Big opportunity comes knocking for Royal Mail's CIO

Robin Dargue doesn’t hang about. His first six months as chief information officer (CIO) at Royal Mail has coincided with a £1.2bn infrastructure revamp, with IT at its heart, a project that merely marks the latest phase of an eventful 20-year career.

After graduating in computer science at Strathclyde University, Dargue started his career in 1988 as a team leader at Logica CMG’s financial systems division.That position lasted less than a year ­ in 1989 the vendor stopped its UK front-office dealing systems activity as the volatile economic cycle of the 1980s entered its bust phase.

His brief time on the supplier side was followed by eight years at confectionery manufacturer Mars, where he began as an analyst and ended up managing IT for the company’s Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) division. Dargue then climbed through the ranks until he became a systems manager for the UK and Ireland operations.

“I was suddenly under a very bright spotlight,” he said. “In two years, I went from king of a principality ­ the CEE division ­ to a prince of a kingdom, with a wide range of responsibilities.”

In 1998 Dargue, a strong advocate of technology acting as the “lever to pull” for business change, moved on to his next job at distiller UDV, which later merged with Guinness and eventually became Diageo.

By the age of 36, he was catapulted to the post of the group’s CIO and handed the task of consolidating a “patchy” set of 40 different IT systems worldwide and carrying out a post-merger global SAP implementation.

Simplification is one of the key commandments of efficient systems architecture, and it is also Dargue’s main mantra.

“I am a fan of packages. If you get the right partner, they will invest in it and can do more with R&D and other features than you can ever do on your own,” he said.

“If you do in-house development, you take that burden on yourself. And if you have that trouble for a business area that makes no real difference to customers or staff, you are just siphoning out funds.”

“So I do not see the need to innovate in areas such as finance. I would rather share innovation and invest my precious budget in bespoke systems for the customer front end.”

Bringing in “superlative” consumer-focused initiatives to Royal Mail was Dargue’s main goal when he was hired by the mail giant to lead its IT-driven £1.2bn business transformation.

“It would be funny if we could say the opportunity to work for Royal Mail dropped through the letterbox,” said Dargue, headhunted into the firm last November.

“But actually I received a phone call summarising what was on the table. And as soon as I heard the word ‘challenge’, I was just drawn to it,” he said.

Replacing former CIO David Burden is a big task, but Dargue believes he has “deep reservoirs of enthusiasm”, and benefits from a solid platform built by his predecessor.

“I am always wary of someone who is neither frightened nor scarred. So I would say that I am frightened and bring with me scars to undertake what is a colossal challenge,” said Dargue.

“David [Burden] has done a herculean job in keeping the ship afloat in difficult times with almost zero investment, so we now have a great base to work from and proceed with the transformation.”

To meet his goals, Dargue will need to spread his enthusiasm across the whole organisation as part of the change agenda.

“A crucial part of the job is getting the best available expertise and being an inspiring leader, regardless of whether the troops are your own or extended teams at your partners,” he said.

“If I can also win the hearts and minds of our front-line staff to do something different with technology, that will do it for me.

“It is one of my biggest challenges, but I aspire to inspire.”