Countrywide is the UK's largest property services organisation and is made up of nine different businesses; these include its front office retail business of estate agents and lettings, a small army of surveyors, a financial services and mortgage arm, auctions and most recently commercial property following the purchase of Lambert Smith Hampton consultancy in September 2013. After taking over from Ivan Banks as 娇色导航at the beginning of 2013, Oliver Skagerlind spoke to 娇色导航last year about integration, infrastructure, mobility and owning your outsourcing contracts. When did you start your current role?January 2013 Have you completed an MBA?No Order the following sources of advice/information by value to you:1. In-house2. Vendors3. Peer group4. Analyst5. Consultant Technology strategy and spending What is the major transformational IT project that has been recently completed, or is underway at your organisation?Currently underway is a £90 million Transformation & Outsourcing contract with major outsourcer, deal will provide IT services to Countrywide’s 11,000 employees across the UK. Countrywide IT was delivered in a static (not dynamic) fashion, takes too long and costs too muchThis time & cost associated with delivery is a direct business constraintThe current model is inherently rigid, always placing IT on the critical path for business changeHistoric “ownership culture” of hardware creates additional limitationsOur infrastructure is aggregated, not integrated with fixed links between software and hardwarePresent architecture will not sustain a meaningful increase in property market transactions Three specific areas are key to breaking this cycle:Hardware virtualisation – decoupling hardware from software and driving better utilisationService-driven operating model – management and operations aligned to same goalsBlended, flexible resourcing – tap into supplier resources & skills, whilst lowering cost Complete IT transformation is the most cost effective route to dynamic ITExisting teams have no capability to transform, so a partner is required A partnership will deliver:Lower operational overhead, upgraded provision of basic IT and significantly reduced capital costsA scalable, bespoke architecture that supports strategic business intent, with pay-as-you-go pricingA flexible resource pool with the range of skills to deliver group-wide solutions This will enable Countrywide to:Preserve and grow market shareFortify strategic B2B partnershipsDrive competitive advantage, product USP and maintain fee structuresMinimise time to market and realise acquisition benefits from day oneSignificantly increase cross-divisional sales opportunities What impact will it/does it have on the organisation?Deal will consolidate and refresh the companies existing IT systems, with work including virtualising desktops and providing voice-over-IP (VoIP) to all 1,300 office and as a side benefit provides a significant cost reduction and a major cost avoidance benefit to the group Migration to New Data Centres includes Improved data backup and recovery (reliability), Standardisation of applications (cost saving) and Centralised data storage (security / integrity) Single Telephony platform providing Reduction in phone lines (cost saving) a Reduction in missed calls (revenue opportunities) and Simplified administration (cost saving) Centralised VDI – Central, single desktop environment (cost saving),Quicker deployment of new services (time to market) and Centralised data storage (security / integrity) Single Email platform Simplifies compliance (cost saving), Single global address book (efficiency) and Improved mailbox management (efficiency) What new strategic technology deals has your organisation struck and with whom?The single largest deal Is the 2+5 year deal with CGI which is 2 years of infrastructure transformation and 5 years of run the service Name your strategic technology suppliers?CGI, O2 How much is the IT operational spend compared to the revenue or company turnover as a percentage?Circa 4% What is the strategic aim of the 娇色导航and IT operations for the next financial year?Deliver a refreshed infrastructure and operating model that provides Flexibility and capacity – rapid response to business demand both up and down. To have a Scalable utility-based infrastructure model – consumption on demand, pay per user, per gigabyte, per server-day. All of this to facilitate Innovation giving a competitive advantage environment. I want Technology at Countrywide not to be just seen as a cost centre but as a revenue enabler to the group. Transformation achievements Would you describe the 娇色导航role as a transformation leader in your organisation?Yes its about pairing commercial opportunities with technology possibilities. Describe the transformations you have led / been involved in, how did they transform operations, customer experience or the organisation?The transformation delivers programme under the outsoursed deal provides the following: Transition to next generation IT support Transitioning the everyday technology operation to the supplier allows Countrywide to enjoy best-of-breed service, extended support hours and improved response times. New processes and procedures enable self-help, choice of service options and flexible resourcing. Central to the future strategy, transformation delivers a complete refresh of end user technology, deploying simpler thin client computing and new group-wide telephony. It includes migration to dual data centre architecture with data recovery ability as standard. This enables enhanced high availability to be offered at incremental cost, bespoke to business requirements. In addition, as a prerequisite, it delivers rationalised email, access control and licensing. Beyond technology, can you describe a business transformation programme that you own or contribute to?I was the Deal Architect for a £90 million Transformation & Outsourcing contract with our major outsourcer, deal will provide IT services to Countrywide’s 10,000 employees across the UK.  Providing a £20m cost reduction and £15m cost avoidance benefit to the groupDeal will consolidate and refresh the companies existing IT systems, with work including virtualising desktops and providing voice-over-IP (VoIP) to all 1,300 office What key technologies are being considered to enable transformation?VMwareCitrixMicrosoftDell storageCisco What percentage of your applications / infrastructure is run from the Cloud?5-8% 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?My view on this point is that one of the biggest challenges faced in major organisations today is the pace at which use of personal technology is evolving and the relatively low cost of purchasing products. One of the constant battles is keeping up with consumer technology  in a corporate environment where the expectations are now so much higher than they used to be. 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?Shadow IT is something that has occurred for many years where non IT managers go 'shopping' for technology on their own. As a group we have process and procedures to get a head of these types of issues and prevent potential mistakes. I don’t want to stop innovation but would rather we understand the requirement upfront and work with our business and try to help deliver the need through the appropriate technology that is convergent to the strategy. BYOD is very much on my agenda but it is something that is available to us as group rather than a ‘blanket’ strategy. Where do you seek transformational inspiration from?Understanding real business problems and seeing them first hand, by spending as much time as possible with customer-facing staff, is the best source of inspiration. Looking at other organisations and talking about their challenges. The 娇色导航role in the business Who do you report to?Commercial director Do you have a seat on the board?Yes How often do you meet with the CEO?Weekly Does your organisation have a digital leader and what is the difference in their responsibilities to yours?Yes – looks after the marketing and online aspect What percentage of IT budget do you control and what percentage of IT budget does your digital peer hold?They are seperate budgets The IT department How many staff make up the IT team?(What is the split between in-house/outsourced staff)50 in house and 185 outsourced staff Describe the CIO’s management team, do you have direct reports that develop the relationship and services between the business and IT?Yes I have 5 direct reports – all have roles that cover different aspects of the relationships and services between the business and the outsourcer And how many log-in accounts do you issue across you organisation?Over 11,000 What is the primary technology platform? ( for example ERP, Website, trading system)We run 6 core business divisions so there are multiple