On determination: Years ago, there was a program called Tomorrow’s World, and it was all about the future and what that could look like. I was fascinated by it because in one episode, there was a woman presenter. So that inspired me then, and showed you could aspire to that. I went into my first role working in a software development division in the mid-90s where everyone was frantically recoding everything because of Y2K. Those were my very early days in technology. But even then, I had female role models who made it seem accessible. I was curious but not very academic at school, so I felt lucky to get a job in technology. Being able to learn coding was very interesting, and I found my routine, and continued to grow and move through the ranks.
On data: I always say there’s no AI without data. So the thing we’ve been working on for the last two years is the data strategy, understanding the governance, the framework, and everything else we need there as foundations. We’ve done a lot of work around data literacy and upskilling in the organization, and we’ve been doing that in preparedness for AI because we know everybody wants it, and they want it now, but they don’t necessarily know what they want it for. So it’s about creating that safe space where people can test and learn. I’ve been working in partnership with the chief strategy officer to say this needs to be a joint business, and we need an IT strategy around data and AI. It can’t just be directly from it. We need to work together with the business to understand what we want to use AI for so we can get to value sooner. And if you think about what we’ve been doing for the last three years in moving to the enterprise systems, reducing the systems landscape, and making sure we understand what data we’ve got in those systems, it’s all been creating the pathway and the foundation levels we need to get us there sooner.
On streamlining efficiencies: When I came into automotive, it was essentially learning a whole different language because many of the abbreviations are tied to German words. So even when you know them, you don’t understand what they mean. For me, it was about taking that big step back, looking at our business and saying we’re all about designing and creating an amazing product. We then have customers we service through the web or the app. So it’s broken down into value streams, and within those are the processes of designing, building, marketing, and selling cars. I like logic, so I try to apply it when we examine capabilities, like reducing cost of delivery from an IT perspective. That gives us more money to invest in other things, or future ready our organization.
