Matthew Oates - Group IT Director, Portman Travel Group

What's your proudest work-related achievement of the last 12 months?

Having undertaken a merger which doubled the size of our business overnight, achieving unified comms across the company with an eye to further rapid expansion in the near term. Our infrastructure is now fully scalable and able to react quickly to business growth.

What's the number one skill today's IT leaders need?

High-velocity change coupled with a bewildering choice of innovative technologies coming to market mean no IT leader is able to distil a confident IT strategy without a talented, diverse team to advise. Therefore the number one competency is to understand what skill sets must make up the IT team composition for right now and for the future, and how then to nurture this talent in a creative but diligent working culture.

How many people work in IT in your organisation?

We have approximately 35 people in the IT department.

What's your top priority for the next 12 months?

Enabling our clients to bring the stories out of their data using our new MI offering. Providing a tailored user experience, our platform built on Theia, coupled with IBM Cognos and ThoughtSpot search-driven analytics, brings MI in the travel management space to a new level of relevance.

What's your annual IT budget?

£5m split across services, infrastructure, support, development, MI, and assurance.