Interview: Dominic Redmond, group CIO, PageGroup
Dominic Redmond, group CIO of recruitment agency PageGroup, is a digital chief pushed by a want to assist his staff and the remainder of the enterprise use information to spice up operational processes and buyer companies.
Having began his profession as a mission supervisor, Redmond delivered main initiatives for Xerox and Aon that touched on the implementation of know-how. As he more and more centered on IT programs, his profession trajectory modified, saying: “I blended large-scale transformations with IT early in my profession, in order that’s why I’m a technologist at this time.”
After working as head of technique for brewer SAB Miller, in November 2016 Redmond joined FTSE 250 agency PageGroup – usually greatest identified by its Michael Web page model. He labored as an IT director and managed functions globally for the corporate earlier than assuming the group CIO position in January 2021.
“I ran a significant digital transformation programme and began to inherit different elements of know-how till it turned fairly a pure segue into taking the CIO job, as a result of I used to be working all of the totally different items, and know-how is an enormous alternative in skilled companies,” he says.
As group CIO, Redmond has a world mandate to drive enterprise efficiency by know-how and information. He says there are a lot of sides to that broad position, together with partaking with disparate features, overseeing info safety, managing day-to-day operational IT programs, plus some gazing right into a crystal ball.
“I search for alternatives to make the most of trendy know-how and connectivity. Then you definitely get into your online business programs, and the truth that these platforms are what we finally use to have interaction with our prospects, whether or not that’s purchasers or candidates,” he says.
“I additionally look to assist drive productiveness throughout our operations enterprise, which is the individuals who promote and recruit. These persons are successfully the revenue-generating a part of our enterprise. The extra we may give them the suitable instruments, the extra profitable we’re.”
Delivering service excellence
Since assuming the CIO position, Redmond has delivered a know-how technique and created a roadmap to a contemporary enterprise structure. He believes considered one of his key achievements is that the remainder of the corporate recognises his staff delivers nice companies throughout the enterprise, with the suitable ranges of effectivity and excellence.
Redmond additionally factors to the event of a tradition of cohesiveness and collaboration, which promotes a powerful sense of teamwork throughout the IT organisation. This sense of togetherness promotes connectivity inside his staff and helps construct relationships with different individuals throughout PageGroup.
“If you happen to lead a operate, you need individuals in your staff to be supported, to develop, to be engaged of their day-to-day work, and to wish to are available and work with their colleagues. But it surely’s additionally essential as a result of a lot of know-how now’s cross-functional,” he says.
“It’s important to have so many groups coming collectively, from infrastructure and cyber safety by to structure and the appliance aspect together with your distributors. If you happen to can’t try this work collaboratively and cohesively, you aren’t environment friendly in what you ship.”
Now Redmond desires to construct on these technological and cultural foundations to assist additional digitalisation. The intention right here is to make use of data-enabled applied sciences, together with automation and synthetic intelligence (AI), to reinforce office actions and enhance worker productiveness.
“This effort isn’t in regards to the alternative of individuals,” he says. “This effort is about taking the work that our workers do that may be made simpler by know-how, or certainly made extra environment friendly by know-how, and permitting them to do the issues that differentiate us as an organisation. That’s the place the context of any digital, information, AI, or technological transformation ought to all the time be grounded.”
Integrating enterprise programs
Redmond has constructed a know-how stack that makes use of a variety of big-name suppliers, together with Salesforce, Microsoft, NetSuite, and ServiceNow. One of many issues he was eager to assist the organisation transfer away from was unconnected spot options that solved one problem at a time limit.
To convey a stronger sense of route and cohesion, Redmond has labored with Boomi, utilizing the provider’s platform to combine companies and information. He says the result’s a joined-up method to enterprise applied sciences the place Boomi helps to combine greater than 150 functions throughout the enterprise.
“Boomi additionally allowed us to create an information lake, which initially began with the finance info in our NetSuite system,” he says. “Nonetheless, this success shortly allowed us to herald operational information on efficiency, KPIs, and metrics, and that has grown over a number of years, as a result of we obtained our method to integration proper in the beginning.”
“This effort is about taking the work that our workers do that may be made simpler by know-how…and permitting them to do the issues that differentiate us as an organisation”
Dominic Redmond, PageGroup
PageGroup began working with Boomi in 2016 after a procurement train. Redmond says the platform helps information circulation round PageGroup. In the present day, the corporate makes use of Boomi to streamline day-to-day operations, together with processing CVs, onboarding candidates, paying suppliers and managing worker bills.
