HOW TECH ENABLES BUSINESS GROWTH AND BETTER LIVES

Anthony Allcock, Top 100 CIO

Anthony Allcock became one of the UK’s Top 100 CIOs in 2023, with over 25 years’  experience in business transformation and IT with Rolls Royce, British Airways, and Ingeus. In this episode we discuss how to successfully transform businesses for growth, and how to put your people values at the heart of the strategy.

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Transcription
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Dom: Hello and welcome to the F5 Podcast.

I'm your host, Dom Wetherall.

The F5 Podcast is brought to you by Intercity.

Today, I'm extremely privileged to be joined by Anthony Allcock.

Anthony is one of the UK's top 100 CIOs with over 25 years experience in business transformation and IT with the likes of Rolls Royce, British Airways and now with Ingeus.

Welcome to the podcast.

Anthony: Thank you, Dom.

Good to meet you.

Dom: Thank you very much for joining us.

Anthony, we'd love to hear a little bit about your career and your journey.

Anthony: Yeah, so as you said, over 25 years of experience really on the cusp of business transformation, IT transformation and digital enablement.

So I started my career at Rolls Royce.

So worked up from the factory floor, so supporting the factory floor when I first joined, doing various different roles within the company.

So a fantastic company to work for in terms of the ability to grow and try different things and learn new skills, different roles.

Worked through a number of different roles within Rolls Royce, went on to kind of take more of a focus around IT.

So I was a guy in the corner on the shop floor that wasn't scared of the green PC in the corner.

Kind of had a natural draw towards IT and technology from quite early on in my career.

And then went on to do some fantastic projects around e-commerce.

So setting up an aftermarket website and sales revenue for Rolls Royce.

Then went on to do various SAP implementations and focus a bit more on transformation and leading some of the businesses and the IT strategy.

So great company at Rolls Royce, fantastic opportunities there.

Then went to British Airways.

So I was a CIO at British Airways, which was again, fantastic company, huge opportunity to learn, to develop and be part of a British icon in terms of brand and service.

Interesting enough, British Airways had joined two weeks before COVID hit.

So you could argue an unusual career move.

Dom: What an experience.

Anthony: What an experience I had there.

And then moved on to work for Ingeus, which is a people services organisation, very focused on enabling people, enabling better lives, helping the people in society and people around the world that need the most help.

So part of a larger group called APM, which is based out of Australia.

So we've got a footprint, operational footprint around 15,000 of us globally around the world, working out of the US, Canada, and my focus is predominantly in UK and Europe.

Dom: Thanks, Anthony.

Just touching on that British Airways experience, how did the role switch or diversify based on the fact that we just hit the pandemic?

Anthony: Sure, a lot.

So I'd say BA was probably one of the worst hit airlines in the world at the time of the pandemic.

So if you work in Australia or the US, you can still do domestic flying.

So still flying people around.

But not many people want to fly up to Edinburgh and back in the day.

And I'm not sure there's the right margin in that to do that either.

So the role pivoted only slightly.

There's still a lot of focus around investment, enablement, kind of creating a digital purpose for the company.

But obviously, a lot of focus then on how do we just keep the business alive and go through the pandemic.

And if you go to the time, the government weren't very clear what was going to happen.

So there was a bit of crystal ball moments for us in terms of what do we need to do?

How do we need to drive the business forward to keep it alive?

Dom: I'm sure a very challenging period.

Anthony: And yeah, challenging and rewarding.

As I said, huge opportunity to learn new things outside of IT, not just within IT.

And again, a fantastic company that came out the back of that and has continued to grow.

Dom: So Anthony, during your career, how has technology played a role in driving business growth whilst also enhancing the human and the customer or the user experience?

Anthony: I think it's probably fair to say that there's not many businesses that exist now without technology as a backbone in the platform.

And for me, just over the last 25 years, seeing the flip from something that was heavily paper-based and very kind of relationship-based in terms of how to get work done.

