Police Mutual Assurance Society CIO Dave Loughenbury Q&A

Police Mutual Assurance Society  is over 140 years old and provides police officers, staff and their families with financial services. A non-shareholder organisation, it is run for the benefit of its members and the Police Service.

CIO Dave Loughenbury has just selected a new policy administration platform  from Ireland’s Exaxe.

When did you start your current role? November 2011

What is your reporting line? CEO

Do you meet with and discuss business strategy with the CEO every week? Yes

Are you a member of the board of directors? No

What other executive boards do you sit on? Audit Committee, Change Steering Group

Does your organisation have a CDO? Yes

What different responsibilities does the CDO have? Quality, Data Insight, Data Strategy and Integration

What non-technology responsibilities do you have in the organisation? Change and data

How many employees does your organisation have? 500

What number of users does your department supply services to? 470

How do you ensure that you have a good understanding of your business and how your customers use your business’s products? Surveys, Forums and BAs assessing “as-is”

Technology strategy & spending

Is your organisation being disrupted by the internet, mobility or technology oriented start-ups? Yes

Are you empowered by your organisation to disrupt from the inside? Yes

Describe a disruptive measure you’ve led or played a major part in? Challenges with telephony and lack of consistent platform was causing issues so we moved to SIP based telephony, single call centre solution and network changes.  Overall major impact on the business and saves a significant sum of money per annum.

What major transformation project has been recently completed, or is underway at your organisation? Implementation of CRM to allow single customer view for outbound and internal comms with customers, just selected a new policy administration platform from Ireland’s Exaxe.

What impact will the above transformation have on your organisation? We estimate an increase in sales of about 10% through the combination of data and CRM

How has your leadership style contributed to the outcomes of the transformation project We have remained focussed on the key priorities and the outcomes required by the business.  This has required cross business working and alignment

What key technologies do you consider enable transformation? Technology that allows users to improve or significantly change the outcome for customers.  For us that has been better collection and use of data combined with CRM and Digital.

Are you increasing the number of cloud applications or infrastructure in use at your organisation? Yes

What is your information and data analytics vision for the organisation? We aim to be data led and have invested heavily to deliver a more robust and scaleable platform to support the growth of the company

How is mobile and social networking impacting operations and customer experience? We are now seeing over 50% of all traffic on our website coming from mobile devices and given our customer base we are seeing a lot of contact at surprising times

Describe your strategic vision towards shadow IT and BYOD. How do you influence and engage executives and employees around choice? We took a call given the volume of work this year not to look heavily at BYOD however we have implemented remote access and virtual environments so we could easily move to BYOD

What strategic technology deals have been struck and with whom? In the last 12 months Avanade, Exaxe and BT

Who are your main suppliers? Apart from the above Nviron and OpenGI

Technology issues

Has your organisation detected a cyber intrusion in the last 12 months? Yes

Has cyber-security risen up your management agenda? Yes

Does your organisation understand the potential cyber-security threats it faces? Yes

Has this led to an increase in your security budget? Yes

What is the IT budget? £1.8m

How much is the IT operational spend compared to the revenue as a percentage? 5%

What is the strategic aim of the CIO and IT operations for the next financial year? To deliver transformational change to support the business through change

Are you finding it difficult to recruit the talent you need to drive transformation? Yes

Has recruitment and retention risen up your agenda as a CIO? Yes

Are you looking for recruits in the EU to fill the skills shortage you have? No

Does your IT organisation operate an apprenticeship scheme No

The CIO’s department

How would you describe your leadership style? Driven to achieve outcomes, inclusive team working and delegation to give people opportunities

Explain how you’ve supported and developed your senior leadership team to support your overall objectives and vision Where we have needed skills rapidly we have recruited e.g. a CDO from Barclays, internal staff have received a combination of support from Gartner and mentoring across the business

How many employees are in your IT team? 24

What is the split between in-house/outsourced staff? 50/50

Does your team include key skilled workers from the EU? No