welcome to today's service now UK I executive Circle podcast I'm delighted to be joined by Sally an Hicks the global vice president of automation at Experian hi thank you for having me so Sally um I think we have to start with what does a global vice president of automation do and why is it so pertinent to a company like Experian so it's a great question and I think when I joined the organization people thought I would be looking um for pockets of automation you know for pockets of of things that we could automate on a on a task level basis but we've really developed that role and that capability into something far wider reaching that covers really the end to endend of everything experience doing um we're looking at how we accelerate value how we bring um you know our value points with our customers earlier in the um in the journey we're looking at how we generate efficiencies across our delivery organizations um and we're looking at automation opportunities throughout those um throughout those um value points really so could we put it in do an example obviously we've all probably use Experian to check our credit scores um how does automation you know what's it been doing to support that experience from a from an end user perspective so there's b2c which is where you know we know our credit scores and then there's the B2B business which is all about delivering um great software to our customers so you know what does that mean and who are our customers so the software we deliver essentially sits within three pillars we've got decisioning software um we've got analytics software and we've got identity and fraud software our customers are lenders so people who are um lending money to us as consumers um so traditionally that was the banks you know the Barkley and Sant andz um but you know as things move forwards um in in the world that we all know actually the lenders you know are you know in healthc care in Automotive in buy now pay dat you know when we're buying online we see CL pop up you know there's there's lending going on behind all of those things and so our software Solutions are to support the lenders in those Journeys with their customers so working out you know if you can have a mortgage how much you can borrow if you're telling the truth you know are you who you say you are um you know you know are you are you are you honest and honorable and um what kind of analytics do those businesses need to look at all of the data you know about us as a as a population to work out what the levers are that they need to pull to make sure that they're lending to the profile that they want to attract amazing so so what which kind of departments do you find are coming to you more with the can you automate this Alle can you automate that I mean where do all the requests come from so we sit within the global business so our regions in our organization um deliver that software to their customers so um we're about enabling them so we need to make sure that we can deliver our worldclass software as fast as possible that we enable those Regional delivery teams to be as efficient as possible so it's how do we get the software out there how do we enable everything to do with the software in the most automated way that's possible um so we talk about a vision for oneclick on boarding for our customers um and we talk about those delivery organizations being able to focus on um the things that matter most which is their customer experience and being able to focus on the things where they can add value as humans and not be you know focused on repeat tasks so we're looking at repeat tasks um and things that can be um can be done for people so that they can you know value add and a lot of those um those things you just talked about the value that it provides are often things spoken about in regards to generative AI where does automation finish and end or does it not and where does generative AI start in that country I wouldn't think of them as either beginning or ending I think of probably things more in layers so um and and to you know when I joined the organization and people probably thinking that I would come here and automate tasks so you know would you need to send those emails that you send today or could something do that for you you know would you need to create that report or some could someone do that for you but actually what I do is look at the end to endend so um if I take the example of onboarding a new client um the end to endend is the journey from when um a customer decides to buy our software from us to the day that they're up and running on that software and that involves things like um building the solution designing it you know configuring it testing it giving the customer access to the solution you know different customers access to different elements of the solution based on their their Persona and creating you know secure transport access so that they can share files with us and things like that all of those things um and so there's a process involved with that right what I take away from that is it's not just you know like we use chat GPT we put in some information that we want it turn something out you're weaving it in as part of that endtoend process um as they said as a layer and I think what was what I really took from that what was really interesting is that you've got to have that what am I trying to do with it first what is that problem what is that Outlook that I'm trying to achieve and then how has it woven in to get to that right outcome exactly and I think a lot of people think of generous something you can just plug in and it's going to do something but if you don't know what do you want to achieve you're not really going to get what you want out of it so what do you recommend to to other businesses and other leaders in your position who are saying look where do I start so I think don't start thinking I need to do generative