Julia Raue: Why we created the Chief Digital Officer role at Air New Zealand

It will be a CIO-plus role, reporting to CEO Christopher Luxon.

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When Julia Raue leaves Air New Zealand in November, her CIO role will not be replaced.

The portfolio will be part of the newly-created Chief Digital Officer role, which is currently being filled through a global search.

It will be a CIO-plus role reporting to Chief Executive Officer Christopher Luxon, explains Raue, who was appointed CIO eight years ago. She joined the airline as a contractor in 1999, then progressed to roles including Distribution and Customer Solutions manager and General Manager Group IT Production.

Raue explains that Air New Zealand has recently completed a full digital review, which she led, to assess the next phase of digital transformation at the airline.

“Rob McDonald (Air NZ Chief Financial Officer) and I worked with the Executive Team to widen the scope from an IT review to include all areas of the organisation that could influence and grow our digital presence which resulted in the creation of a Chief Digital Officer role reporting to the Chief Executive Officer,” says Raue in an interview with CIO New Zealand.

She explains the Executive Team has been giving considerable attention to the areas of innovation and digital over the past 18 months, which included a trip by the team to Silicon Valley where the airline executives met with 10 of the world’s leading companies in the innovation and digital arena.

The CDO’s team will include the full IT team, along with parts of the existing sales, marketing and operations functions.

Julia Raue, Air New Zealand

Raue says some of the key accountabilities of the CDO are:

• Breakthrough innovation to remove customer pain points and deliver a world class experience.

• Generating influence in Digital Channels and Loyalty that leads to greater revenue and loyalty.

• Engaging and enabling people through Digital Enterprise, providing immediate access to tools and information.

• Delivering on the promise of highly available Digital Operations.

• Exploiting Data and Analytics platforms to deliver a truly personalised experience for customers.

• Protecting digital assets through an ever-evolving advanced Information Security practice.

• Setting Air New Zealand’s Digital Strategy and ensuring the company has the Digital Capability available to deliver on the plan.

Raue explains the CDO’s team will include the full IT team, along with parts of the existing sales, marketing and operations functions.

“It’s a really exciting time for Air New Zealand, and one of the largest internal transformation programmes for some time from a people perspective,” she concludes.