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Introducing, first Master Chef - Cationa Campbell (CTIO) from EY UK & Ireland, who has a recipe for the trilemma of challenges that modern businesses is facing right now.
Within the pages of CIONET Cookbook No. 3, discover a compilation of success recipes shared by 21 of today’s most influential and dynamic information technology leaders across all business sectors. This unique volume presents new recipes for digital success based on CIONET TV interviews with top digital leaders across Europe.
Right now, it’s clear that we all face extraordinary technical and business challenges. This third edition of the Cookbook presents further insights into the best practices required to flourish in a new digital era.
Meanwhile dive in to the next recipe with our Master chef Catriona Campbell, Client Technology and Innovation Officer (CTIO) at EY UK & Ireland.
Catriona graduated from the University of Stirling with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and obtained a master’s in the same subject from the University of Glasgow. She also studied at Sorbonne University in Paris. Having led Barclays Bank’s first online-banking project during the early 1990s, she became fascinated by human-computer interaction (HCI). She raised money to start her own business, London-based experience design firm Foviance, at 26. Fifteen years later, her firm was acquired by EY and is now known as EY-Seren. Today, Catriona is Client Technology and Innovation Officer (CTIO) at EY UK & Ireland (EY UK&I).
EY is a global professional services firm derived from a merger of Arthur Young & Co and Ernst & Whinney in 1989. It was named Ernst & Young until its rebranding in 2013. Today, EY employs more than 350,000 staff in 700 offices globally. EY UK&I employs 19,000 staff and offers services in four areas: audit and accounting, tax, strategy and transactions, and consulting.
As one of the world’s largest professional services organisations, EY encounters all three of these challenges when it works with its clients. Catriona says her firm will survive and thrive by offering superior services to its customers through a constant flow of innovations.
EY has established a global centre for innovation that helps distribute a budget of $1.8 billion to fund local initiatives. This investment is backed by a conviction that innovation is a joint responsibility between EY and its customers. Innovations can be packaged and scaled across the firm once a satisfactory outcome is achieved.
She points to two immediate opportunities. The first is to use AI to remove low-value tasks from business-as-usual activities. As an example, she says EY is using AI to codify and analyse expenses, which saves the firm millions of hours of professional and administrative time. AI is also used extensively in forensic examinations to reduce workloads on legal teams.
The second critical use of AI is in creative tasks, where large language models (LLM) can assist with client work. These algorithmic models can access and interpret vast volumes of information. However, there are challenges. Catriona is concerned that structured and unstructured data sources can be difficult to qualify as unbiased and ethical. Yet there is hope. She points to EY’s work with AstraZeneca. EY is helping to introduce strict ethical standards into formulating new drugs and personalised medicines.
Catriona’s background in HCI leads her to believe that practical innovation must be human-centric. Firms must provide adequate guardrails to help professionals deploy emerging tools that benefit customers and society at large. EY’s brand is ‘Building a better working world’. AI is central in realising this brand promise, as are immersive technologies such as augmented and virtual reality.
The firm has established the EY Fabric platform, which helps ensure AI tools are deployed safely and quickly. This platform allows thousands of bots to interchange data and operate consistently across the business. Catriona describes this platform as a “walled garden” approach, which provides the “Lego bricks” that EY staff can use to simplify and enhance the quality of their work.
UiPath is a strategic partner that helps EY deploy many of these bots. One such bot is Goldie, trained to answer staff's human resources (HR) queries. Goldie reduces the workload on HR teams and enables them to focus on high-value tasks, such as talent development. As part of the EY Fabric, the firm is also increasing automation through low-code technology. Staff can develop applications that satisfy their individual and client requirements in hours or days – and without joining a queue for software resources.
Six years ago, EY built a centre to promote neurodiversity within the firm and help source data scientists from a new talent pool. Given the difficulties many neurodiverse candidates face during the formal interview process, EY encouraged candidates to write essays on why they would be interested in a career with the firm.
Each qualified candidate is invited to a Super Week, where they can better understand the EY community. This focus on neurodiversity has been a great success, with a candidate retention rate of more than 95% during the programme’s first five years.
Catriona is passionate about her chosen career path and the impact of innovation on EY and its customers. She admits her enthusiasm can sometimes mean people are left behind, but she thrives on teamwork and individual mentoring to help everyone maintain the right pace. She has a low boredom threshold and welcomes rapid change. She believes her team will enable EY to stay ahead of its competitors as emerging technologies take hold.
She advises aspiring digital leaders and her children to have a passion for doing things well, help people understand and grasp new ideas, and show humility and kindness to everyone they encounter.
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