Glen Priest heads up the Digital Services team at LIC, a herd improvement and agri-technology co-operative.

Like many organisations, LIC partners with external technology vendors and providers to deliver services for both its internal customers and external customers (known as farmer shareholders). 

“Through changes in the technology operating model at LIC, oversight of those relationships had slipped to the point where the health of the relationships was not in a good place, or the balance of the relationship was weighted too heavily towards one side of the partnership,” says Priest.  “This meant that in some cases the relationship was not beneficial for either party, the purpose had been lost, and at best all that was visible was operational issues being experienced by both parties.”

Drawing on his experience in other organisations facing similar issues, Priest proposed and gained support for the implementation of a Supplier Relationship Management framework (SRM). “The purpose of the framework is to put control in the hands of the business (in this case LIC) by clearly setting out with each service provider what the scope of the engagement with LIC is, who the relationship sponsor is, who the key stakeholders are and what the engagement forums are e.g., operational, tactical and strategic,” says Priest. 

By implementing this framework across key providers, Priest and the team have been able “to rebalance the relationships, lift the conversations up from only being about operational delivery, and provide forums and opportunities for LIC to articulate what its key focuses are and give clarity about what innovation or thought leadership we are looking for that will help drive LIC’s strategy.”

The framework has been in place for just over a year with eight of the organisation’s key providers and Priest says they have seen a significant shift both in the way in which both providers and LIC engage and collaborate and open up new opportunities.

The art of prioritisation

LIC, is at its heart it is a data and insights company, says Priest, and has been for more than 100 years. 

“Given the amount of data we collect, hold and utilise to continue to develop our products and services, keeping technology in the conversation of how we continue to drive LIC forward is not hard,” says Priest.

 The biggest challenge, he adds, is prioritising what to focus on.

Priest cites the exercise he and the team undertook with LIC’s Transformation Office at the end of 2021 to understand and visualise the volume of initiatives that require technology involvement/development across the organisation. 

“Based on using a tee-shirt sizing approach we established that there was 10 years of work that LIC would ideally want to deliver in two years. This has led to good conversations about prioritisation, business value and strategic alignment, not only at a business unit level, but also at an executive and board level,” he adds.

As well as being a member of the Technology Leadership Team at LIC, a member of a number of governance committees and steering committees, Priest also acts as interim CIO on occasion.