Interview: Kirsty Roth, chief operations and technology officer, Thomson Reuters

“Technology people just look at the problem differently,” says Kirsty Roth, chief operations and technology officer at Thomson Reuters. “They think about how the business can use technology to solve the problem versus traditional management techniques.”

That’s why she’s on a mission to use digital systems to transform internal processes and customer services at the business information services specialist.

“I’m a technologist by background,” she says. “I started off working in what we would have called programming and now call IT engineering, so I always had a strong technology bent, and then spent over a decade in consulting, helping companies think about what technology can bring and [how it can] help to get things done.”

Roth joined Thomson Reuters in August 2020. Her previous experiences centred on financial services. She was global head of operations at HSBC, where she led a transformation of the bank’s technology, processes and innovation capabilities. She also held senior roles at Credit Suisse and Deloitte. She says the position at Thomson Reuters gave her the chance to consider how she could apply her skills and knowledge in a different industry.

“I thought that would be a good challenge for me,” she says. “I’m not a lawyer or accountant. By background, many people at Thomson Reuters are, so would I be able to help ensure Thomson Reuters is in the right spot?”

Roth says her background in financial services means she tends to look at opportunities like an analyst. She reflected on the fact that Thomson Reuters had about 2% annual growth for the previous decade. Looking at the company’s products and gaps in the market, she analysed how she could help the business grow.

Today, the firm’s annual growth is north of 7%. Roth recognises she played an important role in helping Thomson Reuters boost its performance through digital transformation. However, she says success is a team sport, and asserts that her organisation will need to maintain its collaborative approach as the rate of transformation continues to quicken.

“Technology people just look at the problem differently. They think about how the business can use technology to solve the problem versus traditional management techniques”

Kirsty Roth, Thomson Reuters

“I led our change programme in the early days. However, we had a collective effort on key questions, such as, ‘What does a growth strategy look like? Where do we want to place our investments? How do we make smarter investments? How do we get technology in products in the right way to enable that level of growth?’ Our success has been a team effort,” she says, before suggesting there’s more change to come.

“We have an interesting opportunity to take technology, to push forward and do something more growth-oriented, with an IT leadership team that has the right skills and mix of talents to be successful at an exciting time, given all the changes around AI [artificial intelligence] and everything else in emerging technology, and how those advances are impacting legal and accounting professions.”

Taking a fresh approach

Roth reports to the CEO and sits on the executive board. She oversees the firm’s efforts to deliver better customer and employee experiences. Roth recognises that her joint operations and technology role is an unusual C-suite position that comes with a broad business oversight.

“It’s probably easier to think about what I don’t have responsibility for. So, I don’t run sales or marketing. The business also has a chief product officer who lays out what we should put in our products as we launch them in the market and our long-term roadmaps. But I’m responsible for everything that sits behind that process,” she says.

“If you think logically, you’ve got to build those products once you have a roadmap, and you’ve got to maintain those products once they’re launched because they include many operational features. If you sell something, you want your customers to be able to call up if there’s a problem and to get good answers to their queries. I also pick up responsibility for other areas, such as procurement and real estate.”

While her joint position is unusual, Roth believes her broad role is likely to become more common. She reflects on her career and says the opportunity to join HSBC and run group operations as a technologist gave her the chance to move beyond the confines of IT.

Roth has benefited from the experience and suggests other companies could gain from a joined-up approach to technology and operations: “I think you’re going to see more technology leaders taking on operational jobs as a way to get things done, depending on the business outcome, such as speeding up processes or boosting efficiencies.”

One way to look at Roth’s career is to suggest that she’s blazing a trail for the new breed of business-focused digital leaders that will follow her. She says her conversations with senior executive peers at other organisations suggest the opportunities are out there for talented IT professionals.

“They’re saying, ‘Who should come and run our operations?’ And I’ll say, ‘I would think about a technology leader right now because the world is changing so much.’ Certainly for Thomson Reuters, I think it’s been helpful to have tech and operations together to drive the level of change that we’ve made over the past five years.”

Supporting business change

Roth says several key achievements underpin her technology-enabled attempts to help the business grow its revenue.

The company had started moving to the cloud before she joined in 2020. However, she says the firm’s systems are now almost entirely cloud-based. This shift to on-demand IT has been accompanied by the development of an engineering team that builds systems and services in a modern and rapid manner.

I think you’re going to see more technology leaders taking on operational jobs as a way to get things done, depending on the business outcome, such as speeding up processes or boosting efficiencies

“The world is moving quickly. When I joined, we used to launch a product roughly once a quarter. Now, it’s every two weeks. Also, we didn’t have a digital channel. We used to have 99 call centres. So, getting a digital channel up and running has been crucial,” she says.

“We’ve moved to a world where there’s a nice, modern mixture of chat options. You can do things directly online if you want to. Don’t get me wrong, we still have customers who like to call, but not everybody does, so giving people that choice has been helpful.”

Roth says another key focus has been to ensure the company has a tight project and product portfolio: “When I started working here, there were a lot more products than there are today. We’ve been focused on deciding which products we want to invest in, asking questions like, ‘Which ones do we want to bet on? And how do we get to a better spot tomorrow than we are today?’”

Having just completed five years with Thomson Reuters, Roth looks back on her time in situ and says she’s achieved a lot and still enjoys the role.

“The technology we use is going to continue to change significantly. So, how much can we do with artificial intelligence and our content over the next five years?” she says.

“There’s so much we can still go after. Often, as a senior executive, you might get to the five-year point and think, ‘Okay, what’s the next thing for me to do?’ However, I think the leadership team at Thomson Reuters can still see so many things we can do to continue to improve our products, drive the revenue forward, and do more things for our customers.”

Reimagining internal processes

The importance of emerging technology was highlighted in Thomson Reuters’ recently released Future of professionals report, which polled 2,275 professionals and C-level executives from over 50 countries.

The world is moving quickly. When I joined, we used to launch a product roughly once a quarter. Now, it’s every two weeks

The research found that 80% of respondents believe AI will have a high or transformational impact on their work over the next five years. More than two-thirds (38%) expect to see those changes in their organisation this year. Survey respondents predicted AI will save them five hours weekly, or about 240 hours in the next year, for an average annual value of $19,000 per professional. Roth is eager to see her business exploit AI.

“That’s mission number one,” she says. “We want to get the best quality generative AI in all of our products. We want to ensure that, whether it’s agents or deep research, whatever comes out next is being put in the hands of our customers as quickly as possible so they can take advantage of the technology with a strong user experience.”

Roth says mission number two will be ensuring AI is used effectively within the enterprise. She says conversations with her peers at other firms suggest her team has made a good start, particularly when it comes to Open Arena, Thomson Reuters’ internal AI platform, which allows staff to access major large language models and internal data securely.

“We want to get our people to use the products effectively,” she says. “There’s a long way to go, but there are so many opportunities. A huge focus for us now will be how we pursue business transformation. Success is all about finding the right use cases and reimagining how we do our internal processes.”

Roth paints a picture of how AI will be used two years from now as part of a digitally enabled business. She expects Open Arena and other emerging technologies to help staff focus on higher-order activities in their work areas.

“If you’re an engineer, you’re going to spend less time doing coding and basic testing, and more time developing new features for the products,” she says. “If you’re in finance, you’re going to spend less time getting the data together, and more time doing the analysis and giving us good guidance on what we should do next. I think that’s the sort of shift we’re going to see.”