CIO Interview: Simon Hill, Caravan Club

What do the corporate giants of Shell, BP and Guinness Brewing Worldwide have in common with the Caravan Club? Simon Hill has worked in the IT department of all four.

The Caravan Club's IT chief has also worked in IT for large UK public sector organisations such as Surrey Council and the Metropolitan Police, where he directed its Solution Centre for seven years, providing all back-office systems to 30,000 employees.

Hill joined Guinness on a graduate programme after gaining a degree in procurement and logistics. It was here he got his first hands-on experience of implementing the SAP enterprise resource suite, something that has recurred throughout his career. He spent six years at Accenture working on SAP projects and was subsequently SAP programme manager at Surrey Council.

Today the London School of Economics graduate heads up IT at the Caravan Club as it embarks on ambitious plans to expand into new areas of the travel and leisure industry. The club, which has 360,000 members and, with their families, reaches about one million people runs leisure sites across the UK and offers insurance and other travel services. Its IT operation currently works out of a single room in the club's office and a small space in a warehouse. But it is moving to dedicated servers in third-party datacentres.

Hill has responsibility for all technology at the club, including head office and over 160 sites across the UK. When he joined a couple of years ago he inherited 14 direct reports and a department focused on supply.

Recognising the need for change, I secured board-level support for my vision for the department and set up demand management, service delivery and project management teams, he says.

This has meant that we are now more closely involved in value creation for the business, and I have been given the opportunity to help shape the Caravan Clubs exciting growth strategy.

He says the IT department is now more consultative. Rather than just building what the business asks for, it gets managers to explain the business goals and then recommends the IT systems that can support that outcome.

We help senior management clarify how they intend to achieve delivery of the clubs strategy through iterative conversations about what it will take, both technically and in terms of business change, to help to achieve their goals.

The IT operation is split in three. One team manages the pipeline of demand for change, developing all pre-project documentation such as business cases. Another team is responsible for developing and delivering all non-property related change, from small change requests through to multimillion-pound projects. And the third team ensures the ongoing provision of IT service while looking to reduce cost and improve quality.

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CIO Interview: Simon Hill, Caravan Club