Ross Heritage Named CTO of the Year at 2025 Computing Digital Technology Leaders Awards

Our Chief Technology Officer is recognised for spearheading a major Platform and user experience transformation, alongside significant process/development improvements and new Sedex products. He’s led our teams to achieve a huge amount in a short space of time, resulting in substantial value and better technology for our customers.

We’re proud to share that Ross Heritage, our Chief Technology Officer, has been named CTO of the Year at the 2025 Computing Digital Technology Leaders Awards!

It’s a recognition that celebrates Ross’s outstanding leadership and the ambitious digital transformation he has driven at Sedex.

Leading our Platform transformation

In 2021, Sedex began a multi-year journey to modernise our supply chain sustainability Platform in response to customer demand and an evolving technology landscape. Our 20-year history means we’d built a great deal of new functionality into our original Platform, resulting in technical complexity with a legacy interface. 

Ross and the team took the opportunity to build a new Sedex Platform that is significantly faster, more intelligent, more stable and more secure, enabling both customers and internal teams to execute key tasks with greater speed and reliability.

Despite its challenging scope, the project became a springboard for reinvention: the Sedex Platform today is more effective, efficient, user-friendly and aligned with customer needs.

This project was shortlisted separately at these Awards for Digital Transformation of the Year, reflecting the incredible achievement driven by our Product department and with support from across the global Sedex business.

Managing complexity, product delivery and customer needs

This Platform transformation was far from simple. It required rapidly scaling and reorganising the technology team, managing 11 concurrent workstreams, maintaining both our existing and new systems simultaneously for an extended period, and aligning closely with all stakeholders on priorities and timings. 

The core transformation project also ran alongside substantial product development. Our SMETA 7.0, our updated Service Provider SAQ and the brand-new Environment SAQ also launched in 2024, alongside hundreds of on-Platform reporting, functionality and process enhancements. 

The team navigated sensitive customer communications throughout to manage changes, and ensured continuity of access to essential features and data throughout the transition. 

The results of the transformation are already clear:

• Delivered ahead of schedule, under budget, to customer satisfaction – enabling our business to better serve our customers while realising internal efficiencies.
• Significant performance gains for our customers:
  • Mid-sized supply chains now experience 75% faster data access
  • Largest supply chains have seen a 58% reduction in load time
• Improved data quality and accuracy, enabling users to make faster, more confident decisions.
• Streamlined and more integrated product suite, eliminating the need for isolated tools and boosting customer ROI.
   

Empowering our customers with enhanced solutions

Ross and the team’s work has delivered a powerful new Platform and upgraded assessment solutions suite. Together, these better support businesses to build deeper visibility, manage risks, analyse sustainability performance and report on this more efficiently across their global supply chains.

Congratulations to Ross and all of the Product team on this well-deserved recognition!

See the new Sedex Platform in action with our interactive demo – or get in touch for a fully guided overview.