CIO 100 Companies (2007)

1. Ministry of Defence

It’s little wonder that, with global security high on the agenda, the UK defence budget is set to increase from £29.7 billion in 2004/05 to £33.4bn in 2007/08.

2. Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs

Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has faced a multitude of supplier and management-related IT challenges and the now famous data loss incident of last winter.

3. Royal Bank of Scotland Group

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), the UK’s second largest banking group, in line with other players in the market, saw its profits rise again this year.

4. BT Group

BT’s IT function has ‘upskilled’ more than 5,000 IT professionals, so that now 3,100 are engaged in customer-facing, revenue-generating work rather than internal IT projects.

5. Department for Work & Pensions

The Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) IT systems may not always have been in the spotlight for all the right reasons, the department headed by Joe Harley has certainly been central to some major changes.

6. Royal Mail Group

With its market now open to competition, the Royal Mail Group still managed to cut 10 per cent from costs, while at the same time absorbing a range of new technologies and systems.

7. Lloyds TSB Group

Lloyds TSB is currently the fifth largest banking group in the UK, operating in England and Wales as Lloyds TSB; and in Scotland as Lloyds TSB Scotland.

8. HBOS

HBOS is the UK’s largest mortgage and savings provider and the number one provider of new investment products.

9. Unilever

Anglo-Dutch consumer goods giant Unilever produces 400 brands in 14 categories of food, home and personal care products.

10. BP

BP is one of the largest integrated oil companies in the world, with an estimated global market share of around 3%of oil and gas production in the major global markets.

11. Tesco

The big story in Tesco over the last year has been its ongoing growth and consolidation as a market leader to rival Wal-Mart in the US through increased global expansion. Most recently, that expansion saw it announce it will enter the US market in 2007 with a new ‘Fresh & Easy Neighbourhood Market’ brand based on its local ‘Express’ format.

12. DHL

DHL Logistics is ahead with its planned integration with UK logistics company Exel, that its parent company Deutsche Post bought at the end of 2005 for £3.7 billion. The organisation had said it hoped to complete the integration in two to three years, but Nigel Underwood, CIO of DHL Logistics, is hoping to conclude the integration work by the end of this year.

13. GlaxoSmithKline

Headquartered in the UK and with operations in the US, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is one of the industry leaders, with an estimated seven per cent of the world’s pharmaceutical market. It is the only pharmaceutical company to tackle the World Health Organisation’s three ‘priority’ diseases – HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria – and it produces medicines that treat six major disease areas – asthma, virus control, infections, mental health, diabetes and digestive conditions. Along with this, the pharmaceutical giant is also the manufacturer of brand leaders such as Gaviscon, Aquafresh and Lucozade.

14. HSBC Holdings

HSBC is one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world. Its international network comprises around 10,000 offices in 82 countries and territories in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa and is listed on the London, Hong Kong, New York, Paris and Bermuda stock exchanges.

15. Barclays

Barclays is a UK-based financial services group and has a large international presence in Europe, the US, Africa and Asia. It is engaged primarily in banking, investment banking and investment management. In terms of market capitalisation, Barclays is one of the largest financial services companies in the world. It has been operating for more than 300 years and now has 27 million customers and 123,000 employees in over 50 countries.

16. Centrica

The markets in which Centrica, the UK’s biggest residential energy supplier, operates are changing. As gas demand increases globally, UK continental shelf production is in decline and new sources of gas are needed to fill the gap. Gas prices in the UK have been on an upward trend and are being driven to higher, previously unseen levels.

17. Co-operative Group

As this year’s CIO special report went to press, the UK’s top two co-operatives were in the midst of agreeing a merger that will form the world’s largest consumer co-operative group. The July merger of Rochdale-based United Co-operatives, which has 930,000 members, and the Manchester based Co-operative Group, with 3.5 million members, makes it responsible for more than 80 per cent of the UK’s co-operative retail trade.