I remember the days when faxes would be sent or you'd get communications that would come out in a folder that would move from office to office.

And now technology underpins everything that we do.

It's the way we communicate, it's where we operate, it's where we engage.

It's the way that we think about customer service now, customer experience.

It's the way that we think about how we give our employees better user experience.

So rather than big clunky ELP systems of the past, something that's much more kind of user-centric, much more akin to how you use your iPhone.

And then coming on to iPhones, the world is driven by technology and data.

So there's not many people out there that won't get onto their day-to-day lives without using a computer or a phone of any sort.

So for me, the shift has been much more around rather than just something functionally operating in the background.

It's actually now the forefront of every decision a business makes.

So the flip of boardroom conversations to employee conversations to meeting customer expectations, that's usually the first questions that you start driving when you get engaged in a big business transformation program.

Dom: Obviously, as you mentioned, such a huge enabler fundamental to processes and performance, but comes with risk as well.

Anthony: Sure.

Yeah.

With any technology, there's the cyber element of how do we protect the data that's core, either IP or customer data that we're processing.

So keeping that safe and secure is also number one priority.

And I'd say that's another big shift that's happened in the digital space.

So whereas before it was much about how do we enable processes?

How do we automate process?

How do we digitize some of our processes?

To now, that's almost a given.

It's the utility of, well, we just need that to operate.

Now it's about protecting and doing smart things with data.

Dom: We've mentioned your successful career as a CIO.

What are the top 100 UK CIOs?

Anthony: Look, it's a fantastic program and a great accolade to be part of and recognised within the top 100 CIOs for the last couple of years.

A lot of it has been around how we've used technology, how we've designed a strategy or a technology backbone to deliver business value.

So not just to the business itself in terms of P&L profit or cost reduction, but also how we enable technology to be more inclusive.

So that's for society, particularly with the business at the moment, helping people that need support.

How do we make technology engaging?

How do we deliver a better service and a better process to them?

And equally, how do we deliver some of that capability back to our own employees?

So a lot of focus around diversity.

So both within the talent that we bring into the organization, how do we develop that?

How do we enable that?

How do we reskill people for the technology of the future?

But also how do we invest in bringing to life the technology to deliver better services, to deliver better employee experience, to ensure that what we're doing is cost effective for the business?

Dom: So Ingeus are concerned with enabling better lives, which is a fantastic mission and vision.

How does your team accomplish this and what role does tech play?

Anthony: So at the heart of what we're trying to do, which is, as you say, to enable better lives, it's a very purpose driven organization.

So trying to help people that need the most help in society.

So that's either rehabilitation or health services or employability services, get people back into work, get people back into society and help them.

So with that, you know, echoing and amplifying that mission to the organization is really important.

So we understand from a technology perspective that if you work on the service desk or if you work part of the cyber team, what are you ultimately here to do?

And I found the best engagement with people is connecting to the company purpose.

If people understand the strategies, the vision, the mission, things that are usually talked about in the boardroom, and people can connect with that on their day to day jobs, actually you come to work and it's more worthwhile.

So you know, every time, you know, you might have a help desk call, you know, the people that you're trying to help, ultimately, there's somebody at the end of that call.

In terms of how we're delivering a service, how we're going to change and transform somebody's life.

Dom: How do you take a company on that journey?

You know, that mission that that ethos, whatever you're trying to achieve, how do you get a team to to back that and follow you?

So a couple of things in my career.

Anthony: I mean, look, Ingeus is fantastic.

I would say that culture, that sense of purpose is united.

And without the throughout the organisation.

And in other companies that I've worked in, you know, a pivot of a strategy, a pivot of, you know, the purpose, the mission is much harder to embed.

So again, you know, how do you connect the boardroom discussions about this is the direction we want to take the company and cascade it through the organization.

Really clear communication, and authentic communication, for me is really important.

So everyone can read off a PowerPoint slide.

But how do you turn that into a story?

How do you turn that to something somebody can connect with?

