CIO

Leading from the front

Top 12 insights from business technology executives featured in CIO New Zealand in 2016.

'The killer app for today's IT teams? It is the ability to transform the organisation – ICT and beyond – to be able to adapt to anything coming down the track.'

Dawie Olivier, CIO, Westpac NZ


'Ensure a sufficient portion of your budget is deployed to help you better understand gathering insights from your customers. Because, ultimately, they will be the source of your competitive advantage.'

Rob Fyfe, CEO, Icebreaker


'Embrace the idea that in the digital world, the customers have got all the power.'

Simon Pohlen, chief technology officer at Flick Electric


'Technology continues to be so disruptive...What is important is the ability to move and adapt at a fast pace.'

Glen Willoughby, CIO, Downer NZ

'The CIO role is 25 per cent IT, 75 per cent change management. Don’t be tricked into thinking that it is any other way.'

Deane Johns, Co-op Money NZ

Lois van Waardenberg
Lois van Waardenberg

'Use good technology to show how we make a difference...We need both hard evidence and anecdotal stories to show what we are doing.'

Lois van Waardenberg, chief operating officer, Plunket

'It is a very commercial orientated world out there. You have to manage vendors in the right way, extract value for the business and be able to talk to the board.'

Myles Ward, CEO, healthAlliance

'Disruption comes when there is dissatisfaction. That is the challenge for the bank. How do you make sure you are not inviting disruption?'

Liz Maguire, head of digital and transformation, ANZ Bank

'You can’t do everything yourself, you have to have good people around you. You need to encourage your team to come up with ideas and be able to implement them. It is also important to encourage the team to be willing to tell you why your idea may not make sense and the reasoning behind this.'

Matti Seikkula, CIO, e-Spatial

'The era of IT focusing on internal cost savings and efficiencies can no longer be the key element of CIOs’ responsibilities. Instead, CIOs will have direct revenue and business impact responsibilities. This means they will need to think more in terms of external customers, impact on business and be more agile.'

Avi Golan, chief digital officer, Air New Zealand

'Make sure we are freeing up the data so that people that actually need it make real-time decisions. We are giving that information to the right areas of the organisation so we can turn information into insights to make strategic decisions based on the quality and integrity of our data.'

Carmen Casagranda, CIO, Cigna

'We are on the threshold of harnessing the power of analytics. But there is an important dimension – the ethical dimension. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. We should be aware of this as analytical tools become more powerful and insightful.'

David Habershon, CIO, Ministry of Social Development

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