The C-tech interviews: Meet the Chief Information and Digital Officer at Ibstock
The team here at InX place a wide range of leaders in a huge variety of roles and industries. To showcase these incredibly talented individuals, pick up a few pearls of wisdom and hear about their progress so far in their new role, we’re delighted to introduce our CIO placement series.
The first of the series is with Alex Richards, chief information and digital officer of Ibstock. Alex was placed by one of our directors, James Lawson.
Have a read of the full interview below to hear more about his role, his experience with InX and his advice for others contemplating a senior move.
Tell us a little about yourself?
I actually originally qualified as a criminal psychologist! After finishing my studies, I got a job as a data nalyst at a local finance firm and fell in love with IT and data. After a small stint as a SQL report developer, I moved into a business analyst role and that's the point my career really took off.
Over the next few years, I progressed through to head of business analysis and project management at the same firm, taking responsibility for a fantastically effective delivery team.
I joined Experian in 2017 taking on a group level role as head of agile delivery, taking ownership of Experian's agile transformation and new delivery approaches.
After 3 years with Experian, I was approached about a new role, heading up the tech delivery and operations function within Frasers Group, Mike Ashley's retail empire. This put me completely out of my comfort zone, after spending many years working in a heavily regulated finance industry.
After 18 months at Frasers Group, I moved over for a short stint as technology director with Boohoo Group in Manchester. Boohoo Group is a very interesting business, extremely fast paced and investing in lots of exciting new technology.
In June 2022, I was offered the opportunity to join Ibstock PLC as chief information and digital officer. I'm currently responsible for all of the tech, data and cyber security across the group!
You recently became the chief information and digital officer of Ibstock PLC. What triggered you to consider a move?
I’ve worked in some super high-tech businesses, in industries that have been digitised for decades. The opportunity at Ibstock was completely different from any I had faced before – moving to an industry which is behind the digital curve, into a business that was keen to evolve its technology! The novelty of starting from scratch and helping to digitise a business in a new industry was the main draw for me.
I’m not far off 18 months in post now, and absolutely relishing the challenge. It’s been a very rewarding journey so far and there is still loads to go after.
What was your experience of working with InX?
From a candidate perspective, InX were amazing. The recruiter who briefed me on the role had run interviews with all of the senior team at Ibstock to ensure he properly understood what they were after from both a personality and skills perspective. During our initial chat, it was clear he deeply understood the business and understood precisely the sort of person who would be a good fit for this role.
Communication with the team at InX was outstanding – regularly checking in to make sure things were progressing well and keeping me informed throughout. It was a far cry from some of the poor experiences I have had with other agencies, where you interview somewhere and get ghosted by the recruiter!
From a customer perspective, I engaged with InX to support in finding a new head of solution architecture for our business. Again, they took the time to understand what I was after, and put some exceptional candidates in front of me.
How did you approach your first few months in your role?
Relatively cautiously – I am liable to race off and try to get as much stuff done as possible, but moving to a business where the technology estate needed evolving, it was important to take the time to understand the team and the context properly before embarking on any major changes.
The first few months were spent getting to grips with the tech estate, lifting up rocks to see what was hiding underneath, and building a plan to evolve the estate at a sustainable pace!
What advice would you give others contemplating a move, or starting a new senior role?
Relationships are everything – if you’re looking for a new role, it’s essential you have a strong network of people who can support you to find the right new role at the right company. The last few roles I’ve moved in to had all been facilitated by trusted individuals in my network, who had my best interests at heart as well as the business they were serving at the time!
Whilst it can be tough in the moment, I would also say it’s important to remember that interviews are a chance for you to interview your potential new company; it isn’t just for the benefit of the employer! Take the chance to raise any concerns you have and find out more about the realities of the culture and life at the new company.
What surprised you the most during your journey from one business to another?
Every business I have worked at has been completely different from the last – yet there is a common thread running through all of my experience, in that businesses struggle to effectively prioritise projects and they generally have little visibility of the workflow in their teams. Regardless of industry, size of business or size of the budgets at my disposal, this has been a surprising revelation for me!
What's on your radar currently (tech, business, innovation, etc)?
We’ve got some really fundamental changes coming down the path – we’re looking at the future of our ERP estate, with a view to moving to a best in class system that will help us to standardise our ways of working across the group and make things much easier to maintain and manage. Tied in with this is the construction of a modern data platform, to help bring together tons of rich data which will help our business make better decisions, more quickly.
There are some sexy side projects on the cards currently also, one focused on fitting monitoring devices to some of the machinery in our factories to give us insight into the best times to take our production lines down for maintenance, and another looking at using artificial intelligence to drive our production forecasting plans for our factory estate.
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If you would like to find a future C-tech leader for your business, or you’re a tech or digital leader who’s looking for their next step, please contact one of the InX technology team, here.