Chris Daniel is a leader at the intersection of Retail, Consumer, and Technology. Since 2004, Chris has been focused on helping his clients solve their business challenges using technology. He has led industry go-to-market transformation initiatives as a Managing Director at Protiviti, a Robert Half company, and Maven Wave, an Atos company. He founded and grew a technology startup into an executive-level digital transformation consultancy. He is also a strong advocate for developing relationships and mutually beneficial go-to-market strategies with strategic partnerships, including Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure.
Clients turn to Chris and his team to solve complex, challenging business problems. His talented team of professionals engage directly with clients on strategic transformational agendas that include digital transformation, customer experience, data analytics, AI, cloud computing, edge computing, digital workplace, service desk, business agility & cost optimization.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with Digital First Magazine, Chris shared his professional trajectory, insights on the three major trends in the retail and consumer industry, the secret sauce behind his success, personal hobbies and interests, his favorite quote, future plans, words of wisdom, and much more. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.
Hi Chris. Please tell us about your background and areas of expertise.
I started my career in management consulting with Ernst & Young working in E&Y’s Advanced Development Center in Chicago focusing on solving our client’s business problems by bringing the client and our team together in our facility to design and deliver a collaborative solution.
After over a decade of delivering value to clients across industries, I decided to transition to a corporate role taking a program leadership position with CNA Insurance. There I led the transformation of CNA’s business from a traditional model to a strategic outsourced model. As a leader within the organization, I was asked to head up one of four strategic programs to completely transform how CNA performs their underwriting business. This program was a foundational imperative in achieving CNA’s strategy. In this role, I led the program’s technology transformation, managing a team of 200+ team members, to deliver a brand new operating model, including new roles and processes built on top of the Guidewire platform.
During my tenure at CNA, I became intrigued with the intersection of retail, consumer, and technology. My initial exposure to the challenges in this industry was with ‘mom and pop’ businesses in my local community in downtown Chicago. I created a business, Red Stapler Hosting, that offered small retail businesses digital offerings and services, including websites, email marketing, branding, and application development.
As my interests in Retail and Consumer continued to grow, I decided to leave CNA and pursue a transformational role at NielsenIQ in their Global Buy business. I played an executive Product Owner role for NielsenIQ’s new flagship product – Answers On DemandTM. This platform offered a more modern, web-based, cloud-centric way to deliver Nielsen’s data. I was honored to have the opportunity to build a global team of over 200 people responsible for customer engagement, client success, product development, and platform deployment. I met with all of the Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 Retail and Consumer companies and learned more about their business and technical challenges.
One of my career bucket list items was to be full time self-employed. Hence, I decided to go ‘all-in’ on my work with Red Stapler Hosting and rebranded and restructured the company as CPG Cloud Partners to provide advisory services to Retail and Consumer clients. As an independent provider of services, I quickly learned the value of developing strong, collaborative partnerships. I worked closely with a variety of hyperscalers, solution integrators and consulting companies to help in providing resources for my clients to meet their transformation needs.
As I continued my solo career, I received various offers to help technology and retail startups. The retail technology founder of MUBEX, The MUtually Beneficial EXchange, asked me to join him as a co-founder to develop this concept into a product and take it to market. The idea was to offer a new way to perform commerce – one that would reward businesses, customers, and the community every time a purchase was made. In this role, we successfully built the platform and deployed it to our initial set of users. But with every startup comes risk and unfortunately our chief investor suddenly passed away which forced us to exit the business.
I learned a lot from my solo career as an independent consultant and a tech startup founder. I learned that “every second counts” and that having passion and confidence in an idea or a decision can make a real impact.
After an abrupt ending to my solo career, I decided to go back into management consulting – this time with a strong, dedicated focus on helping Retail and Consumer clients solve the most challenging problems, with the support and collaboration of strategic partners. I joined Maven Wave, a cloud-first, digital management consulting firm out of Chicago to lead up their Retail and Consumer practice. We made a strategic, bold decision to focus all of our partnership efforts with Google Cloud. It paid off and as such Maven Wave achieved Google Cloud’s annual Best Solution Integrator award three times over a five-year period. In this role, I built a strong partnership with many team members at Google – as well as other partners. During my tenure, Maven Wave was acquired by Atos, a global service integrator. Atos owned a large share of enterprise data centers and wanted the Maven Wave team to migrate their existing clients from these data centers to the cloud – Google Cloud, as well as Microsoft’s Azure Cloud and Amazon Web Services.
