Brian Ruwadi

About Brian

Brian is the global leader of Periscope by McKinsey, a set of marketing and sales advanced analytics and software solutions. In addition to working with clients on advanced-analytic transformations, he has supported top companies as they pursue large-scale commercial and operational performance transformations.

Working across a range of retail and consumer-goods categories, Brian has advised executives in the apparel, grocery, food-service, and department-store sectors. To achieve notable improvements in performance, he oversees major transformation programs, addressing areas such as pricing, promotions, supply-chain efficiency, marketing and operational excellence, capability building, and performance management. In all cases, the transformation serves the dual goals of reducing complexity and uncovering ways to drive profitability.

Examples of Brian’s recent client work include the following:

• leading a major grocer’s business-wide performance-transformation program, capturing more than $1 billion in margin improvement
• redesigning a multicategory retailer’s supply chain, producing significant reductions in markdowns and inventory while improving availability
• driving a major grocer’s multiyear operational-improvement effort, saving costs while improving product freshness
• running a big data commercial transformation at a leading grocer to drive better merchandizing and marketing decisions based on customer insights
• leading a large North American retailer’s multiyear commercial-improvement program, transforming category planning, assortment planning, vendor negotiations, pricing, promotions, and direct marketing
• guiding a food-service and consumer-goods manufacturer’s end-to-end business transformation, including building an improvement function to reduce complexity and find sources of value

Before joining McKinsey, Brian led the development of a regional bank’s personalized-marketing program for high-value customers, during which he built a best-practice approach and then brought the people within the organization along on the journey to apply it.