18. BAE Systems

It has been a good year for business, says Chris Coupland, director of IT and e-business for aerospace and defence supplier BAE Systems. The company had nine per cent revenue growth, more than £1 billion profits, further growth in the US and made a number of international acquisitions.

19. J Sainsbury

J Sainsbury has rarely been out of the news in the last few years and its latest headlines involved the possible takeover by private equity investors of the supermarket chain. US-based private equity consortium CCVC Capital Partners, Blackstone and TPG Capital pulled out in early April after it became clear the Sainsbury’s board would not back their proposed offer.

20. The Metropolitan Police

A continuing target of the Metropolitan Police’s director of information, Ailsa Beaton, is the successful delivery of the force’s largest ever organisational change management programme. The Command, Control, Communication and Information (C3i) project is responding to the projected increase in external calls and emails received by the Met, expected to reach 23 million a year by 2010.

21. Home Office

The silos of information and communication that exist in the Home Office continues to dog the government department responsible for law and order, national security and immigration.

22. John Lewis Partnership

The John Lewis Partnership had sales last year of £6.4 billion, 11 per cent up on the previous year. It consists of two trading divisions, John Lewis department stores and the Waitrose supermarket chain. Both businesses are underpinned by a largely common technical infrastructure, including payroll and accounting systems.

23. Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce had very good results this year, with very favourable growth in all the sectors it operates in – civil and defence aerospace and marine power and energy. As ever IT has been playing a significant role in this growth, with strong project management and very aggressive timescales being the norm at the company.

24. Reuters

It has been a very busy, but successful year for David Lister, CIO at Reuters, and his team. After a two to three year period of recovery, the company is showing good performance, increased growth and getting moving again.

25. BBC

Keith Little has been CIO at the BBC since October, following six months as acting CIO in a hand-over period before CTO John Varney left the organisation. In that time the corporation has been concentrating on bedding down its outsourcing relationship with Siemens, while it prepares to focus on director general Mark Thompson’s Creative Futures vision as the BBC prepares to turn off analogue broadcasting and make the most of the multi-platform world.

26. Rentokil Initial

The year has been one of significant change for Rentokil Initial with a range of disposals including Manned Guarding in the UK, US and Belgium, and 70 company acquisitions across the full range of retained businesses around the globe.

27. BA

BA’s key achievement in the last 12 months is its continued success in the online space, according to Paul Coby, BA’s CIO. “It has been a huge success, moving from niche to mainstream in a very short time. Around 60 per cent of check-ins are done using self-service now in terminal four.”

28. Department of Constitutional Affairs

The next 12 months will see major upheaval at the Department of Constitutional Affairs (DCA). The department is responsible for upholding justice, rights and democracy. Its responsibilities include running the courts, and improving the justice system; human rights and information rights law; and policy on running elections and modernising the constitution.

29. Corus Group

The big news for Corus, Europe’s second largest steel producer, is its successful acquisition by Tata Steel for £6.2 billion. The deal finally went through in April and means the enlarged company will have a crude steel production of 27 million tonnes this year. It will be the world’s fifth largest steel producer with 84,000 employees globally.

30. Alliance Boots

Just seven months after Boots completed its £7 billion merger with Alliance Unichem on 31 July 2006, the combined company became the target of a private equity bid. Alliance Boots’ deputy chairman Stefano Pessina, along with private equity giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, first launched a £10 billion offer to buy the retail and pharmaceutical wholesale company in March.

31. Network Rail

Network Rail’s IT organisation has had its fair share of achievements over the last year, not least of which is the high profile appointment of the new IM director, Catherine Doran, who arrived last June from BT. The team has implemented a major data warehouse project, which holds train performance data, and is used for operational performance monitoring.

32. BUPA

BUPA had a very busy and successful year according to group IS director John Lister. “Over the last two years we have done a lot of planning as well as development. Now our new infrastructure and architecture is coming together, and there has been a lot of delivery both inside the UK and in Australia, Spain, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and Thailand,” he says.