During the Atos integration, I was recruited by Protiviti, a Robert Half company, to launch their Retail and Consumer go-to-market model. I was asked to develop the industry strategy and sales plays and work closely with Protivit’s account teams to customize these sales plays specifically for the client. In this role, I would regularly meet with client CIO, CTO, and senior executives to inform them of Protiviti’s technology capabilities and to help create solutions that will address their challenges. As part of my role, I was also asked to incubate Protiviti’s global Google Cloud alliance and support the growth and maturity of Protiviti’s Enterprise Cloud and AI services.
What do you love the most about your current role?
A client once asked me, ”Chris, what brings you joy in your professional career?”. I quickly answered, ”Solving complex retail and consumer challenges”.
In my role, I get to do this every day. I get to hear about industry problems and challenges and provide advice, guidance, and services to overcome these challenges. I get to build relationships with clients and partners to use cross functional expertise to innovate on new solutions. I get to support growth and innovation. I am humbled to be able to have this exposure and honored to be trusted with sharing my knowledge and expertise.
What are the three major trends you foresee in your industry in the next 12 months?
When we talk about the Retail and Consumer industry, there are various views and subsegments. I define Retail and Consumer as any product or service a company creates to be purchased by an end customer. This applies to the more traditional Consumer Good Product companies like Procter & Gamble, Pepsi, or Tyson Foods as well as the Hospitality and Travel companies like Marriott, Hard Rock Casino, or Airbnb. This also applies to more traditional Retail companies like Kroger, Home Depot, The Gap, as well as more modern retailers like Amazon.com and Rakuten, and wholesalers and big box retailers like Walmart and Costco. I also believe that Food & Restaurants are part of Retail and Consumer, including the more traditional chains like, Lettuce Entertain You and Cheesecake Factory, as well as the more common quick service restaurants like McDonald’s.
With that being said, advice to my Retail and Consumer clients focus on the following three trends:
- Brand Loyalty
- Customer Experience
- Innovation
The Retail and Consumer industry is riddled with many challenges from labor shortages, to frequently changing customer demands, to emerging technology advancements, to M&A. Consumers tend to switch quickly, on brand, product, and channels. Consumers are driving the demand and the channel experience. New business models, like Buy Online Pickup in Store (BOPIS) and Popup Stores are becoming the current norm and large enterprises are struggling to keep up. A quick example is the rising consumer demand to get lunch from a local restaurant delivered to their home office, or having a few products available for store pickup within a few hours, or buying/selling a car via an app from the comfort of the consumer’s couch. Customers are less focused on brand and more focused on value and customer experience.
Hence, clients in the Retail and Consumer industry have to keep focused on driving value and specialization to remain competitive with their brand. They need to be passionate about observing, learning, and constantly evolving their customer’s experiences to be frictionless and aligned with their customer’s preferences. Lastly, they need to breed a culture of agility and innovation – one that constantly asks ‘how can we do that differently or better to meet our customer’s needs?’. The emergence of Cloud and Artificial Intelligence in the market can support these challenges. Cloud and AI is just a capability, but it is what we do with this capability across these three themes that will differentiate companies in this industry.
What has been your most career-defining moment that you are proud of?
I think of my career as a journey, and it is about the people that I have met and developed relationships with and shared experiences with that I remember the most. I will occasionally remember one of these experiences and share it.
If I had to pin-point one of these moments that defined my career, I would have to center in on my decision to become self-employed, to work for myself, to ‘hustle’ to make payroll, and how that decision led me to great relationships, awesome partnerships, life and career lessons, and has shaped me into how I conduct myself in my professional life.
Coincidentally, I was recently sharing this story with one of my daughter’s friends who is currently interning at a consulting firm. She found a lot of value and insight in me sharing this story.
If you could have a one-hour meeting with someone famous who is alive, who would it be and why?
Wow…this is a challenging question! My initial thoughts include a list of people like Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (CEO of Alphabet and Google), or Thomas Kurian (CEO of Google Cloud) to learn more about their transformational leadership and their ability to remain resilient to their mission while navigating industry and market challenges. As I think through this a bit more, I am not sure I would be inspired and motivated to have a one-hour meeting with any of these people.
