Technology is the fuel that drives Addison Lee, and CIO / Chief Product and Technology Officer Ian Cohen is the man with his hands on the pump. Looking way beyond the realms of IT delivery, his focus is to shift an industry model that was predicated on its allocation and dispatch process to one that is obsessed with the experience of customers – typified by the desire for safety, security, quality, trust and assurance. Multiple CIO 100 high-flyer and former CIO 100 panellist Cohen has kept his team busy delivering since joining in August 2017. They are switching the IT infrastructure to support the business's move from a ride and allocation model focused on journey optimisation, to a customer-focused strategy of 'premium, trusted mobility as a service'. He has enabled the underpinning technology and product change through legacy system decomposition to micro services, containers, API hub, service bus solution abstraction and the implementation of commodity cloud and hybrid solutions. On the current innovation agenda are all aspects of machine learning, AI and IoT as Cohen and his colleagues further develop their smart allocation technologies. The goal is not just to optimise the current fleet but also to lead the industry's move into the connected/autonomous vehicle space. The company's involvement in the Merge Greenwich project is a recent example where its leadership position in allocation and dispatch technologies has been used as part of the modelling of a hybrid transportation city solution. Cohen has been working closely with his executive colleagues to "communicate, educate and inform" during every step of Addison Lee's change activities, and is working with the HR Director to move to a fully open plan and flexible working environment. [Read next: Addison Lee CIO Ian Cohen on following your passions and why there is no such thing as a startup way]