Author Bio: Ian Sloan

With over 30 years of experience in IT leadership, strategy, and advisory services, Ian Sloan helps organisations make confident, informed technology decisions.

As Co-founder and Managing Director of Tango, he specialises in delivering independent, vendor-neutral advice to medium-sized enterprises, not-for-profits, and government agencies. Known for his practical thinking and diplomatic approach, Ian excels at turning complex technology into clear, actionable insights. He works closely with business leaders to de-risk IT investments and ensure technology changes deliver long-term value, not just a shiny new system.

Ian’s career spans a diverse mix of hands-on and executive roles across the UK and Australia, including IT Manager, Consultant, and Project Manager, for organisations such as Scottish & Newcastle, Safeway, Adecco, and government bodies. He brings deep expertise across sectors like healthcare, community services, government, and education.

Starting as a Management trainee in Safeway Supermarkets Ian was first introduced to business technology when they switched from cash tills to Point of Sale terminals. Curiosity in the technology was the main qualification Ian had to become involved. It quickly led to him having what he called his dream job. At 21 he was given a company car, an expense account and told to drive around the UK installing equipment and training staff on how to organise their stores to run the systems.

Ian was then asked to be based in London and transferred to the head office there where he managed an implementation and support team upgrading the stores and problem solving any issues escalated from the service desk. With over 50,000 users and an implementation schedule that could see multiple different upgrades going down to stores on a weekly basis this taught Ian a lot about enterprise hardware management, network management, software implementations and hardest of all how to support the people through potentially stressful situations as the early days of technology were not as reliable as it has become.

London also introduced Ian to his wife (Nicki) who had arrived from Perth Australia for a world wide adventure, met Ian 4 days after landing and changed the adventure into a move to Scotland, getting married and having kids.

Ian moved out of retail and into economic development by joining Scottish Enterprise. This time implementing more standard business systems Ian quickly implemented all the available business applications, support environments and special projects. It was then that he realised he needed to keep introducing changes to keep himself busy. Joining their national business transformation project he focussed on the process and systems around complex government procurement.

Then Nicki intervened with a ‘suggestion’ that the kids could benefit from being in Australia to see their cousins. “Only for a couple of years”…… Also, grey clouds in Scotland were a lot more prolific than she had imagined was possible.

So after a brief project with Adecco implementing some new fangled technology called ADSL Broadband to their 250 sites Ian and the family moved to Perth. Despite great counselling from Nicki not to do it he setup a brand new consultancy firm without having any network to get work from, DSBS was born.

The company grew to a peak of 30 people providing consultancy and project services but as the customer size grew the focus changed to mostly wanting the right body into projects rather than true consultancy. This was a big driver for Ian to do a complete revamp and with one his senior consultants (Mark Birkinshaw) Tango was born.

Ian and Mark decided to re-invent themselves into a company providing services that they both enjoyed and get passionate about, with a team who were empowered to work on activities that motivated them. For customers they wanted to show clear value and not just charge time and materials.

This meant recruitment and ‘body shop’ services, which historically made up a large amount of revenue, would not be provided. In its place they built a company that facilitated technology change, suitable for medium sized organisations. They also wanted to remove pain points in relationships with customers and staff and so provided services on a fixed price basis with staff being directly aligned to the same fixed deliverable without the need to fill in a timesheet.

This approach, combined with complete independence from any technology supplier, allowed Tango to be an innovative technology consulting company that not only de-risked customer technology investment decisions but also provided a supportive, flexible way of working that was fun.

Beyond Tango, Ian co-founded Markr Systems, a platform using augmented reality for location-based digital experiences, and Arility, a school safety program powered by immersive technology. He also serves as a Non-Executive Director at Indigo Australasia , supporting independent living through assistive technologies and previously served on the boards of Grow and Independent Living Assessment Australia.

A finalist for the WA Innovator of the Year in 2019 for Arility Ian built a joint venture partnership with Constable Care and together they achieved a feather in the cap for WA innovation. They not only got the UK’s leading road safety education organisation (Road Safety GB) to adopt the product but also had the British government fund a longitudinal study which demonstrated clear evidence that Arility improved children’s road safety knowledge and behaviours over the long term by using augmented reality to visualise risks and make measurable safer choices. Learn more.

Arility also picked up a number of awards including:
National road safety award with The Australasian college of road safety.