Peter Furness Employment History 1997-2017 Peter Furness Limited:  Director Peter founded Peter Furness Limited in 1997 with a view to developing a niche consultancy specialising in the fields of decision analytics, modelling and data mining. The company provided consulting and training services to clients in a wide range of sectors. 1995-97 American Management Systems:  Senior Principal AMS is an international consulting company which partners with its clients to achieve breakthrough performance through the intelligent application of information technology.  Founded in 1970, the company now employs over 7000 people in more than 40 offices throughout North America and Europe. As Head of AMS Decision Analytics Practice for Financial Industries in Europe, Peter was responsible for the development of customer segmentation and predictive modelling to support clients' marketing, risk and other relationship management activities.  The Decision Analytics Practice pioneered the application of advanced data mining and data warehousing techniques building on an established reputation in the use of more traditional approaches. 1993-95 CACI Limited: Director, Strategic Analysis Group CACI is an international high technology services corporation based in the USA. As Director of the Strategic Analysis Group reporting to the MD, Peter was responsible for spearheading CACI's activities in advanced modelling.  He applied new and traditional mathematical and statistical techniques to marketing, in areas such as retention modelling, database enhancement, behavioural analysis, advertising effectiveness and distribution planning.  In 1993 he led the development of CACI's new family of ACORN geodemographic products. 1991-93 Independent Consultant Mathematician In the period 1989-90 Peter saw some exciting commercial opportunities developing in computing and mathematics for the application of adaptive systems and artificial intelligence.  To pursue these opportunities he decided to leave CACI and set up as an independent consultant. He worked on a number of pioneering projects in sectors such as banking, brewing and marketing services.  As an evangelist for the new techniques through conference presentations and articles, he soon became widely known. 1988-90 CACI Limited: Manager, Strategic Projects This position, which was specially created for Peter, involved the development of a new practice for CACI in the field of marketing systems.  He won the first project to develop and implement a database marketing system for a client, in the banking sector.  CACI's proprietary database marketing system package Market*Master was developed from this project. During this time, Peter was responsible for a number of other strategic projects, in sectors such as financial services, retailing, electricity supply, health services and telecommunications. 1984-88 CACI Limited: Manager, Financial Services Group The Financial Services Group is a profit centre within CACI's Market Analysis Division.  In 1988 the Group comprised sixteen people including marketing and technical consultants, with revenues exceeding £1.1m per annum.  After Peter took over the management of the Group in early 1985 it grew by an average of 40% in revenue and profit terms in each financial year. The Group specialises in the application of geodemographic and consumer market analysis techniques to problems in retail financial services targeting.  It has been particularly successful in assisting clients in the areas of distribution strategy, sales targeting and branch and ATM siting analysis. In the period 1984-88 clients of the Group included major banks, building societies and insurance companies as well as many smaller institutions. 1978-83 Price Waterhouse:  Senior Manager, Management Consultancy Services During his time at Price Waterhouse, Peter had extensive experience of consultancy projects in the financial, energy, publishing, retail and public sectors.  A highlight of this period was a secondment to Oslo in 1982-83 to be responsible for the marketing of PW's consultancy services to the energy sector in Scandinavia.  This covered project management, financial planning and treasury services associated with major North Sea offshore developments. 1974-78 National Coal Board: Manager in the Operational Research Executive Peter worked on a variety of projects at ORE which at that time was the premier operational research unit in the UK.  The projects included logistics modelling, financial planning and simulation systems development.  Between 1976 and 1978 he headed the team providing external consultancy services to a major government department. 1972-74 University of Southampton: Research Fellow After obtaining a PhD from the University of Durham in 1972, Peter won a postdoctoral research fellowship based at the University of Southampton.  There he worked primarily in the field of differential topology and published several papers.  He also teamed up with another researcher to work on the modelling of geomagnetic reversals using techniques from the rapidly developing field of topological dynamical systems theory (some parts of this field are now better known as "chaos theory").