Building a solid foundation to support AI adoption at Bentley

Before starting at Bentley Motors in 2022, KirstyMason had already worked in IT for over 30 years across industries such as telecoms, airlines, insurance companies, and outsourced service providers, so there aren’t many things she hasn’t seen at least a couple of times.

But as AI and agentic AI usher in a new era of technology, and as adoption rates increase, she’s increasingly focused on capabilities like data visualization and, fundamentally, using the right tool for the right thing to maximize value.

“We had to rationalize the amount of systems delivering capabilities, so that’s where we had to take the business on this journey with us,” she says. “We know people get precious about the systems they use because they know it, love it, and understand it.”

Change, as we know, isn’t always welcome, but framing it in a way so end-to-end processes could be streamlined across the business, thereby reducing costs, IT delivery, and overall complexity in the landscape, was a more deliverable and effective strategy.

One thing Mason certainly welcomes is not having an office, something she’s consciously done to buck the convention. “I book a desk the same as everyone else,” she says. “CIO is just a role. It isn’t me as a person. That’s the role I perform when I come to work. We just have different responsibilities yet we’re all part of a team with the same common objectives. So I need to be part of that team as well.”

With increasing attention on AI, people are starting to learn more and work together toward that common objective. “Education is massive because in a four-box grid I reference, competence is on one side and consciousness on the other.” She says. “If we’re not careful, we’ll have lots of unconscious incompetence, and that’s the worst place to be.”

Strategic partners play their part as well, to come on the journey with them. It’s a win-win with each involved to help define products and add business value. “I’ve been pulling our partners and the business in to get us there,” she says. “It’s not easy, but you just have to start. After all, everything’s hard when you begin.”

Mason also speaks about defining workplace actions that support women in tech, and finding effective role models at each career stage. Watch the full video below for more insights.

On women in tech: There’s so much we can do, and there are things I try to do myself. I think the most important thing is getting out there and sharing stories. Because when you hear someone’s personal story and their journey, that’s something you can gravitate to a bit more. That’s why it’s important to do things like this. A lot of people seem put off by moving into leadership roles because they see you have to be a certain way or be very corporate. And I’m not very corporate at all. I’m quite down to earth, and I think people see more real people as well. Bringing their true selves to work helps people feel more comfortable to go into those roles and progress through the ranks too. When I have apprentices joining, I still see the world through their eyes when I started at an IT organization. It’s so different to when you’re at school or university. So knowing how it felt for me, I still get that sense of responsibility to help them feel as comfortable as I did when I first joined that development division.

On determination: Years ago, there was a program called Tomorrow’s World, and it was all about the future and what that could look like. I was fascinated by it because in one episode, there was a woman presenter. So that inspired me then, and showed you could aspire to that. I went into my first role working in a software development division in the mid-90s where everyone was frantically recoding everything because of Y2K. Those were my very early days in technology. But even then, I had female role models who made it seem accessible. I was curious but not very academic at school, so I felt lucky to get a job in technology. Being able to learn coding was very interesting, and I found my routine, and continued to grow and move through the ranks.

On data: I always say there’s no AI without data. So the thing we’ve been working on for the last two years is the data strategy, understanding the governance, the framework, and everything else we need there as foundations. We’ve done a lot of work around data literacy and upskilling in the organization, and we’ve been doing that in preparedness for AI because we know everybody wants it, and they want it now, but they don’t necessarily know what they want it for. So it’s about creating that safe space where people can test and learn. I’ve been working in partnership with the chief strategy officer to say this needs to be a joint business, and we need an IT strategy around data and AI. It can’t just be directly from it. We need to work together with the business to understand what we want to use AI for so we can get to value sooner. And if you think about what we’ve been doing for the last three years in moving to the enterprise systems, reducing the systems landscape, and making sure we understand what data we’ve got in those systems, it’s all been creating the pathway and the foundation levels we need to get us there sooner.

On streamlining efficiencies: When I came into automotive, it was essentially learning a whole different language because many of the abbreviations are tied to German words. So even when you know them, you don’t understand what they mean. For me, it was about taking that big step back, looking at our business and saying we’re all about designing and creating an amazing product. We then have customers we service through the web or the app. So it’s broken down into value streams, and within those are the processes of designing, building, marketing, and selling cars. I like logic, so I try to apply it when we examine capabilities, like reducing cost of delivery from an IT perspective. That gives us more money to invest in other things, or future ready our organization.