Susan Walsh, also known as **The Classification Guru**, is a globally recognised expert in data cleaning, classification, supplier normalisation and AI-ready data. As Founder and Managing Director of **The Classification Guru Ltd**, Susan and her team have helped more than 100 organisations worldwide clean, classify, enrich and normalise their data, making it more **Consistent, Organised, Accurate and Trustworthy** using her COAT framework. With more than 14 years of experience working with data, Susan specialises in turning messy, inconsistent information into clean, structured and usable data that organisations can actually trust. Her expertise spans spend data classification, supplier normalisation, taxonomy development, data quality and preparing data for analytics and AI. In 2024, Susan launched **Samification™**, a self-service supplier normalisation platform designed to help organisations quickly identify and standardise supplier name variations, creating cleaner and more consistent supplier data. Before entering the world of data, Susan built a successful career in sales and ran her own clothing boutique. That commercial background has shaped her practical approach to data: she understands that clean data isn't the end goal. It's what organisations can **do with it** that matters. Susan is the author of **Between the Spreadsheets: Classifying and Fixing Dirty Data** and **Optimizing Sales & Marketing Data**, and has created online courses for Pluralsight, O'Reilly and the Analytics Institute. She is also a **LinkedIn Learning instructor**, sharing practical approaches to data cleaning, data quality and AI-ready data. Her TEDx talk, **Say NO to NO**, tells her personal story of resilience and determination. Susan is also a sought-after global speaker, regularly speaking at data, procurement, sales, marketing and AI events about data quality, supplier management, AI readiness and the very real business impact of dirty data. Her contribution to the data industry has been recognised through accolades including the **DataIQ100** and DataIQ Data Champion. But at the heart of Susan's work is a simple belief: organisations cannot expect great analytics, automation or AI from data they don't trust. Her **COAT framework – Consistent, Organised, Accurate and Trustworthy –** provides a practical way for organisations to assess and improve their data quality, helping them save time, reduce costs, improve decision-making and get more value from the data they already have. Whether you're tackling dirty supplier data, preparing for an ERP or CRM implementation, improving sales and marketing data, or getting your organisation ready for AI, Susan helps turn messy data into something your business can actually use and trust.