Clare Lansley, CIO at Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One, displays on the position of the trendy IT chief and says she’s fortunate sufficient to be in her dream job: “I’ve been an F1 fan all my life, courtesy of my parents. I was indoctrinated at an early age.”
While she’s a motor racing fanatic, it’s not simply the sporting atmosphere of the position that appeals. Lansley, who joined Aston Martin F1 in July 2022, additionally enjoys the fast-paced nature of the {industry}. As somebody who’s already labored in senior IT positions for Jaguar Land Rover and McLaren, the traits of the sector match her personal working type.
“I love the fact that it’s dynamic and that you need to keep an open mind because ideas can come from anywhere,” she says.
“It doesn’t matter whether the ideas come from a newly appointed graduate all the way up to the CEO. The whole concept of collaboration – because you’re all pulling together for a common goal – really appeals.”
Success on the monitor is reliant on a mixture of individuals and programs off it. Lansley says that inherent sense of connectedness – allied to her love for the game – made taking the chance to steer expertise at Aston Martin F1 a straightforward determination.
“Quite frankly, when you work in corporates, they can be siloed,” she says. “There’s a hierarchy, they’re slow to transform, and I wanted to get back into something that is pacier – somewhere you can genuinely affect change quickly.”
Leaving the beginning grid
As CIO at Aston Martin F1, Lansley studies to the group chief business officer and manages an inner IT workforce of 40 folks. After six months within the position, she’s starting to enact her programme for digital transformation.
“My focus right now is getting embedded within the team and getting things set up for success,” she says. “I’m not doing much globetrotting. But moving forwards, I want to get out to races, so that I can understand the duress our kit is going through and how can we make our processes slicker at the track.”
“I’m not always in the marketing suite. I like to be down in the garage because that’s what I’m responsible for. The engineers are at their desks because that’s where they add value, so I need to be going to their place of work, interacting with them”
Clare Lansley, Aston Martin Cognizant F1
Lansley isn’t your conventional CIO – and in additional methods than one. She acknowledges she’s a lady in what’s generally perceived to be a person’s recreation. As properly as turning that notion on its head, Lansley needs to enact a step change in IT management type. Rather than being caught within the datacentre, she needs to spend extra time partaking with the enterprise.
“Rest assured, I’m not always in the marketing suite,” she says. “I like to be down in the garage because that’s what I’m responsible for. The engineers are at their desks because that’s where they add value, so I need to be going to their place of work, interacting with them. And I think that’s a very different approach to perhaps what’s happened previously in F1.”
While Lansley has held senior administration positions within the motor {industry} earlier than, that is her first CIO position. She recognised from the outset that this was the type of IT management alternative she craved – particularly given Aston Martin F1’s long-term ambitions and the position that expertise is predicted to play in that journey.
“When I came in for an interview, I began to understand the growth and what needs to happen with technology to transform it and use it as an enabler for the broader team. Obviously, everything’s to do with tech in this industry – from designing the car to starting the car – so you’ve got a huge journey to go on,” she says.
“The amount of transformation that needs to happen to make this a championship-winning team is really appealing. And given that I’ve got a delivery background, doing the planning and driving the agenda to make sure tech-led transformation happens and gets executed at the right time is a great combination.”
Moving up the rankings
Aston Martin F1’s path of journey modified in January 2020, when billionaire Lawrence Stroll invested £182m within the motor firm. The following 12 months, the Racing Point F1 workforce was rebranded as Aston Martin F1.
An ambition was established for the workforce to be competing for podiums within the sport inside 5 years. Last 12 months, the workforce completed seventh within the constructors’ championship. Lansley says the journey in the direction of long-term success will proceed at tempo throughout 2023.
Aston Martin F1’s journey in the direction of long-term success will proceed at tempo throughout 2023
“There’s been a lot of learning already,” she says. “There’s obviously been a fair amount of investment since Lawrence bought the team. A lot of new talent has been acquired and there’s been a fair amount of process change internally. But time is totally of the essence in this industry.”
Lansley says there’s no hiding from the requirement to ship nice outcomes rapidly. “It’s demanding,” she says. “As well as making sure the basics are in place – so that means the reliability and the performance, which is a given – my day job is to transform faster and innovate smarter.”