Like, I've been part of teams where that's been really successful and parts of teams where that's been really difficult to do.

And within hearts and minds is fundamentally, you know, what we need to do as technology leaders anyway, whether it's hearts and minds of the business, the board, our stakeholders, our consumers, our customers or our employees.

Dom: Are there any strategies or tactics that you've deployed to make sure that that communication is successful?

Anthony: Yeah, I think over my career, the ability to listen, I can hear some colleagues and some of the leadership team in the past that have said, you know, great, we can hear you transmit, but what are you doing to listen?

For me, it's been a tactic that's worked so far.

It might be very hip.

Dom: Thanks Anthony.

Is there a moment in your career journey where you had to navigate a significant technical challenge whilst keeping people in mind?

Anthony: Sure.

Many, many, but I'll give one that some people will probably smile at.

So the transition from Blackberry, if you can remember Blackberry, to yeah, unfortunately, some of our executive leadership team had around the use of Blackberry because they liked the keypad on the Blackberry and it was a way of doing business.

And that was their first kind of engagement really into corporate, you know, mobile technology.

And the shift to either a different smartphone and there's many out there.

That was really difficult.

Other brands are available from the one that's on the tip of my tongue.

But yeah, I mean, look, a really simple thing that said, you know, you needed to make a technology change.

There was redundant technology.

There was a level of risk carried around some of those devices and for some of the work we were doing on them.

So helping people understand why we needed to make the change.

You know, at the time it was kind of signaling that the Blackberry was probably not going to last the test of time, but hadn't declared anything.

So trying to make a technology change when people don't see the need for that.

You know, what's the burning platform?

What are we actually trying to do here other than just cause a daily life irritation for me because I've got a change of technology.

And look, you can cascade that out to replacement of ERP systems, CRM systems, HR systems, you know, big monolithic enterprise IT systems.

People like what they're used to.

People inherently don't like change and therefore, unless they see some value of that change, e.g. what's in it for them or, you know, it's going to improve something in their daily lives.

It's a really tough message to get across that we're just going to flip you onto something you're not used to.

Dom: With the rapid pace of technology advancements, how do businesses evolve trends while also maintaining the focus on the people that work with the company and also the people they support?

Anthony: Great question.

I guess that brings us onto AI, doesn't it?

Artificial intelligence, you know, that's the new, whether people think it's hype or not, or it's just a new form of automation.

Dom: The buzzword of 24, yeah, for sure.

Anthony: You know, it's here and now, isn't it?

It's something I've not seen before.

The interest at a board level, through executive level, through to employee level, through to, you know, government and consumers, you know, everybody's got an interest.

There's a common language, whether everyone has the same understanding of AI, it might be slightly different, but a common language, it brings it together.

So I've not seen that before.

So I guess, you know, what we're seeing now is the demand is much greater that comes out of all of those different stakeholders in terms of wanting to delve into, you know, how do we exploit AI?

How do we use AI to improve our business or improve our day-to-day lives?

And the reality is there's not that many experts out there.

So, you know, more people I talk to, you know, large companies, small companies, everybody's on the journey.

Dom: Do you believe that AI is going to be that next thing that's going to really transform business, how they operate, you know, efficiency, scalability?

Anthony: Look, I think the dawn of AI is inevitable.

It's coming, it's coming at such a fast pace and a lot of conversations I get in with different leaders outside of the organisation and in the organisation is actually when you really unpick what people are looking to do, they're looking to automate a lot of activities and use a level of intelligence to be able to guide users or consumers through it through a process.

I think, you know, the AI technology that's available has made some of that more accessible than perhaps having to build something yourself, which is usually the blocker when you end up having to build a lot of technology yourself when it becomes commodity and it's more available, you can do smarter things quicker.

It's kind of my view on it.

Putting AI into an organisation doesn't come without risk itself and understanding the flip side of all the greatness that it could, you know, generate and make all our lives easy, you know, but on the flip side, you've got to trust the technology and how that data is being processed through AI.

