We recently caught up with Peter Thomas, one of our more prolific bloggers on SmartData Collective. Peter is a BI specialist and cultural transformation expert based in London. Until a few months ago, he was with The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies, where he spent many years in different roles, the last couple as vice president of management information for the International Division, which included subsidiaries in Asia Pacific, Canada, Europe and Latin America.
Peter holds an MSc. in pure mathematics from The University of London and a BSc. in Mathematics from Imperial College, London. He believes BI has been at the heart of every role he has held, with his serious involvement with BI beginning in 2000, and he has blogged many times on the subject.
In this interview he talks about “the four pillars of business intelligence,” the relationship between the business and IT, and how to tell when a BI project is going wrong. Looking to the future and changes in the world of BI, he’s especially intrigued by how many businesses are “incredibly interested in tracking what happens when they launch a product.”
Listen now:
![Big Data in Retail Industry [INFOGRAPHIC]](https://www.smartdatacollective.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/big-data-retail-industry-infographic-330x220.jpg)
