buying decisions.  This was a key role in a high profile team that had a significant impact on Mars’ Inc bottom line.

1999-2003:      Senior Snackfood Market Analyst for Mars UK . 

As the senior analyst of a 7 strong team, Nigel worked with the UK sales, marketing and finance teams.  His prime role was to identify the key drivers of snackfood sales and to evaluate the effectiveness of Mars’ sales and marketing levers.  He also made the lead forecasts on which all business plans were made.  Lastly he was the only analyst qualified to source, evaluate & validate new sources of market data that could be incorporated into Mars’ business information systems, many of which he designed and developed himself.

2003-2006:      Senior R&D Statistician for Mars Europe . 

In this role, Nigel provided statistical consulting and training services to the European R&D division of 800 people.  The division’s responsibilities included food safety, quality management, process improvement and product design all of which required significant statistical input.

2000-today:    Trustee of Sense UK , the largest deafblind charity in the world. 

Nigel’s strategic thinking and communication skills have been valued by the board of this organisation with a £70mn turnover which provides services, support and information to over 5,000 beneficiaries in the UK .  He has been an active member of the governance, finance and strategy steering committees and led the first ever group appraisal the trustee board.  In 2007, he chaired the search committee for a new Chairman of the charity.

2006-today:    Independent Consultant, Bath . 

Nigel started life as an independent consultant with a bang by delivering statistical training for over 50 people in Thailand .  Since then, he has worked with a wide variety of clients in UK , USA , China and the Netherlands providing consulting, training and data management services.