Abbey Protection is a specialist insurance group with a focus on selling legal and professional fee insurance to businesses. The company offers intermediation between clients and the insurance, legal and professional services required. The company has several divisions such as Abbey Legal Protection (ALP), Accountax, Abbey HR, After The Events (ATE) services and Abbey Tax Protection, most of which are based in London or the surrounding area. As the company has expanded it has introduced additional legal services which it provides to its clients. Abbey Legal Protection’s profits in 2011 were £10.1 million, a revenue increase of 4%. Abbey Protection employs 232, has 16 directors. IT leader:Toby Clarke, Group IT Director. In role since:Joined in my current role 10 years ago  in April 2002. Reporting line:CEO. How often does the CIO meet with the CEO:Two to three times a month. Board level seat:A seat on the Executive Board. IT budget:The IT operational spend compared to company turnover as a percentage is 3%. Level of the workforce that relies on technology to carry out their tasks:100%. IT staff currently employed:12. Split between in-house/outsourced staff:90% in-house and 10% outsourced. IT management team and reporting structure:Group IT Manager, Development Manager, IT Manager. Primary technology platforms at the organisation:Insurance Management and CRM. Primary technology suppliers:HPIS, HP, Mitel, FrontRange. Significant strategic technology deals struck in the last 12 months:Mitel and Alternative Networks. Percentage of your applications/infrastructure run from the cloud:10%. Major technology or transformation project recently completed and how did it transform operations, customer experience or the organisation:I devised a revolutionary system for our surveyors using Windows Tablets to record fixtures and fitting of commercial buildings. The tablets have built in cameras to allow images to be captured directly into the database so that when the completed survey is uploaded to the central system, the output is immediate available and has saved 60+ man-hours for each survey. Did the above project reach its cost, timing and transformation objectives:The project took three months longer to complete due to the business changing requirements as the new technology was used and added benefit were considered. It was within the monetary budget and bettered the transformation expectations. Strategic aim of the CIO and IT operation for the next financial year:Integrating a new line of business that requires an additional regulatory body, the SRA, which will force a fundamental change in our organisational matrix (creating new Company for non-SRA regulated business). As CIO, I will be driving this strategic change. Business transformation programme – beyond technology – that the CIO owns or is a major contributor to:A major BPM program in our Legal Services Centre that I initiated and led. Strategy in the use by employees of their own technology, use of mobiles and how social networking is impacting operations, customer experiences or the organisation:Advocate UYOD (Use Your Own device) and Abbey Protection are currently piloting VDI to enable delivery of applications to any device. The main advantage will be offering Abbey Protection clients a richer means of communicating without sacrificing the more traditional methods that some of our clients will always use. Strategy for dealing with shadow IT and BYOD including influence and engagement with executives, to place the right controls around employee choice:My role on the board is to be the authority FOR the other Executives, so some of the more common challenges I hear from CIOs are not relevant. The controls we keep simple and our AUP has served us well as our enterprise expands. We keep our engagement fluid with lots of users from all different corners of the business partaking in pilot programmes and being encouraged to voice opinions. Technologies being considered to enable transformation:VDI is the main transformation technology contender and there are a number of pilots underway in different areas to fully understand how we can maximise the effectiveness of such deployments. Transformational inspiration sources:Primarily peers but also my fellow Board members who offer purely business focused inspiration.