“Now, at each touchpoint when one system talks to a different, we’re utilizing Boomi to make that occur,” he says. “The know-how is the best way we transfer information round our programs. However, clearly, a few of that’s processing somewhat than simply shifting information. So, Boomi ingests our information after which strikes it into totally different programs.”
These integrations enable PageGroup to course of over a million CVs every month. Throughout all enterprise processes, Redmond says Boomi’s integration platform creates a unified view of knowledge. He’s now contemplating different methods to make use of the know-how, together with taking a proactive method to drawback decision in an age of AI.
“The opposite space, based mostly on what I’m listening to and what we’ve already considered, is, if we’re utilizing this know-how to combine companies, and we’re utilizing brokers in different programs, how far can Boomi go to be our management round identification, monitoring and governance? That’s one thing we’ll proceed to contemplate.”
Delivering contemporary experiences
Along with utilizing digital and information to reinforce worker roles, Redmond is keen to make use of know-how to complement customer support. With hundreds of thousands of individuals looking for work in an more and more aggressive labour market, Web page Group should concentrate on creating efficient digital engagement processes.
“You wish to try this work the suitable approach,” he says. “Digital can’t simply be a catch-all. It must be one thing that feels just like the digital channels are as personalised as attainable. So, that’s the entrance finish of a variety of what we do as a know-how staff.”
Redmond describes these efforts as a funnel by which digital applied sciences and human experience information candidates in the direction of the most effective alternatives. As jobseekers interact with the corporate, they transfer by the funnel, specializing in particular openings and alternatives, a few of which can depend on digital interfaces.Ultimately, these people attain some extent the place they’re positioned in a job, and there’s a excessive diploma of human-to-human interplay at that stage.
“That’s how the know-how and folks come collectively as you undergo the funnel,” says Redmond. “We’ve undoubtedly obtained that cycle from digital, personalised interactions by to the extra direct people-based interactions. That stage of interplay can fluctuate at totally different levels, however, in precept, that’s the way it works.”
Redmond says the suitable digital method helps to curate relationships with candidates in order that they consider PageGroup as the primary level of name for recruitment companies now and sooner or later: “It’s about attempting to residence in on the essence of the particular person on the coronary heart of what we do, and it’s supported by know-how to allow us to work with as many individuals as we have to.”
Defining the CIO of the long run
In the course of the subsequent few years, Redmond will work along with his staff to make sure that digital and information applied sciences are sourced to offer inventive options to the corporate’s enterprise challenges. Whereas there’s ongoing debate in regards to the future position of the digital chief, he says nice CIOs all the time concentrate on supply.
Nonetheless, some points will impression the tasks of IT chiefs, most notably the democratisation of know-how. Whereas the trail to digital transformation up to now decade has concerned line-of-business workers making extra selections about IT, Redmond recognises that the extent of democratisation has risen in an age of AI.
“I don’t assume we’ve ever seen it like this earlier than,” he says. “Discovering methods to work cross-functionally, being extra collaborative, working with that ambiguity, and attempting to border the way you convey a enterprise collectively in a extra matrix approach by know-how is a unique position from command and management, which is probably how the CIOs of 10 years in the past had been working.”
Redmond says profitable CIOs of the long run will embrace this engaged method. Reasonably than being requested to construct one thing and returning, doubtlessly, with an answer that doesn’t overcome the problem, digital leaders and their groups will work in concord with enterprise friends to develop data-enabled programs and companies.
“There’s a variety of adaptability now, so there’s an adjustment for CIOs to make,” he says. “Additionally, issues haven’t settled down. Generative and agentic AI are nonetheless at an embryonic stage. As that space of innovation turns into slightly bit extra settled, the long run position of the CIO will grow to be clearer.”
Whereas there was vital hype about generative and agentic AI through the previous few years, Redmond recognises that many organisations, together with his personal, have established pursuits in utilizing AI, significantly machine studying. The position for CIOs now’s to contemplate how this confluence of advances produces enterprise worth.
“If you happen to have a look at the best way we run CRM campaigns by our digital groups, they’re utilizing information intelligence and algorithms to learn how to present individuals essentially the most personalised content material that’s going to have interaction them in one of the simplest ways. That’s not a brand new method; that’s been round for some time,” he says.
“Then, after all, there’s the day-to-day processes round how the enterprise makes use of GenAI instruments, resembling Microsoft Copilot. CIOs should think about the right way to use these programs successfully. There’s plenty of stuff occurring, and it’s about homing in on areas which might be going so as to add essentially the most worth.”
