AEP Consulting is a retail-focused consultancy where strategy & operations are grounded in data analytics, customer-centricity and tech innovation.
About
AEP Consulting is a full-service consultancy, with a focus on retail and consumer, where strategy and operations are grounded in data analytics, customer-centricity and tech innovation. Founder and Director, Ashley Powers, partners with established companies and startups on both in-house and project-based engagements. By harnessing the power of market, performance and customer data, she optimizes investments across product, marketing and innovation.
Services
Founder & Director
AEP Consulting is founded by Strategy, Operations & Analytics Consultant, Ashley Powers
Ashley has over a decade of experience in data-driven strategy, operations and analytics, with a focus on customer-centricity and retail innovation. She cultivated a talent for producing unique insights and viewing companies through an analytical lens while covering retail and financial stocks on top ranked equity research teams at Citi. Post-Wall Street, Ashley held positions at Fortune 500 retail companies, including in a high-profile Corporate Strategy group under the CFO at Ralph Lauren, and as the head of the Customer and Marketing Investment Analytics teams at Michael Kors. Her strategic work has included: product and category expansions, managing entries into new geographies, advising executives on emerging technology, sourcing and evaluating retail tech startups, and leveraging browsing and buying behavior to enhance digital platforms. Her more technical work includes utilizing statistical modeling, advanced analytics and experimental design to produce actionable insights and analyses, increase engagement and retention, and optimize investments across company divisions. Additionally, Ashley co-founded and led operations for a VC-backed secondhand kids’ clothing marketplace and helped start a men’s brand ranked number one in its category by Boston Magazine.
Services
Analytics
CUSTOMER & WEB ANALYTICS
Ashley delves into your customer data to give you a deep understanding of who they are, what they want and where they are. She creates comprehensive reports and analyses on site visitor behavior, provides insight into the customer journey, and sets and tracks key web KPIs. By analyzing past and future behavior, she works with you to increase customer engagement, loyalty and lifetime value, and to optimize your product and marketing investments.
MARKETING ANALYTICS
Ashley analyzes digital marketing performance and develops weekly KPIs across SEM, CSE, email, social, and affiliates. Based on performance and merchandise forecasts, she builds marketing budgets, assesses incremental investment opportunities, and optimizes and allocates spend by channel. She provides extensive campaign and seasonal hindsighting to determine returns, identify misses and opportunities, and develop more effective future campaigns.
Strategy & Operations
BUSINESS STRATEGY
Ashley drives practical, data-driven changes by analyzing past and current business activities, translating insights into actionable strategies, and modeling the impact of proposed initiatives. By analyzing market and performance data, she identifies new category, product and geographic expansion opportunities. She models trends, builds business models, creates robust forecasts, sets and tracks KPIs, and measures and optimizes tactics.
OPERATIONS & PROCESS MANAGEMENT
Ashley assesses business models, resource allocation, processes, and logistics to identify opportunities for operational efficiencies in order to increase profitability. She partners with management and divisions across the organization to streamline workflows by developing and implementing new policies and procedures. She manages outside vendors and contractors to ensure quality outputs are delivered and timelines are met.
Digital & Innovation
INNOVATION STRATEGY
Ashley works with management to identify the business’ key challenges and priorities, and source startups that meet those needs, or utilizes design thinking to create new products and experiences. She assesses the financial and cultural risks to adopting new technology, sets clear business objectives, and models expected results. She works with management to get cross-functional buy in, manages the execution of pilots, and measures the impact.
PRODUCT & UI/UX
Ashley leverages web data and market research to identify enhancements to existing digital platforms and create business cases by modeling expected results. She assesses the opportunity for new digital offerings, partners with internal teams to develop concepts, writes tech specs, and produces screen mock-ups. She creates and refines product roadmaps, manages the execution of enhancements and new developments, and analyzes their impact.
