54

Tait Communications

  • Senior IS executive:

    John Emerson, global CIO
  • Name of organisation:

    Tait Communications
  • Reports to:

    CEO
  • 2015 Ranking:

    73
  • Size of IS shop:

    30
  • Total screens:

    5,793 (including 1,043 overseas)
  • Address:

    558 Wairakei Road, Christchurch
  • Website:

  • Key IS projects this year:

    Digital Tait Strategy, standardising systems and processes across global offices.
The cloud is evolving our business models, increasing options such as multi-channel sales and customer self-service.

JOHN EMERSON, GLOBAL CIO at Tait Communications, says the company’s move to the cloud has further cemented the ICT team’s role as a strategic partner across all business units.

“As a result of moving to the cloud, just over 50 per cent of IT are staff are involved in delivery of products and services to Tait customers,” he states.

“We are providing leadership to other parts of Tait – including R&D, products and services – as the cloud is becoming the global delivery platform of choice,” says Emerson of his 30-member ICT team.

“There is increasing recognition of IT’s business value due to the organisation’s evolution to a digital environment.” Tait Communications is a multinational radio communications company with headquarters based in Christchurch, with offices in 10 countries.” Over the past year, the company sped up its ‘Digital Tait Strategy’ and its impact is now strongly felt in its operations across the globe – from customer facing systems, delivery systems to security.

Innovating Tait’s products and services using the cloud becomes a lot easier than dealing with multiple (legacy) infrastructures, explains Emerson.

“We are working on being able to offer customers more choices in deploying their critical communications networks, as well as more options for the use (e.g. apps) of their networks.” He says security can be applied more effectively on one (cloud) platform, which has enabled IT and services to earn the ISO27001 certification.

The next security goal for him as CIO and the security team is to implement physical and product security, to achieve the ISO27001 certification for most of Tait.

He says as a result of these changes, IT’s relationships are becoming broader, regularly interacting with Tait customers, partners and staff across the world.

“At the executive level, IT is becoming more aligned with HR due to the evolution of our culture to a digital environment,” says Emerson.

“While the speed of change has increased, resource limits usually don’t enable changes to occur across the organisation at the same rate, requiring significant change management and ongoing alignment efforts.”

IT is perceived as an enabler of significant initiatives in the business strategies, he states.

He says this year IT will be a key partner in standardising systems and processes across Tait globally, to enable new organisational structures and delivery systems.

“IT will continue to be essential to efficiency improvement initiatives, as well as improving customer service,” states Emerson. “The cloud is evolving our business models, increasing options such as multi-channel sales and customer self-service.”

Back to list