Alan O’Neill

About Alan O’Neill

Alan ONeill is an author, trainer, conference speaker and international change consultant. While businesses face increasing pace of change, complexity and intense competition, Alan brings out the fundamental truths that lie at the heart of every successful organisation. As a speaker he is energetic, passionate and engaging. He uses his extensive business experience to illuminate his talks with anecdotes and examples. Alan has worked with blue-chip organisations across the spectrum of industry, covering Financial Services, FMCG, Hospitality, Industrial, IT, Motor, Retail, Telcos, Tourism, Travel and others. With more than 30 years of front line board level experience, he has a lot of no-nonsense expertise in three important areas – Customer Service, Culture, and Change. Alan knows what it takes to drive change right throughout a business.. For example, up to 2004, the Selfridges department store was a sleeping giant, performing way below its potential. Alan facilitated a significant culture change project which dramatically improved its performance and as a result they achieved the official title of Best Department Store in the World, and it is one of the most profitable department stores in the world. After 20 years, Alan continues to work with Selfridges Group.

His retail and hospitality experience ranges from food to fashion, luxury to mass market, in Europe, UK, Russia, the Middle East and Far East. His knowledge is not confined to retail. His B2B experience includes international giants like Intel, Lavazza, Lufthansa, Moet Hennessy, Nissan, Pepsi, St Gobain, Symantec, Vodafone, and Xerox, where he has brought discipline, rigour and common sense to change projects.

Alan has a reputation for making the complex simple, for being down-to-earth and practical with a commercial focus that brings everything back to the customer. He always remains the strong voice of the customer. Whether the issues are about Change, Vision, Strategy or Structure, High Performance Culture, Leadership or Customer Service – Alan has stories, models and real-life case studies that will adapt.

It is this unrivalled business acumen that has seen Alan facilitate and speak at conferences in several countries and conduct master-classes with C-level executives. He asks hard and uncomfortable questions, e.g. How do you renew culture and get it ready for emerging global challenges? How do you overcome cynicism and resistance to change? How do you ensure accountability and overcome complacency? How do you build a customer-service culture to drive sales? Alan publishes a weekly series of articles for the Sunday Independent, Irelands leading business newspaper, analysing the challenges faced by enterprises across all business sectors. In 2018 he will publish his first book Think Customer.