Time For A Change
Sutton knows a lot about moving IT from a utilitarian to a strategic approach, after a two-and-a-half year stint at Foxtel. Until her appointment, Foxtel had never had an executive-level person responsible for IT. Her role was to develop an IT strategy and then progressively implement it with a heavy focus around providing additional support for the parts of the business involved in the management of subscribers.
By the time she left, her team was well into a CRM program using PeopleSoft CRM and had implemented the exchange campaign management product Valex. They had also done a lot of work around infrastructure. She significantly lowered Foxtel's infrastructure costs by introducing standardisation, and rationalised external support costs by introducing one prime relationship to replace a myriad tiny relationships. And after a lot of work around data warehousing, she turned that into a fundamental part of the systems capability at Foxtel, ensuring all reporting was done through the data warehouse, which had become "quite a rich source of information" by the time she left.
The Arnott's job lured Sutton away because she was ready for a change and was attracted by the Arnott's culture.
"I met the managing director of Arnott's, John Doumani, and he was just the sort of person I wanted to work for," she says. "He's an inspiring kind of guy - lots of energy, very bright, clearly taking the company somewhere - whereas Foxtel was, and still is in the doldrums of the shareholders, and it's very hard to understand whether it is going to do anything or go anywhere with digital and the like. I was sick of waiting. I wanted a company that was making money, had a clear agenda of where they were going and where you could really sink your teeth in and get things done."
Arnott's was that kind of company, she says. One of the many Australian icons now owned overseas, Arnott's has been making biscuits in Australia for more than 135 years, including some of Australia's most famous such as Tim Tam (billed as the biggest selling chocolate biscuit in the world) and Sao. Now owned by Campbell Soup Company, the company today employs about 2500 people in Australia, with its biscuits made in Australia, by Australians. Campbell's in turn is one of the world's largest food companies, with a portfolio of more than 20 market-leading food brands in more than 40 countries around the world.
But when Sutton came on board she says she found an organisation in which IT had been very under-resourced. The systems were old and heavily customised, with lots of bespoke development and with such lean teams supporting that infrastructure there was very little opportunity to do anything new. She says the new forces battering the industry have forced the company to a conscious decision to ramp up its investment in IT. Building more capability will allow Campbell's to improve its relationships with customers and suppliers and move to the "future promised land of collaborative commerce where everybody wins".
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