Sanjay Patel – CIO of Tate & Lyle – From manual work to full automation in a food ingredient company

Описание: How to reinvent food business with long tradition? What does it take to eliminate manual work and to have as much workflow as possible?

In this #LeadershipDeepDive episode, Sanjay Patel, CIO of Tate & Lyle, talks with Hendrik Deckers about how to reorganize the way we work. Big evangelist of technology and automation, Sanjay believes that pandemic was a great change catalyst that enabled huge transformation of the workplace and workforce. “Start small, pick a technology” and start the journey in robotics, says Sanjay. Throughout this conversation Sanjay also reflects on the new approach to Innovation:

☑️ Sharpening focus on customers
☑️ Accelerating portfolio transformation & innovation pipeline (data & insights)
☑️ Simplifying business (automation, workflow)
☑️ Agility & integrating business

Having worked as a chemical engineer, business consultant, transformation leader and CIO gave Sanjay all the necessary capabilities to understand and work with the business. Watch this amazingly insightful interview and learn from Sanjay Patel how years of self-development helped him to become a conscious business leader.

Table of contents

01:05 | Introduction and Sanjay Patel’s background
• Global citizen
• “My roots are clearly in London, but I'm Indian origin and my heart is in India”
• Understanding how businesses work

03:44 | About Tate & Lyle
• 4500 employees
• 160 years of history, originally sugar business around the world
• Today - food ingredient business

05:50 | Drivers for change

• Changing consumers eating habits
• Sustainability
• Moving from products to categories

08:02 | Reinventing the approach to innovation

• Sharpening focus on customers
• Accelerating portfolio transformation & innovation pipeline (data & insights)
• Simplifying business (automation, workflow)
• Agility & integrating business

10:10 | Reorganizing the way we work: the workplace

• Pandemic was a great change catalyst
• Remote work
• Workplace is no longer a physical environment
• Greenfield approach towards the office
• Hybrid model & flexibility
• Providing employees with all necessary software & hardware for efficient home office work
• Travel kits for working at customer sites

17:48 | Changing workforce

• Building agile capabilities
• Analytics & insights capabilities
• Cloud-based infrastructure
• “Build on the inside, buy from the outside”
• Reduce manual work wherever possible

20:00 | IT organization

• 40% smaller internally than 3 years ago
• Operational model – 3 Towers:
o Security & Operation
o Delivery
o Enterprise solutions & user experience
• New tower for bringing advanced technologies
• IT team: 120 internal & 150 external

23:40 | Workflow

• Core ERP (SAP) on premise
• Starting on journey in robotics (finance & supply chain)
• Road mapping no-regret technological solutions (enabling AI)

26:00 | Building a robot factory

• “Start small, pick a technology”
• UiPath providing technology
• People managing bots that are managing bots

27:23 | Citizens development

29:42 | New Technologies Tower

31:30 | Changing role of CIO

34:44 | Sanjay’s management & leadership style

• Give his team liberty
• “My management style is really one of curiosity around, you know, getting into the detail, but then sort of setting the direction and being available to sort of remove obstacles”
• “Sometimes I'm too fast for the people to sort of either catch up or to be able to execute successfully”

38:14 | MBTI profile: the Executive

43:27 | Sanjay’s core values

• Recognition, sense of achievement and integrity as core value
• Making Sanjay’s parents and his two sons proud
• Integrity

44:52 | Sanjay’s mentors

• Mahatma Gandhi & Nelson Mandela
• Personal coach who’s been supporting Sanjay for the last 20 years – currently they coach each other mutually

49:12 | Bad and good memories

52:03 | Personal mantra

• Open questions: “What do you want to be when you grow up”, “Where do you want to get to?”, “What problem are we trying to solve?”
• “It's Friday only two more days and it's Monday again”
• “You did today, what you did today, you didn't do what you didn't do”

54:33 | Ways to relax

• “I think I've trained myself in that respect to relax more”
• Time spent with family, sports & reading books

58:04 | Sanjay’s biggest fear

• “Drowning is my biggest fear”
• Scuba diving to overcome this fear

01:02:05 | Advice for people starting out

• “If you're in the education system, then think about the sorts of things you like doing, not necessarily the job that you're going to do”
• “Be clear about what you like to do, what you're good at doing”
• “Stay the course, overcome the obstacles, take pleasure in the achievements that you make along the way”
• “Learn about business (…) and how technology can help business”


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