Conor Whelan, Chief Information Officer, Experian UK&I
The influence of digital technology in our daily lives has reached such a point where envisioning life without it becomes arduous for most people.
The Digital Technology Leaders Awards occupy a special place among Computing events. Rather than platforms and tools, this event is dedicated to the companies and workers driving technology forwards at the leading edge of IT.
This year, we announced the winners at a live ceremony last week in Central London.
Experian, one of those finalists, reached the shortlist for two categories: Digital Project of the Year and Digital Service Company of the Year.
We caught up with Conor Whelan, CIO at Experian UK&I, to talk about the company's entries.
Conor joined Experian in October 2019 as Chief Information & Operations Officer for UK & Ireland (UK&I). Today he leads the technology and customer service operations functions. He is also currently leading the UK&I Nike transformation, with objectives to rationalise the current product estate, improve the company's speed to market and reduce the overall cost of the technology Experian provides to its clients.
Computing: Please provide some background on your company for our readers. What makes you different from other companies?
Conor Whelan: Experian is the world's leading global information services company. We're passionate about unlocking the power of data in order to transform lives and to create opportunities for consumers, businesses, and society.
For more than 125 years, we've helped economies and communities flourish - and we're not done. We're investing in new technologies, talented people, and innovation to help create a better tomorrow. Our 21,000 employees in 30+ countries believe the possibilities for you, and the world, are growing.
What one company achievement in the last 12 months are you most proud of?
In the last 12 months we have continued to evolve our operating model and technology transformation to the cloud.
We have successfully built cloud native products and platforms that manage millions of transactions daily. One could argue the evolution never ends, technology constantly evolves, and the organisation needs to remain agile.
I am really pleased to see we now have a recognised mature agile framework in place across the organisation that really stands us in good stead for the future, which will help us continue to develop and build products at pace, invest in new skills and technologies as the demand requires.
A great example of this was the launch of our PayDashboard product, which from a standing start to product launch was completed in four months. This product was launched on the web and mobile application, enabling our customers and employees to have secure access to this data on the go 24x7.
What are you working on this year?
2023 sees more product innovation across all of our product domains. I am especially looking forward to seeing how our customers respond to our AI-enabled products across decisioning software, fraud identification and credit scorecards.
These new innovations are an evolution to the market leading capabilities we already have in the market. AI is not new for Experian however we are seeing an increased demand from our customers and consumers wanting to see and learn as to how we embed these technologies across our product estate.
Why are events like the Digital Technology Leaders Awards important to the IT industry?
The Digital Technology Leaders Awards are really important to Experian. We very much appreciate the fantastic opportunity it gives our employees and teams to strive for exceptional performance and to be recognised by their peers and colleagues in the technology industry. The internal buzz is fantastic to see, teams thinking about how best to sell their achievements and then to celebrate the nominations and maybe awards across the wider organisation.
Computing's next awards event is the Cloud Excellence Awards. Click here to view the shortlist and here to book your table.
