CASE STUDY
Throughout the transformation journey , Insight demonstrated that it had the answers , the people and the capability to meet the modernisation challenges .
ACCA ’ s Head of IT Commercial & Operational Services , Doug Galt , summed up the relationship : “ We wanted a trusted partner that could lead us forward and grow with us . Insight brings industry knowledge and innovation to ACCA to challenge our thinking .”
Tony McClelland , CIO , ACCA , discusses the project in further detail .
Can you tell us about your role at the company and what this looks like day-to-day ?
I lead a team of just under 100 colleagues spanning a range of areas including architecture , planning and partnering , digital platform teams , DevOps , testing , supplier management , IT operations and cybersecurity . A lot of my personal focus is on strategic priorities such as Digital Transformation , the ACCA qualification and modern ways of working .
What does ‘ future innovation ’ mean to you and what are some
of the complexities you expect to encounter along the way ? dependencies . Once upon a time if we lost a key office location many of our colleagues would lose access to crucial systems . That doesn ’ t happen anymore as our systems and access are now cloudbased , allowing colleagues to work seamlessly from anywhere in the world .
How far does the cloud enable you to be ‘ truly digital ’ and what does this mean for business capabilities ?
Cloud is not digital and digital is not cloud . Having a strong cloud-based infrastructure improves scalability , increases speed of deployment and removes infrastructure as a key dependency for change initiatives . We now focus on the needs of our members and students and the solutions that support them rather than focusing on infrastructure and data centres .
What ’ s next for ACCA in terms of your Digital Transformation journey ?
We are completing the final stages of our Digital Transformation by deploying new flexible core systems . They make ACCA fitter and faster and allow us to better support business technologist colleagues who work alongside IT to develop data insights , improve customer experience and develop new products and services . p
We see innovation in two ways . First , how we use emerging technologies , such as Generative AI , to improve our offerings ; and second , how we work in a faster and more efficient manner to allow us to move at speed in the market .
As the global professional body for certified accountants , how important is providing a consistent , resilient and secure technology infrastructure ?
Resilience is critical for a global business . Without the flexible infrastructure we had built we could not have continued to work in a smooth and almost uninterrupted way when COVID struck . Geo-politics , data localisation laws and the need to develop further markets all point to having resilience and flexibility that allow us to scale and to absorb shocks as the need arises .
Can you tell us more about the types of end-user issues prior to your work with Insight and how you addressed and overcame these ?
Before our work with Insight , we had dependencies on aging technology with geographic limitations and
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