Interview: Driving digital change at Renault

Renault UK IS/IT Director Lorraine Dodd has delivered change with trust

IT leaders in automotive are under pressure to innovate with maximum operational efficiency, whilst also managing some complex legacy environments and end user requirements. Lorraine Dodd, IS/IT Director at Renault UK shares her approach.

At Renault UK, IS/IT Director Lorraine Dodd is leading in lockstep with the corporate Renault team a multi-year transformation agenda designed to streamline systems and processes, embed automation, and enhance customer experience at Renault Group.

With nearly two years in the role, Dodd brings considerable experience from her previous positions in project delivery, security and governance within the financial services arm of Renault Group. This has shaped her approach to IT leadership—one that emphasises collaboration, pragmatism, continuous learning and building trust.

Dodd’s team extends across four core areas: business intelligence, project management, IT infrastructure, and security. The team, work closely with the Renault corporate team. Wherever possible the approach has been to align local IT systems and processes with corporate standards, ensuring both consistency and adaptability.

“We operate as an extension of the corporate teams,” Dodd explains. “If there’s a corporate solution that fits, we adopt it. If not, we go to market. The key is ongoing collaboration and communication to bring the best solutions to the business.”

Consolidating applications and building trust

Dodd explains that her wide-ranging remit necessitates prioritisation. In the nearly two years since taking up her role, she has invested a great deal of time in automation, standardisation and consolidation.

One area that’s had a real impact is has been the rationalisation of Renault’s application portfolio.

“Previously, every step in a data journey like vehicle registration we were naming as a separate application,” Dodd explains. “Now, we recognise the full process as one tool, one application, which simplifies management.”

Beyond this consolidation, the team have been working on decommissioning underutilised applications since 2023 by engaging with end-users to understand needs and identify alternative workflows.

“The team takes time to understand, what is that user doing? What benefit are they getting from it? Is there another tool we could move them into? Do we even need to keep doing that task? It was really a study and a dig into all these applications to see what's really needed, what we’re benefiting from, and where can we move into a better way of working?”

Dodd acknowledges that the biggest obstacles in this consolidation effort were not technical but cultural. The investigation phase required detailed scrutiny of longstanding processes, which sometimes met resistance from users accustomed to doing things a certain way.

“The team have to reassure people that this is an investigation, not an immediate removal,” Dodd says. “Understanding who was using what, why, and how, takes time but it is crucial for building trust.”

The results of this exercise speak for themselves. Since 2023, this initiative resulted in consolidating Renault UK’s legacy application estate by roughly half.

Visibility for engagement

Dodd has effectively addressed one of the most common challenges faced by IT leaders: while the work of technology teams often goes under the radar amid continually increasing demands for productivity and seamless experiences, any issues that arise tend to draw immediate attention.

Dodd’s team made efforts to increase their visibility, demonstrate their value across the business and foster engagement and transparency via a series of departmental roadshows.

These sessions showcased practical tools and capabilities within Microsoft 365 and demonstrated automation and AI use cases tailored to each department’s needs. “We wanted to show people what they could do, not just what IT could do for them,” Dodd observed.

The initiative culminated in a highly successful 10-day TechFest in July in conjunction with Mobilize Financial Services featuring 56 events, ranging from AI workshops to cybersecurity talks. Nearly 800 spaces were booked, reflecting strong enthusiasm from staff. Inspired by cybersecurity expert Rebecca Taylor’s family-focused cybersecurity initiatives, the CISO also launched a security awareness session designed to resonate with employees and how to protect their families.

Digitising customer journeys

Digital transformation at Renault extends beyond internal systems to customer-facing services. Many years ago, while Dodd was still on the Mobilize Financial Services team, they developed a finance eligibility check—a soft credit search that allows prospective buyers to assess their finance likelihood before visiting dealerships. Dodd says this helps to avoid awkward situations where finance is declined in the showroom.

“It gives you peace of mind to think about that and take that with you into the dealership and it automatically creates you a quote within the system. We also have the ability for customers to start the car purchase process at home. They can peruse the vehicles, see prices, configure and submit it, and then it goes to the dealer. So, they've done that first bit in the comfort of their own home. It streamlines the buying process.”

More recently moving into aftersales, Dodd’s team supported the business to deliver an online service booking tool which now connects customers directly with dealership calendars, eliminating the back-and-forth of traditional service scheduling.

And a real game changer, led by the marketing team, has been a Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator designed to show the benefits of electric vehicle (EV) adoption over the life of ownership.

“You can put in your current Renault ICE [internal combustion engine] vehicle and then you can compare it to a Renault EV, and it will tell you based on if you're charging at home the benefit of having an EV over paying for petrol.”

It was only launched a few months ago but the calculator is already a valuable asset for dealerships, helping to educate and reassure customers considering the switch to electric.

Dodd sees the future at Renault as one of continued collaboration with the local business teams, corporate teams and her global counterparts to develop shared tools which are adaptable enough to suit the needs of the employees, the retail partners and our end customers.

No AI for AIs sake

Dodd is very positive about the potential of AI to be a useful part of our lives, but is clear that in Renault, any generative AI use case must deliver benefits for employees, retail network and customers alike, in addition to business value.

“Renault is so forward thinking with AI,” she says. “We've got our own Gen AI chat bot using multiple LLM’s that is secure, and it's available to all the staff and we’re really seeing that coming on now. There’s a corporate team that is really receptive to hearing our use cases.

“When we bring a use case, it's not just a use case for the sake of a use case. We need to demonstrate the value, cost reduction, the sustainability side of it, and then also the customer and employee experience. We need to be really clear on the benefit that we're going to be bringing before we get approval to do it.”