About me

Dear Sir/Madam,

I wish to apply for the position of 'New Business Manager', as advertised on creativepool.co.uk. I am currently working Allianz, a global and multinational insurance organisation, in the position of Customer and Market Insights Officer.

My interest in the area of customer research and proposition development began when I pursuing my Bachelor of Science in Product Design. It was then that I learned both quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover customer insight and used this as the basis for any new product development work. I continued this approach when I entered the workforce as a design researcher with Dolmen Industrial Design and Innovation Consultancy in Dublin and I quickly progressed to Junior Innovation Consultant. During my time there, I worked with a number of clients across a range of industries, getting involved at various points of their new product development processes. My most notable achievement was the coordination of the 'Innovation Connections Programme', where I acted as project manager, as well as getting involved at a task level. The aim of the innovations programme was to identify unmet customer needs in the airport security market, and help SMEs break into this market.

I returned to college to pursue a Masters degree. Following this, I briefly worked at a Market Analyst for Cpl Integrated Services before I came to the UK to take up my role with Allianz. In Cpl, I reported directly to the Strategy Manager, helping to identify new commercialisation opportunities and work out cross divisional plans related to marketing and operations.

I took up a fixed term contract with Allianz in February 2012 and this will draw to an end shortly. My responsibility as Customer and Market Insights Officer is to establish the voice of the customer and communicate it to the rest of the business, ensuring that the customer is at the heart of business decisions. I have particularly enjoyed taking the lead on a global scale project where, through quantitative research, I identified the motivations of employees to purchase/promote Allianz products, and developed a series of new propositions, the first of which will be launched in the coming weeks. This involved liaising with key individuals from six different Allianz operating entities and reporting insights to key stakeholders across the business. The insight which I uncovered has been the driving force behind changes that have since been made in the business and a programme of work has been established to ensure that the needs of employees as customers are met.

I hope you consider me suitable for interview. I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully,

Claire Shanahan

Awards

MSc in Business Management (1st class honours), BSc in Product Design (1st class honours)