And, you know, there's examples, deep fake technology, fantastic for, well, maybe not fantastic for the movie industry in some respects to some of the roles, but a great opportunity to be able to produce things much quicker.

But on the flip side, actually taking my face, your face, and creating a video that you've had nothing to do with, either professing an opinion from you or trying to extract money out of an organisation or data out of an organisation.

So, you know, there's a flip side to understanding the AI technology you might be engaging with in within your organisation or a third party product, but equally, where does that AI come from?

And if it's processing your information, my data is a, you know, is a citizen or data on behalf of the organisation.

Where's it ultimately going?

Because as much as it's an opportunity for us as citizens or businesses, that risk is very much prevalent.

And I think we see that cybersecurity threat landscape, utilising AI for good and for bad.

So the opportunity for the hackers is certainly there for the taking.

And we're helping organisations at Intercity in that respect where, you know, they're scraping your social media profile, understanding your location, using certain language and dialect in the emails and the voice threats as well.

So it's something we're seeing growing and talking to our vendors as well.

So it's very much a risk.

Yeah.

And, you know, you can see AI in the hands of the bad guys is very much, you know, a quicker technology to make attacks more successful, ultimately.

And then it's much hard to defend against.

So you end up in a really bizarre scenario where you have AI battling AI, you know, bot versus bot.

And that exists, you know, we've been doing that for a few years now, but obviously it becomes more interesting in how you start to defend against that.

And equally, you know, poisoning of data.

So we're seeing that now across the world, you know, companies are actively poisoning the content on the internet, which is poisoning the AI algorithms, which is causing more disinformation around the world.

So, you know, if you're in the education sector and you're using AI to help you, you know, write a report or a dissertation, actually the validity of that data is kind of really interesting.

So you might be able to get some information really quickly, but then you're spending more time validating that information.

So you change the dynamic.

I'm not always convinced it's necessarily quicker.

Dom: It's interesting because, you know, in business, we're going to be using some of the or similar tools that consumers are.

So for that exact same purpose research, you know, we still need to check the validity of it.

Anthony: Correct.

Dom: Which again brings risk.

But I think it's about making sure the right tools are used with the right governance around them.

And I think it's that human firewall approach as well.

Anthony: Correct.

Dom: Yeah.

Anthony: We all know that people are unfortunately the biggest risk to any business from a security aspect.

Dom: Absolutely.

Anthony: Human firewalls, you look at the, you know, a tap vector from phishing emails that are coming in.

Actually, that, you know, the prompt, the prompt code that's been put into some of those as well.

If you think about a scenario, which, you know, I've heard played back to me on what, you know, not within my organization, but other people that have experienced it, you know, prompt injection going into phishing emails, that prompt injection code then appearing in copilot, which sits across copilot across 365, which all of a sudden has access to all your emails and all your Excel documents, et cetera, et cetera, which becomes quite a fascinating attack vector into an organization.

And you don't see that code either.

You know, white text code that's put into a chat and does some funky things in the background.

Dom: Interesting white text code.

Can you elaborate on that?

Anthony: So, text that you can't see.

So, you know, if you've got a white box in it and a chat and, you know, you put in and it's black text when you type in M, but you've had something that's prompted text within that.

That's white text.

Dom: That takes me back to my old web dev days where people used to load websites with white text for keywords to beat the search engine algorithms.

Anthony: There you go

I just think it just becomes, you know, it's the same problem that's always existed.

It's just there's now a new use case for how that could be used.

As a CIO, kind of your role changes all the time.

Not only you just focused on how do you enable the business, you know, how do you focus on managing technical debt, you know, keeping the estate modern and current in terms of, you know, patching or investment.

But equally, you know, how you're managing the cyber risks and how are you also helping the business and guide the business through the use of AI and machine learning and, you know, newer technologies that are coming out.

And it ends up quite a lonely place because you end up trying to juggle it all.