As a part of that course of, Lansley is looking for out digital improvements – both internally or from trusted companions – that may assist her workforce transfer up the grid. “We’re looking for a competitive edge,” she says.
“We need to harness the power of data. We need to leverage technology to give us an edge on the circuit, whether that’s from a simulation and design perspective or in terms of establishing what trends the data is showing us. It’s all about anticipating the future based on the data that we’ve already got.”
Overcoming obstacles
Lansley’s expertise ambitions are formed as a lot by the principles and laws of the game as they’re by the folks main the workforce. Her technique is intently associated to the requirements of the FIA cost cap, which limits the quantity groups can spend on automobiles. Dealing with these laws means contemplating rigorously how the workforce’s IT finances is invested.
“We’re asking questions like, ‘Can we do some smarter spending?’ From an IT perspective, we’re asking, ‘Can we rationalise?’ You’re always trying to make sure your legacy estate is minimal and tidy. And because applications and tools date so quickly, we’re asking, ‘Are we giving the best value to our business partner?’”
As properly as guaranteeing current programs are cost-effective and environment friendly, Lansley’s workforce can also be exploring the way it can benefit from knowledge analytics and synthetic intelligence (AI). She says AI may help the workforce to analyse photos, whether or not that’s from the wind tunnel or the monitor, and so they can use knowledge to make smarter predictions about automotive efficiency.
“There’s some seriously hard-core tech available, which means you have to have some high-level talent to use and consume it,” she says. “But the data it gives you means you can leapfrog some of your test and development processes significantly.”
Aston Martin F1 creates large quantities of knowledge. Lansley estimates her workforce manages about 400TB (terabytes) of knowledge. Changes exterior the game carry additional issues. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine meant the nation was dropped from the race schedule. However, Russia is perhaps again on the race map someday. The IT workforce would then have to make historic race knowledge – resembling timings and climate situations – out there at tempo.
“A big challenge of mine is that we’ve got all this data. I need to ask, ‘Do we need it and, if so, where do I put it?’,” she says. “Managing data to make it available quickly is key. But we’ve also got to manage the cost. As I mentioned before, the cost cap is driving a huge amount of choices from a technical perspective.”
Delivering nice efficiency
AI can also be serving to the corporate to make sure its IT operations are as efficient as doable. Lansley is utilizing Juniper’s Mist AI platform, which makes use of a mixture of AI, machine studying and knowledge science to optimise person experiences and simplify operations throughout the community.
She says the expertise’s self-heal properties are significantly necessary. Mist AI, for instance, will attempt to heal a wi-fi entry level that’s struggling. If it might probably’t, the platform sends an alert to IT. When the workforce swaps the failing system, Mist AI robotically pushes the configuration for the outdated community straight to the brand new system.
“Mist is using AI to help transform how we support infrastructure,” she says, earlier than including that automation means her proficient workers can spend extra time making a distinction to the workforce moderately than specializing in operational considerations. “It means I’m hands-off and my people can concentrate on value-adding activities.”
“We’re not an IT team that sits downstairs. That model of working is long gone. We want to be considered an integral partner of the team because we make great stuff happen” Clare Lansley, Aston Martin Cognizant F1
Lansley says F1 has distinctive necessities round reliability and efficiency. Any expertise has to ship nice outcomes rapidly and constantly. She says the industry-leading options that Mist AI gives present the enterprise with the innovation it craves and the operational perception it wants.
“That’s what we’re looking to capitalise on,” she says. “The fact that the platform gives me access to everything on one dashboard – and I can go straight down to it, it can self-heal and I can investigate issues remotely – means I don’t have to send somebody off down a corridor to go and check a device.”
Taking the lead
Lansley says the capability to provide her workers extra time to make game-changing choices for the enterprise is her primary precedence going forwards. Her intention is to empower her workforce, enhance effectivity and embrace innovation.
“We need to be pushing boundaries. You’ve got to have a motivated team and they’ve got to go after something good. We’ve got some really sexy software and fantastic concepts going around the business. Being able to partner with our business colleagues to unlock the power of technology is where we want to be,” she says.
“We want to be sat next to the aerodynamicists helping them. We’re not an IT team that sits downstairs. That model of working is long gone. We want to be considered an integral partner of the team because we make great stuff happen.”
