Natural Insight announces hire of Nigel Cruttenden as its U.K. business development manager

Natural Insight has  announced the hire of Nigel Cruttenden, a retail field marketing expert, as its business development manager in the U.K. In this role, Cruttenden spearheads the company’s strategic expansion initiatives and cultivates new business and partnership opportunities to further increase its brand recognition and market share in the U.K. market. The move is part of Natural Insight’s expanded presence into the U.K. and European markets.

With more than 20 years of experience in the retail industry, Cruttenden holds extensive experience in managing large scale data and insight projects for various retail and consumer packaged goods clients around the world. He began his career working for Tesco at the store level, and then moved to FDS Field Marketing, the U.K.’s largest independent field marketing agency, where he worked as a member of senior management and managed several of the agency’s largest accounts, including Danone, Procter & Gamble and Sky TV, among other global brands. In 2012, Cruttenden moved to SMR7, a world leader in retail merchandising software, where he served in a global role developing client relationships and new business opportunities. He also previously served as a board director for the World Alliance For Retail Excellence & Standards, a part of the Shop! Environments Association, which provides research, education and networking to more than 1,400 member companies and affiliates globally, from 2016 to 2018.

Natural Insight’s fully integrated mobile and cloud-based platform empowers all players in the retail ecosystem to improve in-store experience, grow sales, increase ROI of distributed workforce, and capture and report on field data to drive continuous improvement. In use in more than 20 countries around the world, Natural Insight assists managers and workers alike in managing distributed workforces, assigning and managing work, and verifying project completion and compliance. Natural Insight first began working with companies in the U.K. in 2014. Through Natural Insight’s platform, nearly 150,000 work assignments have been successfully managed by its clients in the U.K., including more than 500,000 photos uploaded from more than 10,000 locations.

“To thrive in today’s competitive retail environment, retail execution platforms like Natural Insight are increasingly critical to traditional retailers for effectively managing their workforce and providing customers with the best experience possible,” said Stefan Midford, president and CEO of Natural Insight. “This trend in retail is happening worldwide and it continues to accelerate. This is why we are sharpening our focus across the U.K. and European markets, and are excited to welcome Nigel, who brings a wealth of retail industry expertise and a broad knowledge for how to solve intricate field marketing operational challenges.”

Midford also notes that the growth in traditional retail is due to online retailers opening physical stores to support their brands. He cites online companies like The White Company, which has grown from its first store on Symons Street in London in 2000 to now having 59 locations across the U.K., as the kind of rapid growth that requires improved execution and access to tools for providing an excellent in-store experience, both of which are cornerstones of the Natural Insight platform.

Since launching in 2003, Natural Insight’s platform has enabled brands to collect more than one billion data points to manage retail conditions, successfully managed millions of workforce assignments at more than 180,000 locations worldwide, and uploaded more than one million photos to visually verify completed work. In 2017, over 80,000 workers across the retail ecosystem earned more than $220 million by completing work assignments managed in the Natural Insight platform.