33. Compass Group

Compass Group is a major foodservice company, with annual revenues of around £11 billion. With an extensive geographic and market sector coverage and employing over 400,000 people, the group’s business is diverse, operating in different regions and cultural environments.

34. WH Smith

WH Smith is one of the UK’s leading retail groups with 543 high street stores and 129 travel stores at airports, train stations and motorway services across the UK, plus an online retail outlet with WH Smith Direct.

35. Arriva

Arriva, one of the largest transport services organisations in Europe, has a major presence in nine European countries: Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the UK. Employing more than 33,000 staff, the company is the largest bus operator in London and the largest private bus operator in Italy, Denmark and The Netherlands.

36. Aviva

Aviva is the fifth largest insurance group in the world, the biggest in the UK and one of the leading providers of life and pensions products in Europe. Its main activities are long-term savings, fund management and general insurance. The group has some 58,000 employees and 35 million customers worldwide.

37. FirstGroup

FirstGroup is in the middle of an acquisition. Laidlaw International, the yellow school bus operator and owner of Greyhound, is being bought by FirstGroup for £2 billion and, assuming the buyout goes ahead, it will make FirstGroup the largest bus operator in the US, with less than 20 per cent of the American market and giving it ample opportunities for growth.

38. Kent County Council

Kent County Council’s ICT group recognises that efficiency in the deployment and use of ICT is not about a narrow approach to reducing costs, it must also be about deriving increased value throughout the business, brought about by investment in the application of technology.

39. Ford of Europe

Last year Ford of Europe’s head of IT, Bill Fairclough, stated that the company would be concentrating on service levels, critical systems and security controls. The business focus was on cost and IT was focusing on simplification and consolidation of its infrastructure and systems.

40. ASDA

Wal-Mart owned ASDA has been celebrating its performance in the first quarter of the year. According to figures from retail market specialist TNS, ASDA is the UK’s fastest growing retailer, showing a nine percent improvement on figures last year.

41. Balfour Beatty

Balfour Beatty topped financial forecasts with a 25 per cent rise in annual profits on the back of record order books for its full 2005 financial year. The company is made up of around 18 different businesses, operating in a number of markets, including civil engineering and energy, road and rail services and construction.

42. McDonald’s Restaurants

McDonald’s is in the middle of a major back-office overhaul and technology refresh which began last year. The work is being carried out on three to four restaurants over night to cause as little disruption to the company’s business as possible.

43. Nationwide Building Society

Last autumn Nationwide, the UK’s biggest building society, reported interim profit up 30 per cent to £336.4 million in the six months ended September 30 2006. This compares with £254.8m in the same period the year before. Also in September, the company announced it would take over rival Portman, the third largest building society, in a deal that will create the UK’s second largest mortgage lender after HBOS. The merger is due to take effect in September 2007.

44. JP Morgan Chase

JP Morgan Chase is a global financial services firm with assets of about $1.4 trillion and operations in more than 50 countries. The organisation is a conglomeration formed as a result of years of mergers with different banks, including what a decade ago were five of New York’s largest.

45. Serco Group

Serco is an international services company that operates in markets as diverse as defence, transport, government, science and education. Although it still generates 75 per cent of its sales from the UK market, it won a raft of overseas contracts during 2006 such as a deal valued at Aus$155 million over five years to run Acacia Prison in Western Australia.

46. Home Retail Group

The Home Retail Group came into existence last autumn after demerging from Great Universal Stores, which was wound up after being in business since 1900. Its shares began trading on the London Stock Exchange as of 11 October 2006 and its operating divisions comprise Argos, a multi-channel retailer of general merchandise, and Homebase, the UK’s second largest home improvement retailer.

48. Leeds City Council

Leeds City Council has won plaudits for its work on an ongoing programme to improve and expand the electronic delivery of local government services to its 715,000 citizens. This year this has led to the council’s website being rated among the top eight UK metropolitan authorities for meeting residents’ needs by the Society for IT Managers (SOCITM) in March.

