Javed Iqbal

Part of the IT Leaders 100 - a list of the most influential IT leaders in the UK in 2025.

Javed was born in a small town in Punjab, Pakistan and comes from a family of teachers. This was where his mother, back in the 1970s, broke the rules and became the first female in her family to start working outside the house, instilling Javed's passion for work.

Javed joined British American Tobacco (BAT) in Pakistan in 1996 as a management trainee and has held several roles across the BAT world – most recently as the Area Director for Middle East, South Asia and North Africa. Currently, Javed is a member of BAT's Management Board as Director, Digital and Information.

What's the most exciting part of your current role?

The most exciting part of my role, together with my team, is using technology to build A Better Tomorrow and achieve BAT’s strategic aim, which is to actively migrate adult smokers, who would otherwise continue to smoke, from cigarettes to smokeless products and to build a smokeless world.

As a function, we are catalysts in this as we are investing in technology to support the organisation make our aim a reality. For example, in Research and Development we are supporting the use of product-and-app connectivity to prevent youth access and give consumers insights on how they use their devices, as well as supporting our world-class scientists in using the latest technology to study our products.

In Marketing, whether it is cloud-based data analytics or introducing AI solutions for our consumer engagement work, our role is pivotal. But it goes beyond just our organisation, we also support colleagues in our supply chain and help them navigate the difficult geopolitical challenges they face.

What do you consider your greatest IT achievement of the last 12 months?

Our cloud adoption journey. This has been a mammoth task but one we are proud of. We are on track to achieve over 85% of cloud adoption by the end of this year, up from 50% in 2022. Eighty-five per cent adoption makes BAT a leading global company across categories and sectors in adopting cloud.

By adopting cloud technology, we aim to simplify our technology landscape, scale operations, innovate, optimise costs and support our vision of becoming a leading, agile, and sustainable organisation in the digital age. BAT also aims to reduce its IT carbon footprint by 98% through cloud adoption, reflecting its commitment to a sustainable future.

Partnerships were, and continue to be, instrumental in BAT's cloud journey, providing the necessary infrastructure and support to ensure a smooth transition to the cloud. The collaboration with these providers has enabled us to leverage our expertise and resources, ensuring that our cloud strategy is aligned with industry best practices.

We recently moved our first factory, in Mexico, to the cloud and we are on track to shut down our Tier 1 data centre by 2025, with 100% of global applications moved to the cloud.

What's the biggest challenge facing IT leaders today, and how are you tackling it?

For me, it is the role of CIO. CIO roles have changed significantly in the last five years and more importantly the last two because of the expansion of AI.

Before AI, the role of the CIO was to understand the traditional IT organisation such as being ERP solutions-based, maintaining networks, supporting the supply chain and running HR/finance applications. Now, CIO roles have transformed to become important business enablers by bringing technologies like data analytics and AI to the forefront of every function.

It is because of this transformation that CIOs now need to understand business objectives and strategy more holistically and be ready to partner with every function/functional head across their organisation.

I am tackling the expansion of AI by ensuring my team is ready to support functions in new ways and that the business is ready. That's why we developed an ethical and legal AI framework to protect our employees, consumers and the business. We are also running comprehensive training programmes for those who will be using AI programmes such as Copilot. This also includes our management board members so they can act as champions across the business.

What piece of technology could you not live without, and why?

For me it is something very simple and personal – my smartphone. My work often takes me away from my immediate and extended family. My smart phone helps me stay connected with my wife and children but also my wider family, friends but most importantly, my mother in Pakistan.

What excites you most about the future of IT?

What excites me the most about the future of IT is the role that technology can play in creating a better world and its ability to create a level playing field for all.

From a BAT perspective, technology will help us transform and help us build a smokeless world: a smokeless world built on smokeless products where, ultimately, cigarettes have become a thing of the past.

Technology will also help BAT advocate for tobacco harm reduction and smokeless products, due to the advanced capabilities our scientists have in conducting in-depth research into New Category products. We also have robust Product Stewardship activities, and technology will help us conduct more in-depth toxicological and safety risk assessments of the ingredients and materials proposed for all new and current tobacco and nicotine-containing products.

Zooming out, technology is going to play a pivotal role helping us to manage the bigger ESG challenges facing businesses and the world.

So, there are a lot of areas where technology can act as an enabler. However, it must be used with the right intent and the right objective, which I am excited to continue exploring.

What’s the strangest job you’ve ever had?

I became the first Board Member, in more than 100 years of BAT, who was asked to do two roles – Interim Chief Financial Officer and Director of Digital and Transformation. This was probably the most intense and challenging experience of my career but one I was honoured to do.

It was strange, because my remit expanded massively to cover two vast and strategically important areas of the business. As Interim CFO, it was my responsibility to lead a large function, make investment decisions, become fully immersed in BAT's financial performance/capital allocation and discuss this with key stakeholders from Analysts and Investors. I also continued in my Management Board role leading BAT's digital transformation.

Despite being intense, it was a fascinating experience, one that I learnt a great deal from and one that I will always be grateful for. Doing two roles enabled me to gain a much deeper understanding of the business and learn new skills which have supported me and my team in our ongoing transformation journey.

If you could instantly master one new skill, what would it be?

A healer – to help people get better and smile more. Maybe less from my jokes and more smiling from the heart.