William Hill hires former BT director to sharpen tech strategy

Former director of technology, business engagement and roadmap, Paola Zekkou joined William Hill as director of strategy and planning as of 1 October.

Zekkou will play a key role in driving the overall digital technology transformation programme at William Hill. Her career background includes stints at EE (BT Group) as the director of technology, business engagement & roadmap and EE chief information officer.

Prior to BT, Zekkou worked in a number of international strategic planning and transformation roles in Greece in a number of sectors including banking.

What do your responsibilities entail?

My main responsibilities at William Hill are; owning the IT investment plan and IT financial management. Working with key stakeholders within IT and the rest of the business, including CxOs to make sure key objectives are aligned, communicated and met.

{I’m also tasked with] articulating/communicating a clear and inspiring vision around what’s important to deliver. Guarantee effective prioritisation, by ensuring delivery processes are in place that accommodate both a product and feature approach.

Playing a key role in driving the overall digital technology transformation programme. Create a transparent, non-hierarchical, engaging and innovative culture in order to deliver nimbly and at pace.

How has your background in telecommunications prepared you for working at William Hill?

The telecommunications industry is also fast-paced, well-regulated and has the customer at its core. These characteristics have always been part of the ways of working, as well as the focus of the initiatives I’ve managed with my teams at both EE and BT.

The key things I’ve learned, applied and aim to lead on are close collaboration with business functions to support the company strategy, technology activities and identifying opportunities for improvements/change. It’s then about supporting this progress – being a change agent and as I always say “looking for trouble”, whilst focusing on our development and culture.

Was this a newly formed role? If so, what sparked the need to establish such a role?

It’s not a new role but it does have a sharpened remit from Paul Durkan, the Group CIO, so we’ve got the right focus on the digital technology strategy for William Hill. I’m creating and providing a framework for delivering capabilities to our customers and achieving our goals of efficiency and effectiveness.

Primarily we’re all about getting our products to our customers as quickly as possible, providing a great experience and always keeping an eye on stability and security.

How is the tech team at William Hill evolving? Especially with the addition of a data lead and Ulrik’s position as Chief digital officer?

The technology team is already on a journey of becoming more agile in its delivery for our channels and with the introduction of the Product Council in digital for example, we are even closer to what our customers need and the priorities of the business.

Technology is such a fast-moving sector, so we have to constantly innovate and challenge ourselves to try new and more efficient ways of doing things.

Our role in technology is to help lead the transition into new digitally-enabled opportunities which unlock the power of algorithms and automated, intelligent workflows which support the data collection feed and help the growth of innovative products and services.

Paola Zekkou joins Hills as director of strategy and planning