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Profile: James Huckerby

Beverley Head, Information Age

10/12/2002 17:13:55

Licensed club behemoth Panthers needed someone to develop an information environment that could support a burgeoning business, so it hired its first-ever CIO. In the first in an occasional series, Beverley Head reports on the emerging challenges of the role.

West of Sydney on the flat plains that eventually give way to the Blue Mountains, a series of stocky towers hunker down in a scrum. It is a fitting architectural statement for Panthers Entertainment Group (PEG), the broad network of businesses which grew out of the Penrith Panthers rugby league club.

Today PEG boasts around 130,000 members. Besides the 13 licensed clubs dotted across New South Wales, the motels, the restaurants and the Penrith Panthers rugby league operation, the organisation also sponsors Penrith's rugby union and cricket teams, and through Club Nova in Newcastle is a major sponsor of the Newcastle Knights league team. On the drawing board is a multimillion dollar development plan to build a boulevard of retail and entertainment outlets called Panthers Walk, which is another attempt to draw more people into the Panthers network.

PEG's growing sprawl of operations recorded pre-tax earnings of $19.1 million for the 2001 financial year. The organisation's assets, staff numbers and revenues had doubled in two years. Although PEG was not without IT systems, they were not integrated, or centrally owned or managed. They needed to be. The group's accountants advised hiring a chief information officer who could create an information system that would support PEG today and grow with it in the future.

While the people of NSW barracked, bet, ate and drank their way through the PEG empire, on the other side of the world Australian James Huckerby was sick of the cold and the grey and the damp. Since 1998 he had been working in Britain in a number of IT roles including a stint with telecommunications company Global Crossing, with BBC Worldwide and also with the almost iconic British brand Tetley Tea. But it was time to come home. "I was sick of the weather," says Huckerby. "You can't overstate how much that can get you down."

Huckerby certainly achieved his desire for a little more warmth - literally. He flew back into Australia on Christmas Day 2001, his plane banking over the bushfire-plagued Blue Mountains which were belching black smoke down onto the Penrith plains. His first interview with the Panthers CEO had to be postponed "because the CEO's house was burning down". It was quite a homecoming.

Initially Huckerby was appointed as a strategic consultant to PEG. In April he was anointed CIO and has been at full stretch ever since.

The IT operation Huckerby inherited is perhaps best described as eclectic. A scattergun collection of IT staff supported the computer systems out in the field. There were four people in operations (since boosted to nine) plus IT people spread widely throughout the businesses, and a specialist IT team in the gaming arm of the organisation. PEG also had its own call centre, which Huckerby says was working so well that he subsequently corralled it to provide first-line IT support. Besides the assortment of staff, there was a mixture of computer systems, software and communications networks that bore few planning hallmarks. And beyond the information systems network was the cornucopia of gaming technology in the clubs.

Since auditing his inheritance, Huckerby has been busy drawing up blueprints, laying down infrastructure foundations and pulling together a core team that will deliver the information ecosystem to support Panthers. As part of a cross-functional team comprising the CEO, CFO and director of gaming, Huckerby achieved his first milestone in July when he launched his rebranded information systems department - PEGiT. The next major calendar event was the August unveiling of a new corporate Web site.

However, Huckerby's to-do list is still chockers.

He is developing an e-business strategy incorporating a new business model and design. He is scoping a mid-range ERP solution and a supply chain for PEG's hospitality products, which he believes represent a potentially big new revenue stream. On the drawing board is a CRM system to manage the group's 130,000-plus members along with other consumer and business customers who might benefit from closer links.

Huckerby is also looking at selling chain management, supply chain management, e-fulfilment and e-procurement. Then there is the range of business intelligence tools he wants to develop with an eye to improving the quality of data available to the group's management team. Last but not least there is "lots of really boring stuff like policies and procedures".

It is a lengthy, albeit somewhat conventional, list; but Huckerby's journey is not starting from a conventional point. As the old Irish joke goes: "Well, to get there I wouldn't be starting from here."

When Huckerby started work at Panthers, what he found was "weird". "It's really, really different in Clubland," he says. "The vendors were allowed to get away with stuff."

Business systems were picked and paid for by the users, and IT's role was to support it once it was installed. "Finance or HR would buy the system. IT had no authority to select systems, but they had the responsibility to support it once it was in," Huckerby says. And to make things worse, multiply that by 13 because each club chose its own computer and gaming systems.

Although there were some core transactional systems, what this basically amounted to was an Access database back end, he says.

Consolidating fiefdoms

Before wholesale change can take place at PEG, Huckerby needs to negotiate some historical political issues, and a handful of fiefdoms are likely to persist at least in the short-to-medium term. Some systems are also going to prove just too difficult to tackle immediately.

For example, the payroll system is tied closely to the complex awards system of the hospitality unions. The human resources department is championing the development of a new system called Clubline, which will meet the union award requirements and also conform to PEG's specifications. It is a project that predates Huckerby and for the present he is leaving it well alone and with HR in charge.

That stance is not without risk, as next year he hopes to roll out a common IT platform for PEG, and somehow Clubline will have to shoehorn into that platform. Huckerby though is optimistic about that process as Clubline is migrating to Microsoft SQL, which is compatible with his operating environment plans.

One area that will see change in the near term is the financial back-office. Currently the business uses Adept, which has been modified in association with PEG. Huckerby is now considering implementing a mid-range ERP system and is scoping the Microsoft Great Plains suite. "I'd like to replace all the back-office systems with a common platform," he says. "I'm quite confident that it [Great Plains] can handle the supply chain stuff and the back-office."

