Caragh O'Carroll, Fujitsu Distinguished Engineer at Fujitsu
Driving change through data-focused digital co-creation
Caragh O'Carroll, Fujitsu Distinguished Engineer, has a keen interest in data strategy and the potential of data-centric companies. Her particular focus at present is unpicking the 'value from data' concept – finding the keys to actually extracting value.
Having graduated in 2019 with a Masters in the 'Management of Information Systems Strategy' and as the sector lead for both the telecoms and defence industries, she focuses on transformation through combining business challenges with technology solutions.
Caragh is passionate about co-creating and articulating how technology can improve and change our working and daily lives and believes in removing constraints to define the vision before identifying the business process and technology solution.
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As technology moves forward, our need for empathy remains. Empathy is fundamental to effective adoption of a technology change. We should also be selective in what we de-humanise, and we should determine where it is beneficial to retain the human element.”
Caragh O'Carroll
Caragh O'Carroll LinkedIn
From her background in engineering, operations, product management, partner management and sales, she has insights into many business challenges and opportunities. She has presented widely on data protection, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Robotic Process Automation and Data Centricity.
As a founding member of the Women's Business Network in Fujitsu Ireland, Caragh actively contributes to organising events to empower and inspire those who attend, making events open to all – "equality begins with inviting everyone, not just females to events."
Tell us about your current role and what you like about your career and areas of focus.
I'm very lucky to have a joint role - I'm a Fujitsu Distinguished Engineer (FDE), and also I'm the Telecoms & Defence sector lead for Fujitsu in Ireland.
My FDE role is about creating and sharing knowledge, being a thought leader, helping customers on their journeys, exploring and taking advantage of technology trends. I really enjoy consulting and influencing data-centric strategies both with customers and internal change-makers.
My sector lead role is about inspiring customers with solutions to enhance their businesses and organisations. One of the things I've found is that customers really value that blend of technical and business conversation. Being able to articulate how a technology trend could make a specific relevant business impact makes these trends meaningful.
Technology is only valuable when it can be used to drive a business outcome – technology innovations allow you to achieve outcomes you may not have previously thought possible.
Think about how we've all taken advantage of flexible workplaces – as a recognised leader in this field, we've quickly helped customers to move to full remote working, challenging previous assumptions and feelings about workforce productivity and efficiency when employees are physically out of sight. It's been very rewarding to take customers through this quick transition.
On a personal interest side, I am particularly interested in data strategy, data-centricity, the field of how and where we use data in our organisations to enable goals, with those goals ranging from insights to support decisions, new capabilities and through to productivity and efficiency improvement.
What inspires you, motivates you, helps you to make each day count?
I love the technology-business conversation, and I've learnt that it's far more than one-sided. To create changes, there are many stakeholder roles and personalities to work with, and it really helps if I canadjust my conversation to reflect their particular role objectives.
My motivation comes from deciding how best to approach each challenge (never an obstacle, but a challenge) in order to achieve the end goal; being clear on the end goal each time.
I like to take stock at the start and end of each day to ensure my thinking is clear about key priorities in order to move forwards and make significant progress – making every day count.
Outside of your professional work area, what hobbies or interests do you have or what other areas of your life are of real importance to you?
Life outside work is very busy – a huge amount of time goes to supporting my family's football and music hobbies, but when I'm not in the car or watching a match with my hubby, my favourite thing is walking on the beach. Every walk is different, the horizon is far away, and it's an opportunity to relax and think, or just not think at all!
When it comes to your life chosen career, is there a phrase, quote or saying that you really like?
"As technology moves forward, our need for empathy remains." It's my own saying. Essentially, while we can replace mundane or repetitive actions or costly activities with technologies, we cannot forget the human interface, the human interaction with technology.
Technology change needs to take account of the human element in a change programme - why is it happening, what will the benefits be, what will change in how we work, how will the change be received, what human factors need to be accounted for in the plan.
Essentially, empathy is fundamental to effective adoption of a technology change. We should also be selective in what we de-humanise, and we should determine where it is beneficial to retain the human element. Technology should be human-centric.
What are you most proud of in your life?
From a professional standpoint, I was really proud to achieve my engineering degree and then later 'Chartered Engineer' status with both Engineers Ireland and also The Institution of Engineering & Technology. This is a significant achievement with the leading bodies for engineers in Ireland and across UK/Europe.
Recently, I’ve achieved a First Class Honours with a Masters of Science which focussed on Information Systems Strategy, and I've presented at multiple tech conferences on emerging IT technologies and data centricity.
Presenting at the Fujitsu Distinguished Engineers conference in Berlin with standing room only and having people turned away from a full room at my Women in Tech conference showed me that my work really resonates and has value.
I love the challenge that a tech conference poses – I always set myself an ambitious talk topic as that motivates me to learn about it to the level where I can teach others.
What do you wish you had known when you started out?