49. Virgin Media

Finishing the Virgin Media infrastructure integration while supporting the continuing growth of the business are the twin challenges for Howard Watson, chief technology and information officer at Virgin Media, over the year ahead.

50. Somerfield

Somerfield is already reaping the rewards of a seven-year deal to outsource the management of its entire IT infrastructure to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), signed at the end of last year. At the start of this year, TCS started answering all Somerfield’s IT helpdesk calls from a facility in India.

51. Manchester City Council

Manchester is the North West’s regional centre for finance, commerce, retail, culture and leisure, home to a major international airport and one of the largest student populations in Europe. It has transformed itself from an industrial city dependent on manufacturing to a thriving, modern, dynamic, international city.

52. SPAR UK

SPAR launched the first of several technology pilots at its Euro SPAR convenience store in Belfast in January. The store is testing self checkout and electronic shelf-edge labelling in an effort to prove the business benefits for small stores.

53. Marks & Spencer Group

Marks & Spencer has continued its remarkable turnaround over the last 12 months and technology is likely to play an increasingly important role in the year ahead. The appointment of IT heavyweight Darrell Stein as IT director at the retailer last year reflects the importance of technology at the store.

54. KPMG LLP

Professional services firm KPMG – one of the ‘big four’ of UK accountancy firms along with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young and Deloitte & Touche – has had a very good year. The company’s revenues were up 14 per cent to £1,454 million, and operating profits grew by 19 per cent to £373m, across all its business lines.

55. Kingfisher

Kingfisher is an international retailer with significant UK DIY and trade brands, B&Q and Screwfix Direct, in its stable. The company operates over 700 stores in 11 countries in Europe and Asia.

56. National Grid

National Grid is currently establishing a shared services function in the UK, which includes finance, HR and supply chain management. As part of that change it is taking a process centric view of its business and transforming all its end-to-end processes. It is also replacing its legacy back office systems with a single instance of SAP.

57. Glasgow City Council

Glasgow City Council, Scotland’s largest local authority, is upgrading its network to provide an IP telephony infrastructure and a multilingual contact centre.

58. Birmingham City Council

Birmingham City Council, the UK’s largest local authority, is hoping to realise some cost savings following a strategic partnership deal with Capita. This £475 million deal produced Service Birmingham – a joint venture between the council and the vendor. Service Birmingham’s objective is to create a fit-for-purpose infrastructure, deliver excellent and consistent service levels and support the transformation policy of the council.

59. Lancashire County Council

One of the largest county councils in England, Lancashire serves 1.1 million people living in diverse conditions; from rural countryside to the cities of Manchester and Liverpool.

60. Deloitte & Touche LLP

It has been a hectic year for Mary Hensher, CIO of Deloitte & Touche, and her team. “We have been restructuring the way we work,” she says. For example the London campus, where 6,000 people work, is being transformed to accommodate hot-desking – the firm calls it “hotelling” – to complement its already mobile workforce. The firm has also been working on standardising and managing its documents and archiving.

61. Department for Education & Skills

According to the government CIO’s annual report, IT spend in education is around £850 million with around £25m on internal IT systems.

62. Essex County Council

Essex County Council is a local government authority that provides a vast range of essential services for one and a quarter million people throughout eastern England. It is also the county’s largest employer with an annual turnover in excess of £900 million.

63. Orange

Orange, the internet and mobile phone arm of France Télécom, is seeing revenue growth in emerging markets. But in its mature markets – France, the UK and Spain – the picture is not so good. In 2006, average revenue per user (ARPU) was down and revenue gains were slim.

64. Department of Health

The Department of Health (DoH) has, as usual, come under a great deal of criticism this year, perhaps with just cause. Throughout the country local hospitals face closure, nurses are being made redundant and junior doctors are unable to find jobs.