If Huckerby gives the nod to Great Plains it will be a windfall for Microsoft. The company would also win the standard operating environment deal because Huckerby would opt for an XP desktop and a Windows 2000 back end with a view to complying with Microsoft's .Net framework.

Scoring quick wins

Huckerby's game plan is one his rugby league bosses will recognise from the paddock: execute against strategy first where he can get quick and visible points on the board, which will boost morale and confidence and result in yet more wins.

One area where he is looking for those early wins is in hospitality services. By harnessing supply chain management and e-procurement technologies, Huckerby hopes to tease out some real savings and simultaneously increase revenues. "As part of the e-business strategy I've analysed every revenue stream into the business and identified that there is huge potential in the hospitality services - in food and beverages," he says.

Besides running the 13 licensed clubs, PEG holds the franchise for the Spurs and Panarottis chains of restaurants. What that delivers is a huge buying power, which Huckerby hopes to better leverage across the organisation. He also wants to identify where in the supply chain there are opportunities to sell product to third parties.

For example, PEG runs supply trucks from its Penrith warehouse to its clubs in Bathurst, Newcastle, Port Macquarie and Albury. By implementing e-business programs, Huckerby is exploring whether it would be possible to bring community organisations into the PEG network, providing their hospitality supply needs from the trucks en route. "Generating a new revenue stream is something I find very exciting," he says.

Also in his IT sights is Loyalty Magic, a project with a price tag just below the $1 million mark. This program rewards members for spending anywhere within the group, whether it's on food, drinks, accommodation, entertainment or gaming. As they spend, the members accrue points they can spend within the group.

A sense of community

Because PEG is run on a not-for-profit basis with all monies ploughed back into the group or the community, Huckerby also has the opportunity to develop IT programs outside the conventional ambit of a CIO.

For example, he is already floating the idea of setting up Internet cafes in the licensed clubs where it would be possible to train elderly or disabled members of the community to access and use the Internet. Clearly this would allow them to access Panthers' own Web sites - but beyond that such a project does perform a measure of community service which PEG sees as one of its important obligations.

But it is the rugby league fans - the men and women who underpin the foundations of PEG - Huckerby must serve first and foremost. "Your diehard rugby league supporter wants something else entirely," Huckerby says, and fans cannot be sidelined by the other priorities of PEGiT. He needs to feed their desire for club, fixture, player and statistics information via the Web site. "I don't see the Web sites as huge generators of revenue; but they will firm up our membership base," Huckerby says.

To enhance the online experience though, he foresees linking customer relationship management systems with Web sites. For example, a member logs on to the PEG Web site and the CRM system, based on historical interaction, identifies the member as a country music fan. The CRM system would automatically alert the member to the fact that Slim Dusty is performing at Club Nova in Newcastle in a fortnight's time.

Reversing the value chain

Huckerby senses that in the past the IT systems were bolted into the club, and then foisted on the members. Where possible, his approach is the opposite: determine what members and users want, and then deliver appropriate information systems. He says that his motivation is to add value to the business; he's not particularly excited in the technology for its own sake. "The model is reversing the value chain and the main focus is service excellence," he says.

Huckerby has floated the strategy with the cross-functional executive team to get their feedback. "Those meetings are good and heated most times. But I do get very good buy-in here generally. I want to change the way this business does business for the better - and the way the employees work for the better," he says.

Although he has been involved in the IT sector since 1988, Huckerby has no formal qualifications in computing or IT. In fact, he is currently working on a part-time MBA and completing the CMACS program with the Australian Computer Society, which he hopes to have completed by mid-2003.

Not that Huckerby seems to need any help with the business of talking the talk. What might prove trickier is walking the walk.

PEG has gone through an extraordinary expansionist phase, and has ambitious plans - such as Panthers Walk - on the horizon, but it is officially in a period of consolidation. Many of its members are facing tougher times, and with interest rates rising the mortgage-belt membership has fewer discretionary dollars to feed into the pokies or spend on slap-up meals at the club.

Huckerby has a budget allocated. He has created a kitty for those strategic projects that will serve up the wins he needs to get support for his more ambitious plans. Looking to the future, he wants to develop the IT centre so that it is seen as an investment centre within PEG rather than just a cost centre. "I don't want us just to be responsible for spending our revenues but for capital expenditure out in the business," Huckerby says.

First though, he needs to kick a few goals.

- Reprinted with permission from CIO magazine, September 2002.

Certification springboard to CIO

James Huckerby's journey to CIO at Panthers Entertainment Group has zig-zagged across two essential elements - business and technology, with a solid bridge of project management in between.

Starting out as a trainee accountant, this 32-year-old son of a computer company executive moved to selling and installing PCs and gaining an MCSE along the way, the better to ride the Microsoft wave of the mid-90s.

Although without an undergraduate degree as the traditional starting point, training and education have remained central to every career move during a stint in the UK with majors like Woolworths, BBC Worldwide, Global Crossing and Tetley Tea.

A clear understanding of the business/IT convergence prompted a search for management development to complement his technical knowledge, bringing him to the ACS' Certification Program specialising in Managing Strategy and IS.

Travelling extensively in his work, the distance education mode of study and work-based learning of the course leading to the APESMA MBA (Technology Management) met ambition and work style considerations which precluded campus study.

"I needed a program that I could study any time, anywhere. An added advantage was the fact that I could apply my studies to my job through the work-based learning format of assignments, immediately applying theory to practice," he says.

Having completed the ACS program, he will complete his MBA in 2003.

- Peter Davidson