Tim Hardcastle

Tim Hardcastle

Following roles in consulting, finance, strategy and IT he was appointed Group IS Director for AWG in 1999, a £2bn utility and support service business.He has subsequently helped grow an IT business as Chief Operating Officer at Agilisys, a £60m IT services company which provides IT strategy, system integration and website services for companies such as McDonalds and Npower.At the other end of the spectrum he 'slashed' IT and shared service centre costs as part of the management recovery team at Jarvis plc.Tim joined Hiscox in 2005 as Group IT Director.

Tim Hardcastle, IT Director of AWG, said: "e-Business is set to play a central role in AWG's future development and I'm delighted to help launch e@awg.

Tim Hardcastle, formerly the CIO at AWG and Jarvis, has joined Agilisys as Chief Operating Officer.Both Charles and Tim have strong management and technology backgrounds with extensive experience in delivering complex technology and e-government projects.
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The appointment of Tim Hardcastle as COO further strengthens the Agilisys management team."

Tim HardcastleDirector of AWG Information Services

This end-user case study is based on an interview with Tim Hardcastle, group IT director, Hiscox.

Tim Hardcastle, Director of information services at AWG, commented, 'We aspire to become a leader in the global water industry by 2007.Logica's unique combination of industry knowledge, sector expertise and proven track record will help us realise this ambition.By adopting a best practice approach we hope to reduce the time required to deliver new projects and accelerate the process of generating business benefit.'

Yorkshire Electricity Group's Distribution Asset Management System (DAMS) programme has resulted in a complete restructuring and refocusing of its distribution business.Logica as integration development consultants delivered an integration architecture bringing together information currently held on 60 computerised and paper-based systems into one integrated system with 13 applications.In addition, Logica's WMIS product was implemented as the work management solution.

Tim Hardcastle, Director of information services at AWG, commented, "We aspire to become a leader in the global water industry by 2007.Logica's unique combination of industry knowledge, sector expertise and proven track record will help us realise this ambition.By adopting a best practice approach we hope to reduce the time required to deliver new projects and accelerate the process of generating business benefit."

Take the example of Tim Hardcastle, Anglian Water's CIO, quoted in the Reuters report."Our CEO Chris Miller looks to me for development of the eBusiness strategy, and I'm quite happy to do as much as I can.But it is probably more to do with my personal attributes and our history together than what I would consider to be the true role of a chief technologist," he says.

Take the example of Tim Hardcastle, Anglian Water's CIO, quoted in the Reuters report."Our CEO Chris Miller looks to me for development of the eBusiness strategy, and I'm quite happy to do as much as I can.But it is probably more to do with my personal attributes and our history together than what I would consider to be the true role of a chief technologist," he says.

Finance directors should look to their IT managers as allies - people to be encouraged to help the finance function deliver best value through investment.In the end this may mean more business-oriented IT directors will vie with FDs for the top spots in business.But, then again, as anyone whose PC breaks down knows, it is better to have IT on your side than against you.

* Beyond the Role of the IT Director, distributed at the IT Directors' Forum, May 2002.