Independent Cement and Lime Group (ICL) CFO Bruce Campbell spoke with us about how he initially approached the role and assessed the relevance of the Digital Convergence (DC) Partnership.
Thank you for your time today; we greatly appreciate it. After recently joining ICL as CFO, I would like to know from your perspective how you found out about Digital Convergence’s engagement with the business.
Before commencing with ICL 18 months ago, I had multiple discussions with CEO Damien Garlick about the business’s profitability, current processes, systems, and 3rd party providers.
Damien had previously inherited older systems and collaborated with Digital Convergence on significant system upgrades and process improvement activities.
DC was still actively partnered with the business on an ongoing support and project basis.
When you commenced with ICL, how did you approach systems and data?
A thorough review of systems and processes, including cross-referencing data to ensure everything was balanced.
All systems were in excellent working order and assured me that the data within the ERP and reports were a great source of truth.
It meant that I could be hands-off with the system, trust the reporting, and leave engagement with DC and data management with the team.
Now that you have been with the business for 18 months, how do you view the Partnership with Digital Convergence?
The DC Partnership is an important one for ICL as DC acts as an impartial party undertaking the role of understanding the objectives of the ICL business and advising what systems and processes would be suitable.
They are knowledgeable in ERP systems and robust regarding action, lift the standard, and come to the table with excellent and suitable ideas.
DC is accountable and bold in saying what the problem is regarding the issue; whether it was due to us, DC, or Pronto, then swiftly jump into action to solve the issue.
When deciding on retaining the DC partnership, what would you say has been the deciding factor?
From a CFO perspective, you can hire an excellent IT SME, but the brain’s trust at DC brings more insight, expertise, and cost-effective solutions to better our business.
When I look at challenges in the business, I or someone internally may have come up with what we think is 5% of a solution. If I then engage our DC client manager, who then collaborates with multiple SME’s with exposure to similar challenges and solutions within DC, I then get a 100% better solution.
I also quizzed my staff on their interactions with DC staff; the feedback was always collaborative and positive.
It was apparent after my review that the business was running well, profitable, had the right tools that gave great clarity.
My experience with Pronto in the past had been that the business had to create its needs based on technological language.
When you work with DC, they act as a conduit, understanding your business needs and translating into Pronto requirements. They are also excellent at communicating back to our business as we are not IT experts; it just brings another layer of transparency to all parties.
We must also have a “middleman” for risk mitigation, especially around system access.
To summarise, I would not get the same outcome if not for the input and engagement of DC; it would be significantly more expensive without better outcomes.