IFS has made two changes in its CSuite. It has appointed Max Roberts as its new Chief Operating Officer and Belinda Finch as Chief Information Officer. The appointments come after another year of growth from the global cloud enterprise software company.
IFS CEO Darren Roos commented, “I am delighted to welcome Max and Belinda to IFS. They are joining at a very exciting time, and I am confident that their energy and perspectives will have a very positive impact as we enter our next phase of growth.
“They both bring strong expertise and a proven track record that is well aligned to our space and, in Belinda’s case, to one of our core industries. I am proud that the brand awareness IFS has achieved over the last few years and our consistent performance are attracting such incredible talent. I know that their combined experience and vision will be hugely instrumental as we accelerate our growth journey.”
What is unusual about this announcement is the people they are replacing, Michael Ouissi and Sal Laher are moving to IGTI, the Holding Group of IFS. They will take the positions of COO and CDIO, respectively. They will be involved in more strategic roles, looking at the long-term value creation of recent and future M&A activities. Is this a change of structure within the Group? Is Roos building a strategic executive team above the operational executive team? Will Ouissi and Laher also look at acquisitions for Workwave?
Max Roberts
Roberts joins from Stripe, where he has been Head of EMEA for the last year. He is also a Non-Exec Director at UK Finance for the last two and a half years. Prior to working at Stripe for three and a half years, he held leadership positions at Salesforce in the UK, rising to become SVP of Professional Services, EMEA. He also spent fourteen years at Oracle, ending as Director of Financial Applications, Public Sector, Comms, Media and Utilities.
Roberts commented in a LinkedIn post, “After three fantastic years at Stripe in London, it’s time for me to move on to a very different but exciting role. I feel incredibly privileged to have worked with many innovative business leaders and talented Stripes. I’m so proud of everything we’ve accomplished together.
“I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be joining IFS – the global cloud enterprise software company – as Chief Operating Officer. I’ll be working with the executive and wider leadership teams to develop IFS’s longer-term strategic products and services portfolios and develop the company’s strategic alliances and partnerships.”
Belinda Finch
This is the third CIO role that Finch has held. She joins from Three UK, where she was CIO for just over three years. Finch was previously CIO (Group Functions) and Chief of Staff at Centrica. She also spent eight years at Vodafone and, before that, worked for Accenture and KPMG.
At Three Layer, she led the firm’s digital transformation programs and also worked on customer-facing initiatives. She was recently named in the CIO 100 awards, which recognises those CIOs who have a broad spectrum of skills and the impact they have on their firms, especially around digital transformation. It will be interesting to see what initiatives she puts in place at the global company.
Finch revealed the appointment on LinkedIn, saying, “It gives me great pleasure to announce I have joined @IFS as Chief Information Officer. The growth and transformation of the company over the last few years has been immense, and I look forward to lending my knowledge and experience to the exciting opportunities IFS brings.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
Yet again, Roos has attracted two experienced and successful leaders to his exec team. Both are based in the UK and while Roberts has experience of working across EMEA, their experience of working globally appears limited. It is certainly a good challenge for both.
While the initiatives that Roberts and especially Finch aim to deliver will be interesting to hear about, it is the move upstairs by Ouissi and Laher that holds more interest. Will both stay in the long term? What are their new roles, and what does it mean for the wider group?
