Utility Week

15 ISSUE 02 FEB/2019 By his admission, Young is an operations veteran rather than a tech wizard. Before Dentsu Aegis Network he was chief operating officer at the Post Office, and held senior executive positions at Orange Verizon and BT. His early career was in the services – 11 years in the special forces and seven as a police detective sergeant. He entered the tech world on the security side at Orange, then a fledgling mobile start-up. "I went from that into IT pretty quickly, more at Orange's instigation than mine – they gave me IT ops and it really went from there. "I've enjoyed the stretch it's given me, the chance to really learn about new technologies, and what part they can play in changing a company's profile as it engages with its customer base." Centrica's leadership has a lot on its plate, growing the business in new areas such as connected homes, battery technologies, and repositioning away from large centralised power stations. en there's the job of making another £500 million in efficiency savings each year and the ongoing rollout of digitalisation and improving customer journeys. Centrica, like all the big energy players, has had to learn the hard way the customer is king. With more than 70 energy suppliers in the UK, and record numbers switching to challenger brands, the market has never been more competitive. But while tough competition might risk investment at some companies, Young says the opposite is true at Centrica, which is quickening the pace of digitalisation and will be investing more in IT in 2019 than it did in 2018, though he won't be drawn on numbers. "I'm not going to discuss the politics of the UK price cap, but it clearly affects the whole industry. It now means anything you do to become more efficient as a corporate can't in any way compromise customer engagement. So it just makes us move faster and faster to become more efficient." Q What is Centrica's destination in digital terms? e end goal for anyone doing my job is to ensure that any interaction an employee has with the rest of the employee base and any interaction the customer has with the corporate should be entirely end-to-end digital. When you reach that point, I would argue that from where I sit, the job is complete. After that, it becomes a question of 'Do I replace this piece of digital architecture with a newer piece?'. We've got digital channels that allow us to interact with our customer base in real time. It's taken many millions of pounds of investment to make that happen. We looked at what John Lewis is doing in its digital channel. We timed how long a transaction took and looked to do it in a shorter time. e more time customers spend dealing with an engagement they might not necessarily want to do, the more likely they are to become disenchanted. e more at ease they are acting and engaging in that digital channel, the more likely you are to end up with a customer that feels quite satisfied. I'll give you another example. My wife would get very frustrated whenever she went onto the M&S site to order something, because she'd go through a process where she went through many pages, got to the end where she wanted to pay for the item, only to find it was out of stock. And she's already spent 15 minutes in that process. Our digital journeys are designed not to work that way, and we test them with customers. We bring customers into a digital studio here, and we interact with them, and ask them 'does that work better, or does this way work better?' So it's real interaction to make sure that their interaction in that digital space is as streamlined and engaging as we can possibly make it. Everything is timed to its nth degree – and we are in fact now faster than John Lewis. Q What are the barriers to achieving digital transformation? Have you done the hard work now? Like everywhere else these days, it's a work in progress. I try to keep abreast of where my colleagues are in their own WHO KNEW? What tech were you hoping to buy in the sales? I've asked my wife to buy me a Bluetooth speaker. Business hero? Colin Powell. I like the fact that he has been successful in a number of careers; his military career, his political career, and now he sits on a number of boards, he's a public speaker, and he has some leadership principles that resonate with me, they echo right back to his time in the army. When I think about how I apply myself in my corporate role, there are some points in that leadership principle piece of his, where I think "I recognise that, I do that, I got that learning from the military too." So he's a particular hero of mine. What did you want to be when you grew up? A pilot; my father was a pilot in the RAF, and I would have been a pilot, but I'm colourblind in one eye to the colour red. I love my career, I love what I do, but I know I would have liked a career as a pilot. What do you do to switch off? I have a Watt bike at home, which is a big static bike, it's the one the Sky team use when they're not out on the road. I use that every day. I go to the gym at the weekends, and I'll do two or three triathlons in the course of the year. And if that makes it sound like I'm a superhero, they're quite slow triathlons. Favourite places in the world? With my wife it would be the Seychelles. On my own it would be diving in Belize. Gadget I couldn't manage without? Smartphone. // e end goal for anyone doing my job is to ensure that any interaction an employee has with the rest of the employee base and any interaction the customer has with the corporate should be entirely end-to-end digital. When you reach that point, I would argue that from where I sit, the job is complete //

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