Opening context
Carbery is a global food ingredients business with more than 800 employees operating across manufacturing sites, laboratories, offices, and partner locations in EMEA, the Americas, and APAC. Its workforce spans production, engineering, R&D, and commercial teams — each with different technology needs and proximity to IT support.
IT is mission-critical at Carbery: keeping supply chains moving, ensuring compliance, enabling productivity across a distributed operation in environments that range from factory floors to commercial offices.
The question was not whether IT was performing — the metrics said it was. The question was whether those metrics were telling the full story.
The situation
CIO Anthony O’Callaghan had good operational data. Ticket volumes were manageable. SLAs were largely met. But the picture those metrics produced was incomplete in a specific way.
“As useful as SLAs and Help Desk stats were, they didn’t show us the day-to-day reality. The overall picture just wasn’t there.”
— Anthony O’Callaghan, CIO, Carbery
Ticket data was transactional. It reflected only the fraction of the real condition that had reached the help desk — not the broader picture across manufacturing floors, laboratory environments, and remote sites across three continents.
A single loud voice in any site-level conversation could set the agenda. Effort could follow the last escalation rather than the actual distribution of the problem across the enterprise.
For a CIO responsible for an operation of this complexity and geographic spread, that was not a basis for confident decisions.
What the independent record showed
Voxxify was deployed across all of Carbery’s environments — manufacturing, laboratory, and office — reaching employees across regions and roles in a structured, time-bound deployment. The record produced 1,700 verbatim comments at a 46% response rate from a workforce distributed across three continents.
Within minutes of the record closing, regional IT leaders in the Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific had their segmented findings. Not a summary deck prepared by the team. The picture, direct.
“There’s a rigorous science to the process — that’s what gives you confidence in what it’s telling you.”
— Anthony O’Callaghan, CIO, Carbery
For O’Callaghan, the first results required context before they could be read correctly. The platform’s scoring scale is demanding by design — a score in the low sixties is a solid result; the mid-seventies a meaningful stretch target. Benchmarking sharpened the picture further: a category score that looks poor in isolation can sit ahead of the industry once comparable organizations are factored in.
“When I first saw the results I was shocked. Seeing them properly in context helped me understand what the scores really meant. There was work to be done for sure, but the shock factor quickly eased.”
— Anthony O’Callaghan, CIO, Carbery
Specific issues emerged that ticket data had not surfaced: regions without adequate on-site IT support, video conferencing reliability problems, outdated hardware affecting productivity in operational environments.
Alongside them, services performing well were confirmed — allowing the team to avoid unnecessary intervention and direct attention where the ground truth showed it was needed.
What changed
Four things stood out.
Priorities followed the evidence. Priorities shifted from reactive to evidence-led. Resources moved toward the actual distribution of the problem across the enterprise rather than the most recent escalation.
“I told our regional IT leads — Europe, Asia-Pacific, Americas — this is your action plan for the year ahead.”
— Anthony O’Callaghan, CIO, Carbery
Investment went where it was needed. The independent record did not produce savings. It produced direction — a clear picture of where spend would have the greatest operational impact and where it would not.
“It didn’t necessarily save money. But it definitely helped us make better use of our money.”
— Anthony O’Callaghan, CIO, Carbery
Trust compounded year on year. As employees saw ground truth produce visible action, engagement rose. Response rates increased from 43% to 46% between year one and year two. More people signed their names against what they said — not because they were asked to, but because they had seen their comments produce action.
“The biggest thing for me was how open people were — they left their names against what they said. That transparency is critically important.”
— Anthony O’Callaghan, CIO, Carbery
The vendor conversation changed permanently. Independent operational data — captured from the people using the service, not from the vendor’s own reporting — gave the team a reference point that no service provider could dispute or prepare for. Over two consecutive years of measurement, a pattern emerged about one managed service provider that the operational metrics had never shown.
“I had a sense that a certain managed service provider was not delivering. The score confirmed it in year one. And again in year two. They will not be around for year three.”
— Anthony O’Callaghan, CIO, Carbery
The outcome
Between year one and year two, scores improved significantly across every area the independent record had identified as a priority:
- Overall IT experience: +9%
- Meeting rooms: +10%
- Online training: +10%
- Collaboration tools: +6%
“The scores have become the backbone of our annual planning.”
— Anthony O’Callaghan, CIO, Carbery
The full picture, now established.
Independent IT ground truth did not replace existing operational data. It gave it context. Metrics that had previously been read as confirmation became readable as a partial picture — and the full picture changed what the team could act on, plan against, and stand over.
“We now have a reliable, independent picture of how IT is actually landing — and that’s what lets us act with confidence.”
— Anthony O’Callaghan, CIO, Carbery
The full picture changed everything it touched.
