A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play, so the ad for the chocolate bar used to go. And a close relationship with chocolate can have its benefits, as Jane Scott can testify. Fresh out of university with a mathematics degree and unsure what to do with her life, Scott landed a place on Mars' graduate trainee management scheme.

For the uninitiated, being selected for fast-tracking by a confectionery maker might not sound that promising, but the Mars programme boasts impressive alumni including former Tesco IT chief Colin Cobain, Royal Mail CIO Robin Dargue as well as Sainsbury's CEO Justin King.

"It was a fabulous scheme and things that I learnt there stick with me to this day. I was surrounded by lots of very bright people," says Scott. A culture of intellectual rigour was instilled into the Mars trainees including the motto "solutions not problems", something that Scott says has stayed with her.

"I still see things that way today. And when I'm coaching within my own team I encourage them to do exactly the same it's almost as if I have an antenna for when people are moaning about something."

Learning good discipline

The discipline of Mars has also stood Scott in good stead. To reinforce the impact on the business of production delays caused by lateness, the company forced everyone from factory floor to the office to clock in, with 10 per cent of their salaries paid as a good timekeeping bonus for arriving on time.

"I can't claim to be on time for every single meeting that I go to, but I'm very conscious of it. The impact that I have on other people not only if I don't arrive on time but also if I promise to do something and don't can be huge."

Headhunted by Coca-Cola

After five years at Mars, Scott was contacted by the IT director at Coca-Cola Schweppes, who was building a new team. Initially involved in IT for sales, then with the manufacturing side, Scott also helped create the systems behind a new vending machine business.

"I think I was very lucky because that turned out to be a fantastic move. It was a company that was enjoying a really successful period. People used to think what they wanted to do first and then figure out how to do it later which, in some ways, was a big contrast to how it had been at Mars."

Eager for a new challenge, Scott's next break came with an opportunity in the international audit team of Coca-Cola. Effectively, it was a training ground for future management, and as part of the team Scott could be sent to any part of the massive international business.

It was a great career development move and it also appealed to her passion for travel. "I love travelling and this job was a full-time travelling role. You'd basically pack up your life into two suitcases, go to a country for about three months and then move on to another, and maybe get home a couple of times a year. That really appealed to me because it was a great chance to see the world."

Transfer to Coke HQ

As well as broadening her mind, Scott got an insight into some of the less glamorous but vital aspects of working in IT, such as disaster recovery and security. It also gave her the chance to meet people from across the international business face-to-face.

"In each of the locations I would be interacting with lots of people in the business, including the person who ran Coke in that country. I had to present my arguments to them and get their buy-in for each action plan," she says. The audit team role was a two-year placement and at the end of it the company's rather austere sounding "talent development committee" secured Scott a transfer to Coke's US headquarters in Atlanta.

As liaison between the company's IT central functions at HQ and those out in the Middle East and Far East, the biggest chunk of her new job involved working with what was then Coke's largest and most profitable international operation: Japan. Scott was asked to go on a seven-week assignment there to set up the IT strategy for a new business.

One of her recommendations was to implement an SAP-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to give the new business a solid platform for the future. The idea went down so well that she was asked to stay on to implement it. "I ended up effectively commuting between Atlanta and Tokyo for more or less a year in order to make this thing happen. I got SAP up and running for the new Japanese business in just over 12 months," she says proudly.

Life in Tokyo

That wasn't the end of the Japanese story, however. Scott began to pick up wider responsibilities, including a new vending business and the overhaul of the country's marketing IT. She eventually ended up moving to Tokyo full-time for a further two years, learning the language in the process.

"There's no doubt the move to Japan and doing that SAP project is one of the biggest challenges I've ever tackled. One of the reasons it was so hard is that [over 10 years ago], it was quite difficult to make your way into, and make connections with, Japanese people if you were foreign," she says.

Any Westerner who has lived or worked in Japan for any length of time will testify to some of the differences in business culture, explains Scott. "There were all kinds of cultural differences that take ages to understand and of which I'm sure I only understood about five per cent. If you went into a meeting room, the position in which everybody sat was extremely important. The order you got into the lift was very important," she adds.

After Japan, Scott came back to London and took a job as the head of IT for Coca-Cola's UK and Ireland business, liaising with the company's central IT function in Brussels. It was very much a role consolidating her previous experience and she again saw through an SAP implementation and a Y2K project. By 2003, Scott was once again looking for a fresh challenge outside of Coke.

A new challenge at 3663

A headhunter suggested Scott for her current role CIO at food distribution company 3663. Although a smaller company than the big blue chips she was used to, the 3663 CIO role was a main board position, with the relationship between IT and the business badly broken and in need of a serious overhaul.

"I knew there was a huge amount of work to be done and I liked the sound of the challenge. The company was also a size that I felt I could get my arms around to really make it happen. Those factors around building business relationships and helping build teams I think of as my core strengths."

In the six years since she joined the company, Scott says the relationship between IT and the business has become fundamentally different, with IT now better able to understand how the business works. Scott also re-organised her tech team.

Working smarter

Most of 3663's IT operation is outsourced, with a team of 90 people managing those third parties to deliver on service contracts and projects. Sustainability is also high on 3663's corporate agenda and Scott says IT's role is not just about being more energy efficient itself, but helping other departments to work smarter as well.

"One of our current projects, the Transport Management Suite, is with the logistics division. Part of that is making sure we route our vehicles as efficiently as possible. Given that we have over 1,000 vehicles, and the mileage we do every year, we can have a massive positive impact." As for the future, Scott sees herself venturing out of IT and into wider management one day.

"If I were to fast forward to what I might do just before I retire, I would see myself in a general management role in a business that has an international focus to it." And, of course, she will continue to travel. "Travel is my real passion. I just try to wring out every last drop of that experience. Whether it's hang-gliding off Sugarloaf Mountain in Brazil or bungee jumping off Victoria Falls, you never know when you're coming back to a place, so you might as well make the most of it."

Illustration: Noli Novak