Based in Cambridge, Bidwells is a top 20 UK-only property consultancy. Bidwells is a full-service consultancy, providing strategic and technical advice on all aspects of commercial, residential and rural properties – from architectural consultancy to transport planning advice. When did you start your current role?August 2006 Have you completed an MBA?No Order the following sources of advice/information by value to you: 1.    Peer Group2.    Analyst3.    Consultant4.    In-house5.    Vendors Technology strategy and spending What is the major transformational IT project that has been recently completed, or is underway at your organisation?Desktop virtualisation is complete and part way through telephony virtualisation What impact will it/does it have on the organisation?Directly impacts on our professionals ability to service our clients and allows them to work anywhere they can get a connection. Frees them up to work easily outside regular working hours should they choose to do so. What new strategic technology deals has your organisation struck and with whom?Citrix for Desktop Virtualisation, Riverbed for WAN acceleration and Nimble for Storage Name your strategic technology suppliers?VMware, Vodafone (WAN) Citrix, Riverbed, Microsoft, EMC, Nimble, Mitel, Cisco, HP, Fujitsu, Ricoh, Airwatch, Apple IT budget – how much is the IT operational spend compared to the revenue or company turnover as a percentage?5% due to some heavy investment over the last few years plus planned investment in 2014. What is the strategic aim of the CIO and IT operations for the next financial year?Complete the replacement of legacy infrastructure, further enhance our virtual and mobile operational capability. Deal with our information management challenge. Transformation achievements Would you describe the CIO role as a transformation leader in your organisation?Yes, as we are always seeking to ehance Bidwells performance though the appropiate use of technology. Describe the transformations you have led / been involved in, how did they transform operations, customer experience or the organisation?Rationalised our print environment, going from 185+ devices to 65 devices reducing costs and vastly improving the quality and consistency of the printed material we produce. What key technologies are being considered to enable transformation?SIP, Lync, Document Management. What percentage of your applications / infrastructure is run from the Cloud?Difficult to estimate properly , we have some cloud based solutions running business critical apps. How is the use by employees of their own technology, use of mobiles and social networking impacting operations, customer experiences or the organisation at present?Early days for us. We deliberately don't have an open BYOD policy due to compatibility and support challenges. Most if not all of our client facing professionals have iPhones and about 25% have iPads.Some of our staff are making good use of social media (Linkedin and Twitter) to grow their business networks and to stimulate debate and discussion. Overall this is have a positive effect on our relationships with clients but we still have plenty of room for growth in these endeavours. Do you have a plan in place for how to deal with shadow IT and BYOD. How do you influence and engage executives, place the right controls around employee choice and engage with the organisation on this issue?Yes. There is not much Shadow IT, we've got pretty good at helping our divisions achieve what they want and we have BYOD for iOS devices if the user has a good business case for wanting to use their personal device for work purposes. Where do you seek transformational inspiration from?Peers in my own industry and other industries. I'm always interested in business as a whole, regardless of sector and seeing how other organisations transform and solve challenges often provides us with inspiration for our own solutions. The CIO role in the business Do they report to the:COO Does the CIO have a seat on the board?No How often do you meet with the CEO?COO Weekly, Senior Partner monthly, sometimes more than that. Does your organisation have a digital leader and what is the difference in their responsibilities to yours?Not really, part of the marketing function dealing with the web site and slowly dabbling with social What percentage of IT budget do you control and what percentage of IT budget does your digital peer hold?I hold 100% of the IT budget The IT department How many staff make up the IT team?(What is the split between in-house/outsourced staff)14 – all in-house Describe the CIO’s management team, do you have direct reports that develop the relationship and services between the business and IT?Yes, myself and two others How many log-in accounts do you issue across you organisation?500+ What is the primary technology platform?A variety! we are divisional with vastly differing specialisms, each division has their own key plaforms