Since TalkTalk’s inception, in 2003, the company has grown both organically and through acquisitions to become the United Kingdom’s second-largest broadband provider, serving more than four million customers. Rapid growth, however, left the company with fragmented and inflexible operations and IT, which raised operating costs and made it harder to manage the customer base and maximize revenues across brands.

David Cooper joined TalkTalk as CIO in early 2009 and embarked on an ambitious transformation program to consolidate all of the company’s IT onto one unified platform while transforming the IT organization in the process. He spoke with McKinsey’s Gerrit Einhoff and Stéphane Rey about his ongoing efforts to reduce the complexity and improve the performance of information technology.