Charity starts in the server room: How BHF’s new CTO is powering transformation

Putting the heart back into retail tech

Here’s how the British Heart Foundation’s new CTO is driving towards the future of technology.

With more than 650 stores across the country, the British Heart Foundation is the UK’s largest charity retailer. But scale brings its own challenges.

“A huge part of time in stores is sorting and pricing - and then ultimately maybe repricing - stock, because we are a very high-volume, low reselling price retailer,” says Chris Brocklesby, who joined the charity as CTO last year.

AI is a key part of addressing that challenge, and its rollout is central to BHF’s ongoing digital transformation: a project started by ex-CTO Alex Duncan, who left BHF to join media and entertainment company Global in September.

Alex began the transformation, and now Chris is putting it into practice:

“She did a lot of the design and the planning, and I've ended up doing a lot of the implementation and benefits realisation.”

The right person for the job

A former COBOL programmer who later joined Tesco as a transformation director – then UK IT director, and later CIO at companies including Tesco Bank, easyJet, Vodafone, Dunelm and the Post Office – Chris already has extensive retail experience, but this is his first time in the third sector. What tempted him away from private industry?

The first part of his answer, he admits, “sounds like a cliche, but it's the reality: at this stage of my career, to work in an organisation that is not commercially driven in terms of the outcomes, but is driven by a societal need, is hugely important.”

BHF's mission is “not just a sticker on the door or a poster on the wall. It really does drive people... If you could get that alignment in a commercial organisation to the outcome and the mission statement, it would be hugely powerful. So, that is genuinely one of the reasons I'm here.”

The second reason is scale, which Chris – again, Tesco, easyJet et al – is eminently familiar with; and the third is BHF’s approach to technology. Almost uniquely in the third sector, BHF has "preferred to invest in technology, and is going through a once-in-a-generational transformation.”

The programme, Enterprise Foundations, will replace nearly every component of BHF’s IT over the next two years, from ERP and CRM to retail and marketing systems, but the first step involves more than simply iterating on a legacy piece of tech.

From action to auction

Enterprise Foundations’ first deliverable is also BHF’s first use of AI at scale. We discussed this with Alex last year, and the programme went live in every store as of this month.

The new tool, which goes by what Chris admits is the “unsexy” moniker of Donated Stock App, uses AI to price donations as they come through the door. It will soon also integrate image recognition, as well as helping volunteers post stock for sale online on eBay and other sites.

“A huge part of time in stores is sorting and pricing and then ultimately maybe repricing stock, because we are a very high-volume, low reselling price retailer. Not only do we get a lot of stock through the door, we also need to turn over stock very rapidly.”

The AI app helps volunteers “get the price right” - not low enough to miss value, but not too high that donations sit in store taking up valuable space, which is key for both top line revenue and efficiency.

While BHF waits to judge the new app’s impact, Chris’ team remains active, handling two big Microsoft rollouts this month: Dynamics 365, in training stores now with a full rollout in March; and Copilot going live across the business.

“Life at BHF is busy,” Chris quips.

Not least with training both Copilot and its users. As a charity BHF holds plenty of sensitive information, and governance was an issue; the organisation had to spend “quite a lot of time” understanding its data before giving Copilot access.

Now that it has achieved that goal, the rollout is proceeding at pace. “Everybody has it,” says Chris. “They've got the tool available to be able to experiment, to explore, and to see how they can use it in their daily lives.”

The charity is targeting specific use cases, too: medical, fundraising, customer service and – naturally – IT and technology.

“It's a kind of two-pronged approach: educate and roll out to the masses, then go deep on specific use cases to deliver value.”

A steady beat

Chris and Alex were “amazingly aligned” and had “a very comfortable handover.” Both have been committed to helping BHF get the maximum value from its transformation, which is about more than just deploying new technology; it’s about “seeing it land in the business and deliver on the benefits case.”

Bluntly, Chris says: “Delivering IT for IT’s sake is never any good for anybody. [Success is in] the business outcomes.”

BHF has “very ambitious” targets over the next three years for both fundraising (a perennial third sector challenge) and transforming the retail experience. For both, the outcome should be more revenue, translating directly to funding for more life-saving research. That’s an outcome we can all get behind.