'I'm a bit ballsy': EBRD's Louise McCarthy on persuading suppliers to work for free

Digital transformation is about commercial innovation, argues European Reconstruction and Development Bank's Louise McCarthy

Louise McCarthy thrives on change. Director for digital IT transformation at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), she is now fifteen months into a programme of digitising back office processes and transforming the way that the IT department interacts with the rest of the business.

"There are no IT projects anymore, those are dead," she told Computing. "Now it's all business-owned projects with IT working with the business. IT has become a broker between the suppliers and the business."

Don't ask, don't get

This is McCarthy's seventh post in charge of a large digital transformation programme. Previous employers have included HMRC, Aviva, Transport for London and Specsavers. All transformations are different, and yet there are many commonalities - lessons learned from one can applied to another. The most important of these lessons, she says, is to insist on collaboration and transparency from the start, to involve the business fully from the beginning and then to build trust.

I said, why don't we go and ask contractors to bid for the first seven epics free of charge?

But first you need to grab the business's attention.

"I said, why don't we go and ask contractors to bid for the first seven epics [Agile sprints] free of charge? There was a shocked silence then laughter, then there were people going ‘that'll never happen', but I knew it could work because I've done it before."

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The EBRD began life in 1991 as a way of supporting businesses and promoting market economies in the former Soviet Union. Since then it has expanded in size and scope, providing loans and other financial support to projects and businesses in more than 30 countries. Because the long-term future of the organisation has been unclear for much of its existence, there has been a historic underinvestment in the IT infrastructure which has evolved in a piecemeal way with functional silos, geographical anomalies and systems that don't talk to each other and are cumbersome to use. IT projects have been delivered traditionally by the Waterfall methodology, typically with a two-year delivery schedule.

This legacy setup struggles to support new ways of working. McCarthy leads a transformation team of about 40 people that's dedicated to turning all this around.

"Now it's all about Agile, microservices, cloud, big data, Tableau and delivering a minimum viable product rather than something that's out of date on the day it arrives," she said.

Agile everywhere

It's widely accepted that Agile IT cannot work in isolation. The rest of the business needs to become Agile too, collaborating, innovating, changing, iterating and adapting, otherwise there will simply be a mismatch of timescales and expectations.

Underestimating this need in a previous project (which she asked us not to identify) was the cause of the only process that she feels failed to deliver. "It was just IT delivering to the board and nothing about collaboration. It maybe wasn't a big success."

However, not everyone welcomes change. Inertia is ingrained in many organisations and in both the business and the IT department at ERDB, McCarthy's plans have been met with suspicion and doubt.

"I told business users if you want better systems I need you to sign up to new ways of working. I need full commitment and full involvement of the best resources in business. The business will own the processes and IT owns the systems strategy, and we work together to come up with appropriate solutions. But some people were suspicious about Agile and didn't trust IT to deliver."

Commercial innovation

But back to the plan to get something for nothing. Within four weeks of the RFP process McCarthy had 14 major vendors interested in delivering the transformation project as partners. These were whittled down to a shortlist of four, who then spent eight weeks delivering proofs of concept - the seven epics - in collaboration with 150 people from the business.

There was a real buzz, and they started to trust IT to deliver something really quickly

"The bank had never seen anything like it, they'd never been involved in a transformation process from the very beginning. There was a real buzz, and they started to trust IT to deliver something really quickly. And the suppliers loved it too. It was new to many of them."

So they loved working for eight weeks for free?

"Oh they moaned, ‘she wants everything for nothing', but at the end of the day they have pre-investment funding and one of the suppliers is going to get quite a big project. It's also an opportunity to build relationships with 150 business people.

"It's commercial innovation. I tell people don't feel scared to challenge suppliers. They love it."

Getting things done

IT remains a male-dominated domain, as indeed does finance. As a woman trying to lead a change programme this has sometimes proved troublesome, McCarthy said.

"I think it has hindered me a bit. Some things are 50 times harder, people say ‘you're female and blonde, how can you know about this stuff?' I do have my ways of getting things done, but sometimes it just takes longer."

Such perceptions may also have to do with the fact that she's not a technologist. Instead McCarthy's background is on the financial and commercial side. These skills help her to keep a tight rein on costs, prevent scope creep and ensure that projects remain focused and relevant.

"I am very results focussed. I can say ‘trust me' over and over again, but in the end it's being able to deliver something quickly that people can see," she said.

"I know my limitations and I've got an awesome team of architects who are experts in digital and data. While I'm not technical I know where to find what I need, by dipping into local skills or partner skills, Gartner and the BCS and networking on LinkedIn.

I'm a bit ballsy. You have to be really challenging, and you don't always make friends

"I'm a bit ballsy. You have to be really challenging, and you don't always make friends in everything you do."

Winners and losers

Among those who might harbour ill feeling about the transformation are employees whose jobs will be on the line. While the bank makes heavy use of contractors, McCarthy admits that some internal support roles will likely be lost - although she says the internal team will also be strengthened through investment in training in the newer technologies.

"We're going to move to a higher ratio of permanent employees for our final phase. Over the years we haven't invested in people because we've had a lot of contractors, so now we have an opportunity to upskill them in new systems technologies and digital technologies," she explained.

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