Professionally, I get a kick out of building high performing teams and helping individuals achieve their potential. Before joining RX in 2012 I spent 18 years with Accenture working across multiple industries but always on big transformational technology projects. My first role in RX was Business Development Director, working as part of the technology team but facing out to the business to clarify requirements and track the achievement of business benefits. I was appointed CIO in 2014 to develop and implement global tech solutions in finance, sales and operations and marketing. I am a big believer in having aspirational goals to bring the team together and aim for. I am also a strong collaborator and believe that there are few truly isolated technology projects  ̶  they are almost always business projects supported by technology.

Many of our challenges arose from the nature of the exhibitions industry itself, which is extremely fragmented and acquisitive.  The top ten organisers, including RX, have acquired more than 200 smaller companies  between them in the last 10 years, and almost as many in the decade preceding that.   RX’s first attempt to develop a joined up digital and sales platforms failed (although some successful elements have been carried forward) because there was no parallel business alignment so we ended up with a very complex system which generated more and more exceptions with every upgrade. But we knew that our future would be digitally-enabled and data-driven, so the leadership team at RX continued on its path to align our business processes and data models around the world.

For RX, it isn’t a tech story. It’s about bringing every aspect of our business – sales, finance, marketing, operations – into alignment. All of the major Business Units at RX were involved in defining what one sales process, one marketing process, one set of financial processes would look like, and then tech built and configured platforms to support them.  The results have been transformative. They still aren’t perfect, but they are aligned, so as we now improve them, everyone feels and sees the benefit. We’re now at a place where some 95% of the organisation is using a consistent set of tools and processes. There are still exceptions because we recognise that not all our events are the same, but these exceptions are driven by customer need and by industry specialisation.  So now, if we want to build a new digital product  the speed at which we can roll it out globally is phenomenal, because we only have to integrate it with one set of systems. We can do things in a few weeks or months that would previously take years, or which we simply couldn’t do at all. For RX, across policy, process, and our platforms, digital and data has become incredibly nimble.

Our vision for RX has always been to harness the power of digital and data to drive more value for our customers, and that reality is starting to happen at pace. Over the last few years, we have rolled out our Mercury registration and ticketing platform and introduced a compelling suite of Business Building tools which are now being deployed quickly around the world. We have a talented product team, so engagement with these products is shooting up and customers are reaping the benefits with more leads and interactions, and greater ROI.    For example, our Lead Manager app enables exhibitors to collect and qualify sales leads by simply scanning the badges of attendees. Colleqt QR makes it possible for attendees to proactively capture and process all the exhibitor, sponsor, and product information they are interested in, quickly and sustainably, on their mobile phones. Exhibitor Profiles offer exhibitors compelling opportunities to promote their brands and products and stand out from their competitors.  And ‘Exhibitor Dashboard’, by consolidating all their leads in one place, gives our exhibitors a data driven approach to measuring and improving their event performance. 

We learned the hard way that change must be business driven, not technology driven. Your leadership team need to set the policy and processes in the way that works best for the whole business globally, and then technology should follow with support. If you attempt to deploy technology without that alignment up-front, you are going to struggle.   Each area of our business transformation programme had a global solutions owner supported by a sponsor from our senior management team. Our global tech team would frequently get into debates with different parts of the business about how things should be done, and we needed a respected process owner to step in and say no, we’re not doing it that way anymore. Or, indeed, to say ‘you know what, you’re right. We need to keep that difference because it’s a core part of who we are and how we serve that market.’ It can’t be a tech person making those decisions.

Change is never easy, but I think the net result for RX is something special in our industry. As I said, it's very common in events to grow by acquisition and not that common to fully integrate those acquisitions into the business. The net result for many of our competitors is that it’s harder to develop new products, harder to do data analytics, and harder to deliver the customers benefits that we are now seeing from our digital products. Our process means that RX is in a hugely competitive position as an organisation.   The absolute goal of our data gathering is to know each of our customers, and the industries in which they operate, well enough to understand what they're trying to achieve so that we can pro-actively help them to be more successful through our events. The process we’ve been through to align our business has been challenging but worth it, because we can now develop and roll out new products that add value for our customers, wherever they are in the world, in timescales that we could previously only have dreamed of. 

I have been a huge Star Wars fan since the age of nine, when the first film came out. When my daughter was younger, she and some friends asked if they could go to a Comic Con. She told me that her friend’s dad had an amazing costume and wanted me to find something equally impressive. Never one to resist a challenge, I discovered that the guy who made the Storm Trooper costumes for the first movie lived nearby, and still had the original presses. I'm lucky that I’m the same height and build as him, so they fit me perfectly. I’ve worn mine to numerous Comic Cons since. One of the joys of working for RX is that we organise MCM, NYCC and a host of other fantastic pop culture events around the world. Now, not only do I have the perfect cosplay – I also get a free pass!