This isn't a detrimental facet, far from it, it is just the unassuming nature of Howarth; instead of power play, she shows an immediate concern for your welfare. It would be easy, nigh on crass to put this down to Howarth being a mother, but throughout the interview, you are constantly reminded by Howarth that her heady achievements are not purely singular and have been as part of a team.
Just two weeks prior to CIO catching up with Howarth she and her team had successfully completed the IT split away from Unilever. had been part of the Unilever consumer goods empire until 2006 when it was sold to a private equity group. Stepping off the Unilever ship, Birds Eye found itself with no IT infrastructure at all and only an agreement with Unilever to use its systems until this summer. Switching to its own IT infrastructure was the final severance from Unilever.
"The challenge we now have is to change the culture and programming of the organisation," Howarth says. "We have been dependent on Unilever for back office and systems and that has affected the ways we do things. Now we are a medium-sized business and to grow it will mean a very different environment."
"When you are part of a big business bad results don't feel as real. When it's a smaller organisation it feels very real," she says realistically. "We are not small, but not large."
Howarth joined Birds Eye when Martin Glenn, the food manufacturer's CEO, approached her with the "difficult IT issue" of Birds Eye being cast off with no IT. "There was nothing, the separation was made in eight countries, none of which had worked together before." Howarth arrived to build a green-field system with the organisation being underpinned by a 12-month transition service agreement with . "It was very exciting to build from scratch, to build my own destiny with no horrible legacy that we all spend our careers having to work with," she says with a nod to her former CIO roles and colleagues.
in November 2006, with Howarth joining the company in April 2007. The greatest challenge she faced was not to disturb the business, while at the same time switching it over to a new infrastructure. "The business has not missed a beat," she says with understated pride. "We've all aged and there were difficulties, but we had massive levels of energy from everyone involved. I told my team, 'I have never experienced a team that was literally thrown together, do such a fantastic job and I couldn't ask any more'." She believes the reason they all channelled so much of their energy into the project is that it -became personal for them.ong"Understanding the business and people are still the passions that get Howarth out of bed every morning. "Fundamentally the reason I love the job I do is the people, not the technology. It's a people business, like any general management role," she says of being a CIO. That interest in people has seen Howarth's responsibilities at Birds Eye extended to include HR. CIOs are often given change management or supply chain responsibilities, and some CFOs add the CIOs role to their quiver, but human resources is not a common addition. "HR is a hobby of mine. IT people are intrinsically about delivering transformation of the way you work. IT people get the process, but typically don't get the people change management needs. HR get the people dynamics, but they often don't get the process bit." Howarth, with her IT and change background and clearly visible people skills aims to meld the two together. Having spent a little time in Howarth's company, it is not difficult to imagine she will succeed in joining HR and IT in a mutually conducive relationship that has never been conceived of before.