65. Woolworths Group

Woolworths’ high street chain continues to struggle and started this year with declining like-for-like sales. In contrast, the variety retailer’s multi-channel operation is booming. The response of customers to Woolworths’ multi-channel offer and the launch of the Big Red Book catalogue has been positive.

66. EDF Energy

EDF Energy’s IT organisation has emerged as a force for business improvement and technology that is trusted by the business, according to Benoit Laclau, managing director of business improvement and technology.

67. West Sussex County Council

West Sussex County Council serves more than 750,000 citizens and spends more than £370 million per year on educating 100,000 pupils and another £130m a year on social care. And the population is growing with new companies springing up throughout the county as West Sussex, with its proximity to London, Gatwick Airport, Europe and a skilled workforce, is perceived as being ideally suited for start-up or expanding businesses.

68. Fife Council

As the third largest authority in Scotland, with a budget of over £580 million each year, Fife Council is responsible for delivering all local government services in the district. Its team of over 22,000 employees delivers more than 900 individual services to the people of Fife each year.

69. Environment Agency

The last year at the Environment Agency was spent working on a realigned IT strategy to create “a decent line of sight between IT and the business”.

70. WPP

WPP is made up of around 100 different companies, the largest with 15,174 employees, the smallest has 17, and operates in 106 countries around the world. Because of the structure of the organisation and the competitive nature of many of its clients WPP has an unusual IT challenge, as it will never be able to completely consolidate its IT offerings.

71. T-Mobile

T-Mobile is the UK network of T-Mobile International, one of the three strategic growth areas of Deutsche Telekom.

73. Land Rover and Jaguar

Michael Ali, CIO of Jaguar and Land Rover, says the organisation has had a good year and is still making progress in its markets. The two brands are both part of Ford’s Premier Automotive Group, which recently sold off Aston Martin.

74. WS Atkins

WS Atkins is the UK’s largest consultancy to undertake engineering and design projects in markets such as rail, highways and defence. In 2005, the organisation set up two steering committees to align IT more closely with its different businesses and to streamline IT decision-making.

75. Foreign & Commonwealth Office

This is a notable year for the FCO. It is in the middle of its seven-year Firecrest contract with HP and it is also the year to deliver on IT-driven savings. Following Sir Peter Gershon’s review of government efficiency, the FCO “committed to realising at least £118 million efficiency gains by 2007/08 through measures including improved information and communication technology (ICT) and more efficient procurement practices. These plans mean that more money will be redeployed away from back-office functions to frontline delivery areas.”

76. Vodafone Group

Vodafone, the world’s largest mobile operator, is still in the process of implementing its One Vodafone programme. The initiative, which started in 2005, is intended to boost revenues while simultaneously reducing operating expenses to fiscal 2004 levels during fiscal 2008.

77. Liverpool City Council

Liverpool City Council is committed to providing electronic access to its key services and is proud of its achievement in making these services electronically available a year ahead of government targets. Council customers can now make payments to Liverpool City Council using the website, by calling the Liverpool Direct call centre, by visiting a One Stop Shop or by using the automated telephone payments (ATP) system.

78. Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform

2006 saw a process of constant IT driven change at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). It completed a programme that delivered 25 per cent savings through introducing eight desks for 10 staff, supported by new telephony.

79. DEFRA

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (DEFRA) claimed core purpose is to improve the current and future quality of life. This one department brings together the interests of farmers and the countryside; the environment and the rural economy; the food we eat, the air we breathe and the water we drink.

80. Royal & SunAlliance

oyal & SunAlliance (R&SA) insurers, owner of the More Th>n brand, posted strong results for 2006 and set a generous dividend policy in March 2007 following the disposal of a troubled US subsidiary.

81. AstraZeneca UK

It has been a mixed business year for pharmaceuticals giant AstraZeneca after buying biotechnology firm Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT) last year for £702 million, and having an important stroke drug fail in clinical trials and development work on it pulled.