So, you know, the organizations are very much looking for the CIO to help be that guiding light, you know, set the pace of kind of technology following, you know, business enablement.

But equally on the flip side, you've got all these risks that you have to also manage.

And it's really interesting and fascinating in my career, you know, the number of conversations I've had with business leaders about absolutely technology can deliver that.

What about the risk?

And that's normally when they head for the door.

So you end up not just enabling, but also then trying to hold a risk.

So for me, trying to drive the conversations with business leadership team, which isn't about necessarily turning them off and switching them off and saying no, but it's about how do you get understanding the business risk and taking real ownership for business risk of how to utilize some of the technology.

And then feeding that through the business as a cultural shift as well with that transformation.

More awareness, you know, you can't do enough awareness around, you know, the pros and cons of technology, both in terms of implementation and change management, but also what you shouldn't shouldn't do.

How do you create those guardrails that people can follow really simply, simple messaging, you know, repeatedly reminding people.

And to your point, you know, the human firewall, that ultimately is what we're trying to strengthen.

And we all create data, right?

And we want to be data led or data informed.

There's businesses and I hear it in many other businesses data is one of the biggest challenges, whether you can make sure it's got integrity, it's correct.

Dom: Can you lead a business from that data set?

What's your experience or view on data sets and how businesses should properly manage that?

Anthony: So the data team out there probably won't like this response for a second.

But you know, data, unfortunately, is probably one of the most boring conversations you can have with business leaders, they instantly switch off, I see it in the body language face, you know, conversation.

But actually, the heart of a successful digital strategy is, you know, your data and how controlled and the quality of the data, the structure of the data, where do you hold it, the frequency you ingest it, how do you store it, how do you access it, how do you make sure you've got the right controls with who can see the data.

So pretty much, you know, around data loss protection.

And for me, you know, talking to organizations and being involved in organizations, where you've made investment in securing your data, understanding the quality of that data, making sure that you've got the right data at the right time, in the hands of the user that need it to kind of coin that phrase for a second, really accelerates then the technology around automation, machine learning, because you can trust your data source, you can trust what it's giving you the business insights it delivers you.

Where I've seen it go horribly wrong is where people try and put some of those technologies over, you know, what they redeem a data lake, which in essence is just lots of unstructured data if you don't get it right.

And it just causes organized chaos, because you spend more time debating the data than you do debating the insights the data is trying to drive.

So I think, you know, for anybody that asks me, you know, how do you successfully drive the implementation and, you know, acceleration of some of these technologies, it start with your data, whether structured or unstructured, whether that's documents or database data that's holding your systems, making sure that you understand how it's being, you know, how it's being generated, the quality of that data and the structured access to that data is probably one of the biggest accelerators an organization can go through.

Ultimately, you know, it takes a long time to set up, but what you've got to set up, you accelerate, if you don't, it's an investment, you paddle really quickly, and you end up doing it anyway, it just takes you longer and costs you more.

Dom: I'm going to end with one final question.

If you could see another person on this podcast, either someone that's influenced you or inspired you, who's, you know, with that human, human side of tech in mind, who would who would you recommend?

Anthony: Great question.

And there's probably many people.

But if I think really about how do you create the user centricity of technology and what it means in terms of transformation?

Raja-Saleem Javaid, who is currently the CIO at Warwick University, I think would be fantastic to come and talk about that from roles that he's done previously, leading technology officers, innovation, and at the heart of all of those decisions that he's driven has been, you know, user centricity of IT and digital technology.

So I think you're going to pull someone in, he probably won't thank me, but I think he'd be good to try and come in and talk through.

Dom: That's a great recommendation.

Anthony: Thank you very much.

Dom: So thank you very much for joining us today, Anthony.

Anthony: It's been a pleasure.

Dom: It's been fantastic to hear about your long career as a CIO.

Anthony: Long and winding.

Dom: And, you know, we're very privileged to be joined by one of the UK's top CIOs.

So thank you very much.

Anthony: Thank you.