I think what would be more rewarding is to meet a famous leader that had everything going against them – but through strategy, commitment, and focus on a clear mission made a difference in a lot of people’s lives – both in the current moment but also by setting the frameworks for the future. I would want to leave inspired and motivated, and I would want the time to fly by and be left with more questions than answers. I would want the ability to explore a broad range of topics from macro to global to personal development to community to shared interests. I would want to leave with more wisdom than I started with. Hence, if I had the chance to have a one-hour meeting with someone famous, I would pick Barack Obama.
You were recently recognized as one of the Top 25 Consumer and Retail Consultants and Leaders of 2024. Our readers would love to know the secret sauce behind your success.
Ah, thanks for acknowledging this achievement. I appreciate it. First, I am humbled to be included in this amazing group of professionals. There are so many accomplishments within this group. I am proud to be included and look forward to meeting many of these people in the near future.
With respect to ‘secret sauce’ – there really isn’t any. I pride myself on being morally centered on a few key values in everything I do – both personally and professionally. My parents, mentors, and family have helped me understand that treating others as humans and being considerate of their feelings, emotions, and motivations in every interaction is how relationships and friendships are built. It is through these actions that trust is established. Once you obtain the level of trust – business is easy.
I look to leverage my relationships to solve business problems. I will be the first one to ask a competitor to partner to solve a client problem. I have no problem pushing the envelope on business decisions, as long as I perform these actions in a manner that puts my clients and colleagues at the center. If there is any ‘secret sauce’ in my approach – that must be it!
Is there a particular person you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are?
Wow…another great question! There are so many people that I am thankful to have in my life – both professionally and personally.
In my professional career, I would like to recognize someone that went out of their way to help me be successful and achieve my career milestones. Someone that continues to be a close contact, friend, colleague, mentor, and coach. Someone that will make time for me and has made an impact on my career. It is so challenging to narrow this down to one person, but I would like to recognize Kelly Rogan.
Kelly was my first manager when I was at Ernst & Young. She helped mentor me and coach me as I transitioned from college to my professional career. Kelly and I also developed a friendship that has lasted for over 25 years. Kelly recruited me to join her at CNA – to help transform the company. Kelly also has never been shy of providing me with constructive feedback – feedback that is needed to develop and grow. This element of our relationship is probably what I am most grateful for, especially in today’s professional culture where constructive feedback is often avoided. Kelly has had a very successful career, most recently as a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft. She is currently the Chief Operating Officer of Ellucian. We stay in contact today and I am eternally grateful for her career advice.
How do you keep your mind healthy and stay resilient? And how do you motivate your team?
This is an excellent question – glad you asked it. One thing I have found important in my life is to ensure that I focus on my mind, my body, and my family. I try to focus on each of these on a daily basis. For my mind, I like to learn a new skill, challenge myself, listen to others, or listen to podcasts. I like to perform critical thinking exercises and enjoy the occasional yoga class. For my body, I am very active in sports. I used to play soccer and basketball – but a knee injury has limited my ability to continue these passions. I used to coach my kids in baseball and soccer. More recently I have really gotten into the Peloton and tennis. I play tennis at least 3-4 times a week. As for my family – I make time. It might be shuttling kids around or making sure I am present at the dinner table. Listening to my family and participating in their lives is a passion.
What is your favorite quote?
I am not a big ‘quote guy’, but I seem to come back to Dr Suess’s Oh the Places You Will Go quote,
“Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away!…..And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed!….Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So…get on your way!”
It reminds me of my childhood, my high school graduation, my first job out of college, reading to my kids when they were younger, and being resilient in my career.
Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
Honestly, my hope is to continue to do what I do today – helping Retail and Consumer clients solve their most challenging problems via collaborative partnerships. I accept the fact that I am on the “back side” of my career, but there is still a lot to learn and share.
What advice would you give to anyone starting out on their career in your industry?
Listen. Learn. Be Bold.
Clients need help. Listening to their challenges, pain points, stories, and life will help you build relationships and build trust. These are the keys to being successful.
Never stop learning! There is so much out there – especially in this constantly changing Retail and Consumer industry. Learn a technical skill, experience a guest speaker, read a book – whatever your passion, keep focused on it.
Be Bold! One of my greatest learnings during my career is that you need to make decisions and being bold about the decisions you make is so much more important than not making the decision at all. Corporate politics will always get in the way – but if you remain bold and resilient while treating your client as a human – all will work out.