Ahmed Disokey | FinTech Magazine
Lacz is Chief Information Officer at AccorInvest, a position he has held since March 2021.
Always knowing that he “wanted to be an IT guy”, Lacz started working in classical administration in 2005 after graduating from the Warsaw University of Technology.
Two years later, he had the opportunity to join the French cosmetics company L’Oréal as Network Administrator/Infrastructure Team Coordinator. This was at a time when the company was planning to industrialize its processes as part of a global SAP implementation project to integrate multiple systems and processes. This led to Lacz doing SAP preparation work and SAP implementation work for what was, he says, “one of the largest factories in Europe at the time.”
When the project was finished, Lacz started looking for something different from a development point of view. “Fortunately for me,” he says, the leading food company Danone had decided to buck the trend of full outsourcing of services, opting instead to build a shared IT service center. Lacz joined the team at the so-called IT competence center EMEA in 2010 as an IT specialist with responsibility for server infrastructure.
Just over a year later, he was promoted to IT Manager Unified Communication, responsible for the consolidation and standardization of email services as well as the design and execution of a new robust email architecture and AirMail migration preparation.
In 2013, he took up the position of IT Manager Devices Automation, responsible for user-oriented services. He expanded the service to the Middle East and Africa, while making several improvements in terms of standardization and automation.
In 2014, still at the IT Competence Centre, Lacz took on a new role responsible for managing the program portfolio for Danone’s IT Certification Council (ITCC) EMEA organisation. This involved improving and controlling service delivery to be in line with agreed service level agreements (SLAs), and ensuring that ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) best practices were implemented at all levels of the organisation.
In 2015, Lacz became the Danone Group’s senior IT manager for the technology domain.
In 2018, Lacz joined Orbis Hotel Group/Accor as Director of IT and Digital Services for Eastern Europe, responsible for defining and overseeing key IT and digital projects in the Eastern Europe region.
In October 2020, he was appointed Senior Vice President (SVP) Technology and Digital and ComEx member for Accor Northern Europe. Just six months later, in March 2021, AccorInvest appointed Lacz as Chief Information Officer (CIO) and member of the Executive Committee.
Lacz has experience in leading teams and services in various technology areas (communication, IT project management, ERP, Business Intelligence and Service Management).
He succeeds in promoting teamwork across different service lines, and leads cross-regional projects and changes in line with the AccorInvest Global Organization’s standards and strategy. His mission is to achieve business efficiency through IT and digital transformation, and “bring the value” for hotels and partners.
The ESG strategy is cross-sectoral and present in all of AccorInvest’s activities: from a more sustainable acquisition and renovation to a more sustainable operation of its facilities – it affects all activities carried out by the group’s employees. The company has published the first ESG report to share new ambitions with all stakeholders, and to be open about ESG performance.
AccorInvest’s ESG strategy is based on three pillars, eight commitments and nineteen challenges. Recently, there has been a huge drive towards digitization to improve both back office efficiency and the guest experience that feeds back into it.
Lacz calls it a “service from the past” that his experiences in digital services and organizations, including building different scopes of the shared services, major international infrastructure consolidation and execution of cloud strategy will be key to this mission.
In a conversation with Sustainability magazine, Lacz gives an insight into the digital transformations taking place in the front and back office and explains why the entire workforce must be 100% on board and engaged for the company to achieve its ESG goals and deliver a consistently outstanding customer experience.
Read the whole story HERE.
