OPUS INTERNATIONAL CONSULTANTS is an infrastructure consultancy operating in fi ve markets – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

With headquarters in New Zealand, a prime focus for IT director Robyn Gillespie is enhancing the ability of the multinational workforce to collaborate among internal users, business partners and customers.

She says the deployment of Skype for Business was among the business technology programs that provided the biggest impact to the 1700 staff in New Zealand and 1500 in their global offices.

The rollout transformed the business operation, she says, leading to increased collaboration, while reducing the need for global travel and removing the need for desk phones.

Gillespie joined Opus late last year, following nearly four years as general manager, IT services at Downer.

Gillespie says the ICT budget for this year will remain steady but the 70-member ICT team (of which 20 are based offshore) will be working on more projects compared to the previous year.

These include projects around knowledge management, project/resource planning, Windows 10, mobile and WAN rollout.

She says her team this year will complete a review of IT services and processes and work on building information modelling (BIM).

Top technology investments this year will include business intelligence and analytics, mobile, security and risk management, machine to machine and Internet of Things, and collaboration tools.

She says among the key challenges the ICT team will face as they lead through this will be meeting the changing needs of the business, speed of deployment and leading disruptive technology-enabled change.