Transformative: that’s the one word that captures the Top 10 CIOs for 2019. The cream of the CIO 100’s crop – announced today as IDG published its annual list – come from an eclectic array of industries. All have driven inspiring change.

IDG said: “The CIO 100 celebrates technology and business leaders driving change in successful organisations, and is a showcase of the achievements of 100 executives tackling transformation in their markets.” Here’s the list’s top 10 CIOs.

The UK’s Top 10 CIOs

1: Andrew Quail, SGN

Andrew Quail has been engaged in a “total IT transformation” at the UK gas distribution company. Examples include a two-year cloud migration and automation programme. Applications on mobile devices for a largely field-based 5,000 employees and contractors now allow self-provisioning and for the apps to be decommissioned in minutes (as opposed to many months previously) and with pence per minute pricing rather than huge capital investment.

“The IT department is now recognised as an internal consultancy and facilitator of change rather than an inhibitor”, his 2019 entry reads.

2: Dan McCormick, Rentokil International

Dan McCormick and his team in 2018 replatformed heritage technologies to global serverless cloud platforms. More than 350 data centre-hosted apps will be replaced with 34 cloud UX products. McCormick sees the real potential in finding how to monetise data previously stuck in database silos. Cloud-connected service points have been deployed worldwide to over 70,000 devices, generating new revenues. His team also worked to analyse the 24/7 real-time data.

“[This has] uncovered the sales opportunity of thousands of field service recommendations going back over five years” his 2019 entry reads.

3: Dave Roberts, Radius Payments Solutions

Dave Roberts has a particularly crucial role to play in delivering ambitious growth targets by expanding the organisation’s product portfolio. In 2018 the company introduced a new vehicle insurance business has been set up, with telematics and fuel cards introduced. Roberts’ key initiatives have been developing an IoT capability for the core telematics product, completing the first version of an integrated dashcam that captures near-real time video footage of driver incidents, and creating a mobile phone-based telematics platform that works without a ‘black box’ device in the vehicle.

Roberts also moved the central processing and billing system from a 20-year-old Oracle and Sage system to a cloud-based ERP platform, his 2019 entry reads.

Andrew Jordan team’s 2018 introduction of predictive analytics improved forecasting accuracy, providing much better visibility over key travel metrics, and giving customers new ways to control their travel spend. CWT’s large historic travel data sets and public data on commodity prices, macro-economic indicators, weather and holidays can now be analysed to identify patterns and correlations, generating robust predictions for a customer’s future spend, specifically the number of trips and cost per trip. P

Jordan and his function also released an AI-powered insight, reporting and visualisation tool on top of CWT’s data lake, his 2019 entry reads.

5: Julie Pierce, FSA

Julie Pierce is Director of Openness, Data and Digital at the Food Standards Agency, where her team has implemented new networks, cloud-hosted solutions (the FSA now has just one on-premise server left), Office 365 and new devices. In 2018 she rolled out a set of strategic surveillance data services to look for changing risks to food for UK consumers. Risks can relate to food safety, authenticity or crime, can stem from any part of the globe, and can be present today or in the future.

“Wherever possible, she took the approach of cloud-based services, open data and open source algorithms” her 2019 entry reads.

6: Andrew Proctor, Staffordshire University

Andrew Proctor’s team in 2018 completed a cloud migration and completely decommissioned on-premise data centres. This slashed planned capital expenditure and freed up space, also enabling fast and effective delivery of IT systems to match demand (for example, allowing a compute resource scale-up to handle such critical business processing periods as clearing). The platform supported the near-immediate introduction of new capabilities, greatly increasing the number of experiments and amount of research undertaken.

Proctor and his team also helped set up the UK’s first degree in esports resulting in significant additional income for the university, his 2019 entry reads.

7: David Henderson, Global Radio

David Henderson’s pushed through a long list of new technology deployments in 2018: a new tech platform for a digital audio ad exchange, including listener ID tracking and dashboards; new sales process and tools for commercial teams; new radio studios with integrated TV-quality video cameras; and an app that surfaces over 1,500 podcasts and which has grown the audience by 30 percent. Henderson and his Technology & Operations function even introduced an app that assesses the impact of events on an audience – from weather conditions to song choice, from advertising to competitions.

“There is even a machine learning solution in place that can forecast demand (and supply issues)” his 2019 entry reads.

8: Dylan Roberts, Leeds City Council

Dylan Roberts is, in effect, the digital czar for the third biggest city in England. As Chief Digital and Information Officer for Leeds City Council and NHS Leeds Clinical Commissioning Group, he is putting digital at the core of delivering better health and wellbeing, a strong regional economy, better travel and transport, better housing standards and improving the lives of the poorest the fastest.

A response to the gargantuan cuts in government grant to local government (circa 60%) and the exponential rise in demand for services, the digitally enabled ‘City as a Platform’ strategy is changing the face of local public service delivery by providing services individualised around the needs of specific people and business.

“Roberts and his team have achieved adherence to agreed technical design principles for all technical developments and procurements, and the setup and funding of numerous tech and innovation hubs across Leeds” his 2019 entry reads.

9: Tiffany Hall, Cancer Research UK

Tiffany Hall and her team created a searchable database that helps match cancer patients to early-phase clinical trials of treatments faster than ever before. Used by a network of oncologists, the database has not only resulted in the faster recruitment of patients to trials and better patient care, but has also enhanced the international profile and cross-organisation collaboration of Cancer Research UK’s experimental cancer medicine centre network.

“She has channelled pro bono work from a digital agency to deliver a proof-of-concept augmented reality application for smartphones that shows the sugar content of foods and drinks”, her 2019 entry reads.

10: Craig Walker, Shell

Craig Walker’s team in 2018 deployed a blockchain-based crude oil trading platform and applied machine learning and AI to the vast quantity of sensor data coming back from the company’s 14 refineries and chemical plants for better preventive maintenance, real-time operational improvements and increasing uptime and tool time. Other cutting-edge releases included a camera that can spot gaseous releases and identify what type of gas it is, and the rollout of augmented reality solutions to plant workers to make data capture and use easier and faster

“We are transforming from moving molecules to moving electrons. And that business is all driven by IT. We are in the process of using digital technology to create business models we have not yet invented” his 2019 entry reads.