AI um you need to know what your problems are uh you need to know the problems you're trying to solve and you need to have decided what your what Your Vision is what good looks like yeah so you know and most Business Leaders will will know this right you know they're they'll they'll have you know some fairly clear views about the problems that they face the challenges and what they want their delivery to look like what they want their organization their service offerings you know whether it's a product or a Services organization they will know where they're trying to go they will have a vision and a strategy and you know they should know the things that are wrong in the organization at a macro level if not a micro level so the things that that aren't happening and um you know it's that that they need to dig into further to find the things that actually they want to to automate to make more repeatable um to have just happen automatically so that people within the organization can as I say focus on value I think you know every leader will know that within their organization actually there's a lot of waste if if they're honest with themselves you know in any organization probably over a hundred people there could be 20 to 30% waste and and by that I mean tasks that people are doing that are all timately not adding value to the bottom line and um you know that happens because nothing stays the same you know we're all always changing and adapting but yet people's jobs do not change and adapt as quickly as the environment around us and if they don't adapt then essentially what you could be doing is doing something that isn't required anymore and some people are smart and figure that out and stop doing it themselves but oftentimes most people at the Grassroots have to be told don't do that anymore and so it's it's our job as as leaders and Visionaries to figure out what the new thing looks like what the new the target operating model is and to stop all of the things that that we used to do that we don't need to do anymore and an Automation and generative AI will be of value to us when we figured out that thing but we've kind of got to figure out that first yeah and then we automate the things that we need to carry on doing and we use generative AI to help us create them more efficiently I think a really particular word you used um in that answer was people and obviously that you saying taking them on that Journey some people come to that realization how they can do things differently others don't how do you go about within an organization that change that sort of change transformation I mean businesses have been on a digital transformation Journey for a long time this is just another Evolution but how do you bring them on that Journey so I think um openness um is is really important and allowing you know everyone on your organization to see and understand your vision your strategy and your view of what good looks like and where you're going is really important I think that um most people's struggle with adapting to change is when they don't understand that but if you can take your time to tell and show people where you're going then actually every human has the ability to understand um that certain things need to change so that's the most important thing and that's at every layer of the organization you know no strategy can be created in a boardroom and executed without you know that cascading all the way down through the organization it sounds obvious right I'm you know probably preaching to the converted but um everything we do has to drive that culture of you know change and understanding of of knowledge of of the strategy of sharing it it has to you know throughout what we do it's um it's an imprint of of everything we do so as the queen of automation if there was one thing in your life even outside of work that you could automate what would it be which you know I've had a really painful experience recently with my um with my pension so I've been doing probably what many people will um will have gone through which is to transfer um you know a Company pension part with a previous organization into my um into my new company it's a terrible process you know I had to to fill in some online forms digital forms to say I wanted to go through this process excellent I think this whole thing is going to be managed digitally no doesn't work like that so they send me a pack of about 20 A4 pages right and 12 of those pages are forms for me to fill in and return but I'm not told how I need to submit my forms I'm not given a envelope to submit my forms and I'm not told whether I need to get them back from my new provider and send them in one go or whether I need to send them separately I just just ludic it gets worse than this because when I haven't filled them in because I'm going through a process of figuring out what to fill in I get sent a second pack hey Sally you wanted to to to transfer your pension you don't seem to have responded to the first pack we sent you so here's another pack I start sending the forms back which I'm told I can send back by taking a photo of with my phone or scanning and emailing so back into the digital world back into the digital world and I sit there looking at this knowing exactly what I would do if if I was on the other side of the fence it's an end to end thing right and if you look at this process you can see what's happened because they haven't looked at the end to end so they'd given me an online form to fill in to say hey I want to do this but then they sent me all this paperwork and you probably couldn't even find an envelope after all that either to send anything exactly and I'm going to have to buy a stamp at some point you know um well this has been enlightening Sally um in the world of Automation and thank you so much for joining us today um it's been a pleasure thank you for having me it's been a pleasure