Colt is a multinational telecommunications, IT-managed services and data centre services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom and with its registered office in Luxembourg.

Colt provides services to city-based large enterprise, small and midsize business and wholesale carriers in 22 countries across Europe. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.

IT leader: Mark Leonard, Executive Vice President Infrastructure Services.

In role since: Been with Colt since February 2008.

Reporting line: CEO.

Board level seat: Executive Committee.

IT budget: 2-3% of turnover.

IT estate and or number of log on accounts under the control of the IT leader: 5,200 users.

Level of the workforce that relies on technology to carry out their tasks: 100%.

Primary technology platforms at the organisation: CRM, Order Management, Billing.

Primary technology suppliers: VMware, EMC, Cisco, Alcatel Lucent, Oracle.

Business transformation programme – beyond technology – that the CIO owns or is a major contributor to: There is a lot of price pressure on the networks, so I have to drive a massive step change in space. In 2011 I was given responsibility for all the delivery and architecture and the real benefit that we have seen is bringing the IT skills and capabilities with software processes with ITIL to the network world. That gives us some competitive advantage.

So now we have one change control across the organisation, no matter what it is.

Strategic aim of the CIO and IT operation for the next financial year: To continue to make the workforce more productive and match the experience of the consumer space, so for example we already offer a corporate DropBox.

We also have a transformation programme around the CRM and Order Management that are key foundations from an IT perspective to enable better automation and faster transactional services to our customers.

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: We have seen a Use Your Own Phenomena and the users are not asking the organisation to support it. That has been transformational in a way that our users are relating to IT. We have seen a maturity in self service.

Strategy for dealing with shadow IT and BYOD including influence and engagement with executives, to place the right controls around employee choice: We enabled iPads and desktop video conferencing over the VPN and there was a big take up. We have also run a pilot where we built a video conferencing bridge that allows you to video conference to other companies so you are incorporating external partners and this has had huge take up. It also means it has cut the travel budget by 25%.

Technologies being considered to enable transformation: Platform as a Service, apps that are native in the cloud.

Transformational inspiration sources: Understanding the consumer market as technology adoption is faster.