Embracing challenges

Corbridge recognises that moving between sectors and organisations affects your digital leadership approach.

“It was something I was mindful of when I left the NHS for Boots,” he says. “Peers, mentors, colleagues and coaches would say the private sector is going to be a lot faster, a lot more ruthless, and would involve a lot more watch-your-back type scenarios, but that didn’t come to bear in reality.”

“Creating efficiency through technology either creates profit for a private organisation or creates efficiency and puts money back in the bank for a public sector organisation”

Richard Corbridge, Segro

Corbridge says organisations differ in strategies and structures, but some important consistencies also allow successful CIOs to move seamlessly between sectors.

“One of the things you learn is that creating efficiency through technology either creates profit for a private organisation or creates efficiency and puts money back in the bank for a public sector organisation,” he says.

“And if efficiency and growth are the two watchwords for digital leaders, then you can apply the principles to what you’re trying to do, whether it’s about making profit for shareholders and looking after customers, or you’re ensuring taxpayers’ money is spent wisely and achieving the goals you want to do.”

Reflecting on the initiatives he’s overseen during his career, Corbridge says he enjoyed taking his healthcare project experience and its focus on making wise bets to the private sector in his role at Boots, where he worked with around 600 IT professionals. He also enjoyed returning to the public sector and applying his experience of fast-paced change at Boots to DWP, where he worked with 5,500 colleagues.

“Now at Segro, I’ve got 35 people working for me, but in an estate of assets across nine countries, a very large amount of money in the organisation itself, and enormous value,” he says. “So, there are different priorities, but, interestingly, the themes within those priorities probably remain relatively similar from a CIO point of view.”

Leading change

Crucially, transformation – which Corbridge describes as creating change and delivering value – is part of his remit at Segro, which he suggests is a wise approach. It’s certainly a change from his previous role at DWP, where Corbridge worked with a director general of transformation who was separate from the digital department.

“At Segro, making a difference with technology, and working with our business to make a difference, is under my ownership,” he says. “After 12 months in this role, my team is making a difference because of how we’re using technology, both from a business and a value completion point of view.”

Corbridge says the general direction of travel for transformation at Segro involves three buckets that will hold his team’s priorities through 2026: implementing new technology alongside trusted partners to simplify complex business processes; making the most of enterprise data assets; and joining up point solutions to deliver business benefits.

“We’re trying not to end up just doing AI [artificial intelligence] for its own sake, and we’re looking at the orchestration that we could do with different technology solutions,” he says, referring to the systems and services that will enable transformation.

“Sometimes that may well be agentic AI, but sometimes it might just involve putting the data in the right place at the right time so people can have it.”

For example, Corbridge refers to his vision of a workbench, which would give the firm’s asset managers access to the information and insights they need to offer customers new opportunities to look after their buildings in the most effective manner and to help the company make the most from its existing client portfolio.

“That approach feels quite different from what some of our peers are doing, where they’re looking at big ERP [enterprise resource planning] replacement or deployment programmes,” he says.

“We took the decision not to do that and to go process by process. It’s about how we simplify the process, get the most out of it, and then bring technology to bear on that process, joining it up as an orchestration layer, instead of having lots of point solutions.”

Making progress

Corbridge addresses each of his transformation aims in turn. First, simplifying complex business processes. For this aim, partners IBM and HCL will play a crucial role.

“We [will] sit down with our two most forward-possible partners to see what they’ve done on a test and learn basis,” he says. “At the start of January, they began with three processes each, reviewed the inherent complexity of those processes, and will now make some technology simplification recommendations.”

Corbridge says this process will help his organisation understand how its technology partners can help reduce complexity, as well as potential timelines, costs and long-term value generation. Deadlines were kept purposefully tight to test the partners, and the results look promising: “I’d go as far as to say that I’ve not seen anything like it in all the different partners that I’ve worked with.”

Open Box Software is another important supplier. This integration specialist manages Segro’s MRI property management system, which Corbridge describes as the company’s operational backbone. He’s working with Open Box to reduce complexity and increase simplicity, and is impressed with the output: “We truly have partners, not vendors.”

When it comes to the second aim of ensuring data supports accurate decisions, Corbridge says his director of data and AI will focus on two important objectives through 2026: establishing strong data governance to guarantee reliability, and getting accurate insights to key people for timely decision-making.

“Getting those elements right sets us up to move faster,” he says.

Finally, Corbridge refers to the aim of joining up point solutions to create business benefits. Here, he points to Sama, which is the Segro asset management app. This bespoke solution has been built by the company over the past two years. The technology team continues to roll out new monthly releases, functionalities and integrations to back-end systems.

“This approach means we can capture data once, store it once, and let others have access to that data,” he says. “Seeing something that has been built specifically for Segro is really exciting because it delivers how our business wants to work and we can deal with the subtle differences that are needed locally in Germany, Czechia, or Poland, without having to standardise everything.”

Adopting technology

In combination, Corbridge says those three transformational aims comprise his digital plan for Segro. He says it’s important to stress that the organisation has a plan instead of a digital strategy.

I want us to be seen as an organisation that is adopting technology, and it’s not a distraction to how we work with customers, where our assets are, or what our value is, but that it’s actually adding to that effort

“I don’t want to sit and write another digital strategy next year because everything’s moving so fast,” he says. “I want to get in there and get some delivery and value released to our business so that we can build excitement and deliver against people’s expectations. So, we’re going to focus on delivery and value this year against those priorities, knowing that, when we get to the end of the year, I want to be able to set the vision for 2027 and 2028 for where we’re going to get to.”

Two years from now, Corbridge expects the firm’s core MRI system will create value by delivering data to people around the organisation. The aim here will be to focus on standardisation and simplification by exploiting Open Box’s orchestration capabilities. He wants to ensure the top 20 tech-enabled processes across Segro are as simple as possible, supported by technology, with data captured once and shared where required.

Corbridge says the rise of consumerisation means people across the organisation have a much greater awareness of technology’s power. Everyone has a smartphone, and many people are using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT at home, never mind at work. This technological exploration means non-IT people will increasingly find their own solutions to business challenges. Corbridge wants to work with the business to hone the best of these ideas.

“Most importantly, I want us to be seen as an organisation that is adopting technology, and it’s not a distraction to how we work with customers, where our assets are, or what our value is, but that it’s actually adding to that effort. And that means a lot to me. We want to provide a clear view of what technology can actually do for this industry,” he says.

“There’s been a whole plethora of commentaries recently with experts saying, ‘At last, the property industry is starting to recruit CIOs. At last, the property industry is starting to adopt digital and technology.’ I want Segro to be synonymous with that march of difference.”