I have been in financial and professional services for over 25 years now. I started with a global credit card processor in the mid-1990s as a mainframe developer – it was not really what I thought I‘d be doing, but I thought I’d give it a go. It played to my strengths of logical thinking, algorithms, and so on, so it all came quite easily to me and was something I really began to enjoy.
I moved up through the ranks over the next five years and moved into what I‘d consider early-days data analytics. I gained a good foundation of working with and reporting data. Starting my next role as a database manager with BDO, over the next 18 years, I worked with data and began to build upon their data systems, bringing in new technologies and aligning that with the business strategies, eventually leading the technology function and working strategically with BDO Global. This experience allowed me to move to Nexia International in 2018 to develop and implement a global digital strategy for the network. However, at the end of 2020, I was approached by Haines Watts who asked me if I was interested in a new opportunity. The rest is history!
When I came into professional services, I was still quite young. It wasn‘t a case of me coming into it thinking I want to be part of professional services, but it was a great opportunity. My previous employer (BDO) offered me a role in which I could learn and develop, and it was an exciting challenge for me.
Haines Watts stood out because they had identified that they needed someone with my experience to help them. They understood that technology played a key part in their business growth and would help them reach their goals and they were willing to invest in those areas.
Be open, honest and communicate. No one has told me that I communicate too much. The more you engage, the more you understand. I think the more information you have, the better the decisions you can make – and the more you know the business goals and how to apply technology to help attain them.
What I would like to achieve is getting a greater consistency and alignment in the use of technology across the group. This will allow greater internal collaboration to maximise resources, capabilities and improve efficiency in their client services. The consistency will also drive an element of commercial gain from technology providers, which will lead to saving on any other technologies we may want to invest in later.
An online presence is key and having the digital tools to connect with your clients and customers. Especially now, with people working remotely and isolating, we can’t always rely on face-to-face interactions, so understanding your clients and having the right technology bridges that gap so you and your clients can continue to engage with one another.
Are they getting the right advice? And have they got the right technology advisors with them because it is all out there and sometimes technology isn‘t their strength. They need someone who knows their business and technology and who can point them in the right direction and make the right decisions.
I think technology will remove a lot of the manual tasks across the board, but through the automation and processing of the data, will lead to having very rich data pools that firms need to know what to do with it. Also, the shape of the worker will change, more employers will need to be prepared for these digitally skilled and data-minded employees coming into their roles; and I also think the role of these professional services will shift to more advisory as we have so much data and analysis that we can plot patterns and predict more.
Before we were locked down, I loved to travel! I have young twin-daughters who have consumed most of my time for the past few years. I also have a lot of time for family and spending that quality time together, having that work-life balance – and the role with Haines Watts is remote but it’s my time to decide what I do with it, but I can be based at home. Kids grow up too quickly, and you can‘t put a price on being around that.
Although I don‘t think I ever would, I would love to get into property development. The idea of taking a property, doing it up and moving on, I think the project management from start to end would be great. It’s having a challenge and a vision then making it a reality.