Talking Tech & Transformation Series: Interview with Sanjay Patel

“CIOs should always focus on business outcomes. However, it’s not always that easy.”

La Fosse Executive’s Dominic Bosher (Associate Director) and Charlotte Dickinson (Executive Delivery Consultant) sat down with Sanjay Patel to discuss the role of CIOs in enterprise. Sanjay shares his own career journey and his advice to businesses on a digital trajectory.

Could you give a brief introduction to your background, for those who don’t know you?

I started my career as a Chemical Engineer and spent eight years in the industry with a global organisation in the UK. Following that, I transitioned into business consulting and spent over 20 years working across various sectors, including telecommunications, retail, aerospace & defence, and then consumer products. During this time, I worked on complex projects for major companies like Unilever, where I was involved in strategic decisions like whether to split their food and health businesses. At Nestle, I managed the entire global outsourced SAP estate, and at PepsiCo I was leading their category operating model restructure. Throughout these roles, I had exposure to finance, supply chain, sales, IT, and HR leadership teams at the C-Suite and Board level.

Because of this background, I gained insights into what keeps top executives up at night and, more importantly, what solutions could help them feel more comfortable and reassured. This experience also led me to work with the CIOs in those companies, helping them and their technology teams to shape and implement change programs to leverage and align technology in line with solving business problems and delivering value. Over time, I witnessed first-hand how technology can remove bottlenecks in workflows and data management, enabling real-time and accurate operations. I also learned from the CIOs’ experiences and collaborated with them to develop business led technology roadmaps and restructure technology functions for cost effectiveness.

In the past few years, I have been a Non-Executive at the University of Bradford, expanding my role in corporate governance and learning about the challenges for the education sector. Working with the Executive Board and other council members has helped me broaden my repertoire of relationship building and influencing skills.

On a personal note, I’m married with two teenage children and currently reside in the UK. My career has taken me to dozens of countries, living in the Netherlands and Switzerland and working in Asia, enriching my global perspective. My wife, a dietician by background and now a chef, teaches cooking classes for children and hosts themed birthday parties and corporate team-building events from our home.   

How has your relationship with La Fosse played a part in your career journey?

One of my earliest significant projects as a CIO at Tate & Lyle was to deliver part of the $250mill reduction in enterprise costs that I led as VP Strategic Transformation. This involved removing 40% of the headcount in IT and lowering IT spend by 15%. During this process we needed to bring in new IT capabilities, which is when I first connected with La Fosse.

More recently, we collaborated with La Fosse Academy to bring in three Associates into our data and analytics team. I had the opportunity to meet some of them in the office and was impressed by their passion and skills. For years, I’ve been focused on finding young talent to bring in and develop on the job, which has been a challenging task. The Academy model proved to be very effective and relatively easy to implement without needing a full interim program.

As I explore new opportunities in the market for my next Executive and NED roles, I’m interested in how I can work with La Fosse and others to build on the eco-system of partners that have helped me in my prior roles and will be crucial to deliver my objectives.

How is the CIO role evolving?

I have experienced and still see three ‘buckets’ of roles for technology leaders;

Traditional technology background: Many CIOs come from a strong technical background, having extensive hands-on experience across IT development, operations and cybersecurity. These individuals manage large IT organisations, often with legacy landscapes and a heavy focus on the technical aspects of the role.

Business partnering: Increasingly, CIOs with a traditional technical background have evolved their roles to business partnering, particularly at the C-suite level. They collaborate closely with functions like supply chain, finance, HR, and sales, understanding their needs and delivering relevant technology solutions. These CIOs retain their technical expertise but are also adept at working cross-functionally to drive business outcomes.

Non-technical business leaders: The third trend involves individuals like myself, who did not grow up in a technology career and others who have significant experience working with C-suite and other business functions at the strategic level. These CIOs increasingly bridge the gap between technology and business, often leveraging their functional exposure to lead and drive digital and technology initiatives that often become an integral part of the business’s goals.

Overall, in my opinion, the CIO role is increasingly moving towards business leadership and strategic partnering. While the traditional CIO roles remain crucial, there is a growing presence of business-savvy CIOs who are part of the Executive and Board teams and can translate business needs into technological solutions and educate leaders on the possibilities that technology can create. This evolution reflects the broader trend of technology becoming an integral part of day-to-day life and overall business strategy.

What’s your view on Digital and AI and how these are impacting enterprise businesses differently compared to people’s daily lives?

In my view, digital is fundamentally another word for technology and is a concept that has been around for a long time but has gathered favour in recent years. Every company already utilises technology, so when we talk about digital transformation, it’s really about enhancing and expanding the use of technology beyond ‘deploying a system’. There’s a lot of hype around ‘going digital’, but at its core, in my opinion, it is about integrating technology deeply into business processes and business strategy at all levels.