I wish I'd known that it was ok to take more risks, to go for promotions earlier, to move around different companies. I left it quite a while!
Who do you most admire in business, academic or creative circles?
I admire David Gladwell, his ability to break the mould; he's not tied into past structures or traditions. Also, Elena Mirca for her insights into data and in that vein, also Tom Davenport from Harvard, who provides considerable thought leadership in terms of data strategy. I also admire Bernard Marr’s crystallisation of tech trends each year.
What companies, brands or institutions do you like or do you think are getting it right?
I read and contribute to material from the MIT Global Panel; also, I like content from HBR, Forbes, TechCrunch and the Institution of Engineering and Technology. They all produce well-written, timely and relevant articles. I also think Google Scholar is a great resource for getting to the latest research.
What is the best advice you have ever received?
Don't ask. Essentially that's it! I read an article many years ago (but also far too late) that was titled 'Nice girls don't ask'. As a female, past culture was that girls are 'nice and pretty and sit quietly'. That doesn't work though because it is frustrating if you're waiting for someone to notice that you can contribute more, that you have potential.
Once I read that article, I understood that I have to stretch and make myself and my potential visible in order to progress. This means in practice, just doing what I need to do, obviously staying on the right side of the line. This practice means that I do the things that seem right and along the way I’m stretching, going for more.
Once my attitude to all this changed, my view of my own self-worth changed. It's hard to overcome a hard-coded way of acting, but I'm getting better.
What drives or motivates you each day in a work environment?
As a sector lead, it’s important that I focus on the sales figures, as an FDE, I am driven by inspiring people through technical possibilities. In reality, these combine to motivate me. I am motivated by helping teams and companies to achieve more through technical solutions.
Whether that's improving mobile platforms, improving digital store experiences or increasing defence IT capability or providing digital transformations for teams previously using legacy or non-enterprise IT systems. Essentially by combining both, I'm achieving in both.
What are your thoughts on the future of social media?
I think this depends on your role and your customers' favourite channels. Social media popularity changes, and if you're going to base significant communication on it, you need the agility to switch platforms regularly as your target market changes.
For me, if I want factual news, I'll go to an app or website where I can consume that. I am conscious that some people consume news via social media; I don't believe it's an appropriate resource for that. I use multiple news apps to get multiple perspectives.
For social media in the future, I think it's a big challenge for companies – whichever platform is picked needs appropriate content for that platform on a consistent basis plus engagement with any direct messages and also a watch is needed on other platforms which are resonating more with your target customer.
The role of a website hasn't gone away though, and I've noticed websites getting much slicker and also with far less content which makes curating them easier, plus there's more of a focus on sharing reports and blogs.
What is your favourite social media platform, and why?
For me, social media falls into two categories, either professional profile management or other social media for light entertainment personal use. I use LinkedIn professionally.
Do you have a mentor, or have you ever been a mentor to anyone?
I had a great mentor in BT UK when I started who opened the door for me to work in many different areas of the business and also held critical constructive discussions with me.
Since then I've gained most from some managers who have been really interested in me the person (rather than just a 'how am I performing' conversation), and that has made a huge difference to my growth.
I have taken on mentoring recently in the business, and previously I enjoyed mentoring an external business as part of a 'Business in the Community' initiative – that was very rewarding.
What advice would you have for someone looking to get into the same area of work?
Be a technology lover. Any kind of technology. And develop the acumen to be able to describe it, to anyone from other technology lovers to someone with no experience of the area. Work well with people, understand their roles, where you fit, what you bring and what they depend on you for.
What do you feel is the most common reason for people failing or giving up?
Not asking for help is probably a common reason; I think the motivation to give up rather than seek help is often deeply-rooted and is impacted by self-belief. Giving up is different from failing in my view.
How do you define success, and what lessons have you learned so far that you could share with our audience?
Success for me is enjoying every day, not seeing work as 'work', rising to the challenges every day while keeping the end-goal to the fore and finding lots of time for the rest of life outside of work.
What skills do you feel have helped you to become successful?
While not always a good thing, I'm generally seen as 'nice'! That seems to have really helped. It has to be tempered with a healthy dose of 'drive' though and it’s important that I can bring the most effective version of me at the appropriate time. The two seem to co-exist quite well.
Is there anything new that you are working on or involved in that you would like to share?
I still think we're at the very early stages of understanding the data we create and use. We aren't yet thinking widely about the future potential - we live very much in the 'today' of the data we create. Essentially I think we're not driving value from the 80% of data that is 'unstructured,' i.e. coming from emails, chats, posts etc.
Would you like to share any positive message relating to the global pandemic COVID-19 situation?
We have enough technology to improve how we trace contacts, how we notify test results, how we manage the numbers. This has to be underpinned by a clear set of goals about what data needs to be shared, with what organisations and with what frequency. When we take time to pause and review, we will be able to set ourselves up to better for the next wave or the next crisis.