The McCue Interview: The AA IT director Trevor Didcock

Didcock started his career in mechanical engineering at Esso's Fawley refinery. But after moving into a financial analyst job at the company he decided he wanted to work in London and in a job that allowed him to travel so he dropped into IT with JP Morgan, cutting his teeth programming and doing systems analysis work.

He then opted to take time out to get a broader business understanding through an MBA at Cranfield University - a move he strongly recommends for any other IT professionals with aspirations to make director.

"Can I put my finger on specific things from that I use day-to-day? Not particularly but it's just having that general understanding of how business works and also contacts. I've used those contacts over the years quite a lot. It gives you a much broader appreciation of what business is about which is what I think a lot of IT people lack. If you sit on a board of any description, any CEO expects you to contribute not just from an IT perspective but contribute generally and that's why I really enjoy doing it," he says.

From there it was on to Mars Confectionary on an SAP implementation, where he stayed for 10 years working his way up to business systems manager and then head of IT for the confectionary business.

Then the head-hunters came calling and Didcock landed his first director job at the RAC as part of a new management team brought in from outside after demutualisation, where he joined the board for his first director role, aged just 36 years old.

"You realise the buck completely and utterly stops with you. That's the biggest personal learning experience I've had during my career and stands you in fantastic stead. You've just got to go for it, just dive in. I was quite young. It was hairy stuff. It was political at times. You really do have to fight your corner and it toughened me up."

An ex-Mars colleague then called Didcock up to join the board of the AA and now, having successfully completed the transition from Centrica, the whole due diligence process is once again underway as part of the Saga merger.

"It's all up for grabs now," says Didcock.

Saga will have managerial control of the new organisation and because it mostly keeps its infrastructure in-house that is likely to lead to changes in some of the AA's IT contracts. Some of the big decisions have in fact already been taken - most notably the deal with IBM is to be cut short and brought back in-house over the next 12 months.

"We have terminated our deal with IBM. The intent is to move that work in-house. We are recommissioning our data centre here in this building and we'll put a second data centre into either the Saga sites or local to here. And we'll steadily move the services back in-house," says Didcock.

Despite the obvious disappointment for IBM, Didcock says the outsourcing company has been "fantastic and supportive".

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"IBM is going to end up with a three-and-a-half year deal instead of the planned seven years. But they've been really professional. They know these things happen as a consequence of mergers," he says.

As Saga already has a networking deal with C&W the likelihood is that will be merged into the AA's existing C&W contract, though no decision has yet been made on that or the Fujitsu Services application support contract. Data warehousing will also be a big strategic decision - the AA is currently an SAS user while Saga has a mix of suppliers.

Didcock obviously has no desire to stick around and effectively undo the work he's done over the last four years and he already has his sights on jumping straight back into another CIO role.

"I love doing the CIO job, it's a great job particularly when it's very much part of a management team. When you're on the board, when you report to the chief exec and you've got the support of an executive team it can be a fantastic job so I'd love to do another one of these - either private equity or a plc - or another few of these," he says.