82. AXA

AXA is a world leader in financial services with operations in Western Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific area. The group services 50 million customers throughout the world and has approximately 110,000 employees and distributors worldwide, working in some 50 countries. AXA reported an 18 per cent increase in its annual profit in February 2007 and announced that last year’s £5.3 billion acquisition of Winterthur from Credit Suisse would yield more financial benefits than expected.

83. Trinity Mirror

Trinity Mirror is the UK’s largest newspaper publisher, with a portfolio of more than 500 media brands. This includes some 240 local and regional newspapers, five national newspapers and four sports titles, as well as more than 300 websites.

84. Cadbury Schweppes

After announcing disappointing results in February 2007, Cadbury Schweppes was reported to be looking to find around £300 million of yearly cost savings to bolster its confectionary profits.

85. Surrey County Council

The Surrey Golf Course mansion has become shorthand for top of the pile residences of the nouveau and super rich, be one a rock star or a city slicker.

86. British Sky Broadcasting

British Sky Broadcasting (BskyB) operates Sky Digital, the UK’s largest subscription TV service and is also intent on positioning itself as the leading triple-play provider.

87. Group 4 Securicor

Group 4 Securicor is the largest security systems and services company in the world. It was created in 2004, following the merger of Securicor and Group 4 A/S, and provides a range of cash-related services such as processing and transportation as well as security services to both the public and private sector.

88. Prudential

Financial services company Prudential sells a range of investments, personal banking insurance, pensions and institutional investments and fund management.

89. Scottish & Newcastle

Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) is a beer-led drinks business and is currently ranked number seven by volume sales in the world’s top 10 brewers. Its business is primarily focused on Europe, where it is the number four brewer in volume terms and number two in profit terms.

90. British Energy

British Energy is the UK’s largest single producer of electricity, accounting for 20 per cent of the nation’s consumption from a predominantly nuclear power base. The company runs eight nuclear plants and one coal-fired power station, based in Eggborough, North Yorkshire, that it acquired in 2000.

91. Nestlé

Swiss-owned Nestlé has an impressive portfolio of leading branded food and beverage products, including Nescafé, KitKat, Ski, Carnation, Buitoni and Herta. Strong growth in its food and beverages business helped it reach a record full-year net profit this year.

92. BAA

In June 2006, BAA was bought by a consortium led by Ferrovial, the Spanish construction company, and in August officially delisted from the London Stock Exchange. BAA is one of the world’s leading airport companies owning seven UK airports and having management contracts at a number of international airports.

93. Comet Group

Comet is the second largest electrical retailer in the UK and part of Kesa Electricals, a pan-European group operating in seven countries.

94. Standard Life Group

Standard Life is one of the UK’s largest financial services organisations, providing life assurance and pensions, investment management and healthcare insurance services.

95. AMEC

AMEC’s construction business is up for sale, following a group-wide redefining of the company’s vision. The organisation is an international project management and services firm that is a major player in construction services, oil and gas, and engineering, working with clients ranging from BAA, Transco and chunks of the UK rail network.

96. Department for Transport

The Department for Transport’s (DfT) stated aim is a transport system which balances the needs of the economy, the environment and society.

97. Sunderland City Council

Sunderland is the largest city between Leeds and Edinburgh. March saw the council’s IT department win the Department for Communities and Local Government 2007 Digital Challenge and Inclusion Network award for using IT to fight social exclusion. The win netted the council £5 million.

98. Arcadia Group

With more than 2,000 outlets in high streets and shopping centres throughout the country, Arcadia Group is one of the UK’s largest clothing retailers with brands including Burton, Topshop, Dorothy Perkins, Miss Selfridge, Evans, Wallis and Outfit.

99. Cable & Wireless

Cable & Wireless purchased rival Energis in August last year for £594 million cash, in a move that made it the second largest telecommunications provider in the UK after BT.

100. Staffordshire Police

2006 was a busy year for Staffordshire Police. It held the technology portfolio in the force amalgamation process between West Midlands Police, Warwickshire Constabulary and West Mercia Constabulary.