LV= CIO Richard Warner the key quotes

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LV= CIO Richard Warner the key quotes

The LV= group is 170 years old and can trace its history to its founding as a burial service in the late 1800s under the name Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society, read the full CIO interview with Richard Warner here.

By Mark Chillingworth | 22 January 2013

LV='s Richard Warner is first among equals

“Being mutual gives you more flexibility to look at the values and the medium- and long-term plans for the organisation. “One of the risks of being mutual is there is less pressure, so we create the pressure. The C-level here is all new, which balances against any inertia and we have all come from big transformational companies. "We are not a growth-for-growth’s-sake agenda; we are looking for sustainable growth. We will be as big as we need to be as a company.”

Insurance firm's CIO shares his title with his IT department

“The function was formed when I came in. We wanted to create an identity that was broad and not just about IT. As a department we are tasked with providing the capabilities to enable growth. We saw the name change as an opportunity to refresh and rebrand. “We have done a lot of restructuring around what is the logical flow of activities and making the right teams.”

Picture the difference

“In the last year the level of dialogue and the volume of it has been really good and mutually supportive. “For me that communication is all about confidence and pride. If the support teams talk of them and the business that creates a customer/supplier relationship that is not good. The relationship needs to be peer-to-peer.”

Unit charge and change

“In the world of the CIO, a lot of what we try to do is change,” he says. “If you look across the business all units have some form of change agenda taking place and the CIO department’s role is to be mutually supportive to ensure there is a lot of trust and support going on. The trick is to make sure we carry each other along and talk a lot."

Problem solver

“I spend a lot of my time with the two business unit leaders talking about what they are comfortable with and where change can help them. They are trying different ways to solve these problems quickly.”

Technology footprints

“So often you need a different way of working because technology and business models are a changing landscape. “In IT we used to be about rationalisation, now there are so many different ways to solve a problem so the sourcing model is changing. “Five to 10 years ago it was ERP and an ERP implementation had to fit as much of the business footprint as possible. Now a technology purchase is about a certain footprint and requirement at the right price. For the CIO and department it is now about how we plug all the best-in-class tools together into the back end of the organisation.”

Right tools

“We are technology-agnostic and always select the right tool for the right job and our scale means we have a bit of everything. Where we can see opportunities for technology consolidation we will take it. The priority for me is an infrastructure catch-up so that it is fit for purpose. We are virtualising the environment at the moment.”

Supplier management

“We have regular touch points with all of them. There is a repository of contracts, notes from meetings, surveys and we have used this repository to change the relationship with our suppliers. “We are heavily dependent on our suppliers and know their motivations. We like to think we are more willing to be innovative and that is attractive for them. We want suppliers that want to work with us and I want more than my fare share of their minds; that is important to us.”

Future tech

“Looking ahead, data analytics and the evolution of e-commerce using tools to analyse the customer journey will become a priority for me. “Bring your own device (BYOD) has made some progress here with many of the executives using iPads. For some parts of the business BYOD is good, but it is unlikely to happen in the call centre.”

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