- Good day Kelly, great to have you on our blog. Could you tell us who you are and how long you’ve been with Energy One?
I’m Kelly May, born in Somerset (UK) where I enjoyed an outdoorsy childhood out in the countryside. However, I always had a huge desire to travel around the world, so I went backpacking for a few months when I was 23 and I ended up in Sydney, Australia. There I fell in love with a beautiful seaside town just north of Sydney called Manly, which became my home for the next 18 years. You could call me a bit of a hybrid English-Aussie.
A year and a half ago, I moved back to the UK and I started working for Energy One around that time, so I’ve been with the organisation for 18 months. My first role was to facilitate the transition of our newly acquired French and Belgian businesses as European transition manager.
Last year, as the transition of Energy One France and Belgium was completed successfully, I moved into a global role, becoming Head of Delivery for Global Technology.
- What did you do before joining Energy One?
I have spent 20 years in my career working in technology across various sectors, including government, telecommunications and the financial sector. I’ve worked in IT delivery since 2006. Specifically in the last 5 years my key roles have been in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) for superannuation funds in Sydney, and then I moved into the divestments portfolio for the banking sector in Australia.
- How did your previous experience pave the way for your first role at Energy One?
My previous experience in M&A paved the way for joining the European team at Energy One to manage that transition period. I was working closely with Simon Wheeler (European CEO) and the original business founders of Energy One France and Belgium.
The key focus was on the people and processes, ways of working, and how we can come together as one team. Therefore, it was less technology-focussed and really about looking at the cultures and processes.
The culture was a big part of this role and had to be carefully balanced. Energy One UK, France and Belgium were on different levels of experience in terms of agile working, IT infrastructure and processes. That was also the key challenge, ensuring that whilst delivering something for one of the business units, we were not impacting another one.
- How did you make the switch to become our Head of Delivery – Global Technology?
As we moved forward as a global organisation in the Energy sector, we centralised our technology teams across the group, and in doing so we created the need for a group-level technology delivery function. Because of that, the role of Head of Delivery – Global Technology came up.
Given that the transition in Europe was successfully completed, and this new role aligned closely with my previous experience in IT delivery, it seemed like a logical next step for me within Energy One.
- What’s your key focus in this role?
The key focus within this function is to deliver resilience, integration and scalability across our technology stack. I’m working closely with Stephan Wall, our global CTO. Stephan has developed a three-year technology strategy with a clear vision for the Global Technology Stack that is aligned with our corporate strategy. I’m working on a multi-year delivery plan – with year one focused very much on ISO compliance.
- Could you elaborate a bit more on these three key principles: resilience, integration and scalability?
- Resilience: This is very much focused on getting ISO27001 accreditation, which is a key strategic goal for us – ensuring all our entities are at the same level in terms of cyber and IT security controls. A roadmap has been defined to implement the technology controls, having completed the new ISO policies for the Group.
- Integration: We are moving away from local level corporate IT solutions to group level solutions. This will bring obvious efficiencies, and reductions in overhead and our operating costs.
- Scalability: This key workstream is focused on how technology and consistent tooling will help to enable our 24/7 global follow-the-sun service capabilities.
- Looking ahead, how do you see the coming years at Energy One?
I have already seen the positive energy of the IT team; they are really engaged as they are starting to see the bigger picture. They notice how the strategic objectives become part of their day-to-day in terms of delivery. There is a solid link in terms of what the ‘target state’ is and how they can contribute to this. This in turn makes me really excited for what’s ahead.
- Last but not least, what does your ideal weekend look like?
I’d start the weekend with a big walk in the countryside with my dog followed by a nice BBQ in the sunshine, like a true English-Aussie hybrid!