I firmly believe that the distinction between a digital strategy and a business strategy is becoming obsolete and that a good digital strategy is really a business strategy built for the digital era. In today’s world, a business strategy inevitably includes digital elements. For example, when we developed our digital roadmap, we integrated digital initiatives into our overall business goals. We re-imagined how technology could address existing pain-points and drive customer and employee engagement and efficiency, creating various future scenarios based on how fast technology could evolve. By embedding digital possibilities into the business roadmaps for each function, we created a plan, owned by the functional leadership teams that leveraged technology to solve near term issues and make possible longer term business objectives.

AI, on the other hand, is a specific set of rapidly maturing technologies with significant potential. Whilst the core set of technologies has been around for years, we’re rapidly experiencing AI in our daily lives through applications like search engines with recommendations and online banking with chatbots. This familiarity sets higher expectations for similar seamless experiences in the workplace and sometimes drives the need for rapid adoption due to the fear of being left behind.

In my experience, AI holds tremendous promise for enterprises, but its adoption is still in the early stages compared to other more mature technology applications. While AI can be considered as just another technology like RPA or SaaS, its capabilities are potentially far-reaching. For example, AI has the potential to transform business models and operations more profoundly than many other technologies, changing whole industry models and giving significant competitive advantage to early adopters. The challenge is the rate at which it is integrated effectively within enterprise systems, cultures and ways of working at scale. In my view, the impact of AI on enterprises is poised to grow substantially as leaders learn to scale the early experiments and address the security and other challenges.

What is your view of AI governance in enterprise businesses in your experience?

Based on my experience, one of the major challenges of AI is the issue of data security and ethical consideration. What I mean is, when human work is transitioned to machines, we must consider the implications of potential errors or failures. If AI leads to problems, who is held accountable? Is it the programmer, the IT function, or another function? This uncertainty in enterprises necessitates robust governance at both the risk committee level and policy level. Additionally, given that AI is fed by data, the need for data governance and security becomes more crucial. Given that Generative AI often relies on internet data, which corporations cannot govern, it becomes more critical to establish stringent data governance within the corporate environment. Enterprises have shareholders and risk committees, making governance essential to ensure data integrity and accountability.

From what I have seen, organisations have started to develop clear guidelines and policies for AI use. This includes determining which function should oversee ethical AI policies, updating them as experience grows, and deciding the extent and pace of AI accessibility for employees.

Given the widespread impact of AI across national borders, companies will need to develop policies in collaboration with governments. In the UK, for example, we have been part of a working group led by the government to brainstorm appropriate policies for AI. While some companies are further ahead in the adoption of AI their policies and governance structures are not widely publicised, as their work can be seen as competitive advantage and containing valuable IP. Typically, these larger organisations with significant investments and manpower are leading the way in defining the scale use of AI and establishing practical governance frameworks.

You attended our La Fosse AI event regarding the future of AI in enterprise, how did you find it?

I was very impressed with the speakers, who provided tangible examples of AI applications from various corporations. At one point, I felt so engaged that I wanted to join the panel, especially when discussing AI technologies for workflow, which I have experience with. The broader potential of combining AI with RPA and workflow was fascinating.

The format was effective, allowing for substantial networking after the panel. I stayed longer than planned due to the many interesting people and conversations. It didn’t feel like a La Fosse event; by that I mean La Fosse weren’t selling themselves, it was orchestrated more as a learning, sharing and networking event and that worked very well.

What have you learnt over your career? What would you say to those who want to be a CIO?

I’ve been privileged because I have been exposed to working with diverse companies and cultures. For those aspiring to be a CIO, my key advice is three things:

Firstly, it’s crucial to understand what the business you are part of is trying to achieve. What is the strategic direction, what is the competitive position and which business outcomes are important, and why? You can then figure out how technology and help to reach those goals.

Secondly, work with other functions to understand their pain and the opportunities technology could bring to them. Every function is different but technology, as an enterprise function, needs to work across the functions and make it easier for customers and employees to get things done. Think about things end-to-end and from the lens of user experience.

Thirdly, be a part of the functional leadership teams, working as a peer with other teams and executives. CIOs often have to overcome the perception that IT is just a cost centre or that IT professionals are too technical to engage with business goals.

I encourage aspiring CIOs to learn the business value of technology and how to sell that value to your team and stakeholders, making them see how technology can help them do their jobs better and achieve strategic and personal goals.

To find out more about La Fosse Executive and the end-to-end solution we offer, please contact Dominic Bosher.