Utilities / Interviews

We are forging through with an insights driven culture with the introduction of an advanced analytics platform and data engineering/data science capabilities, says Tim Aynsley, head of ICT at Mercury NZ.

“My approach is to let business users make informed choices and create compelling business cases that are win/wins,” says Contact Energy CIO Iain Gauld.

“We use technology for competitive advantage in a traditional industry sector,” says Brian Northern, group CIO at Fulton Hogan

CIO New Zealand launches the inaugural CIO50, recognising the nation's top 50 technology and digital chiefs of 2019, at the Te Papa in Wellington (Photos by Mark Coote)

Kevin Angland, general manager digital services at Mercury, says some of their projects, tapping disruptive technologies like AI, are a first in New Zealand

“We continue to innovate on many fronts, in many countries,” says Kevin Drinkwater, CIO at Mainfreight.

Transpower is working on several projects that harness AI and related technologies. One of these is the deployment of the robots Wall-E and Evie to provide real-time situational awareness of their remote sites.

For Simon Clarke of Trustpower, the key question a CIO needs to ask is, “How are our technology team and technology investments creating competitive advantage for our business?"

“If you look at where IT organisations have failed or have succeeded, you will see the same characteristics,” says Ed Every, chief information officer at KiwiRail. “It is how they engage with and get close to the the customer, whether these are internal or external customers. They fail the moment there is a separation between IT and the internal or external customer, and IT becomes insular. Conversely, if IT can connect with the customer, that is where they succeed.”

“Where traditionally Vector looked within the energy sector and a traditional set of vendors, our partnership with (Israeli firm) mPrest is the first time the company has sought collaboration from an unrelated industry to produce innovative work in electricity management," says Nikhil Ravishankar, chief digital officer, Vector.

“We have upped the ante on two fronts this year, first is moving to a much stronger ‘cloud first’ position, and in parallel, increasing our security maturity,” says Thomas Hyde, Beca CIO.

Anthony Bitossi faced one of his biggest challenges in mid-2015 when he was promoted to head of information services at Stevenson Construction Materials.
Before this, he was a business analyst for three years.

“I had to establish management and executive level buy in extremely quickly,” says Bitossi, who further stepped up late last year as the chief information officer at the company.

‘‘IST in Transpower is more than just a provider of technology solutions,” says Cobus Nel, general manager, IST. "We are key enablers of change and support to achieving the strategic priorities of our business.

Hawkins Group has completed two of the three phases of the 'Step Change' project, which is altering the way it provides data services to company employees on construction sites, says CIO Hannes Van Zyl.

Before Claire Barber took on the newly created role of chief digital officer at Spark New Zealand, she led the re-engineering programme for the telecommunications company.