In this article: Part One · Part Two · Thank you
Welcome to Lumika Five with Five: Insights from the CIO and CTO in 2016.
Lumika’s Five with Five series will ask 5 leaders in a certain area, 5 thought provoking questions in an attempt to gain insight into how leaders are thinking about a certain topic, provoke some interesting discussion and hopefully pick up some helpful advice and or guidance.
In this edition we speak to some of Australia’s leading CIO’s and CTO’s where we gain some interesting insight into how they are thinking about technology in 2016 and how they think IT professionals in Australia should be best positioning themselves for technology career success.
In Part One we had the pleasure of speaking to Roy Hawke (previous APAC CIO at Lendlease), David Higgins (previous CTO at OzForex), Faheem Shah (CIO Australia & New Zealand at ABB Limited), Peter Smith (previous CIO at Wolters Kluwer) and Bruce Sweeney (previous CIO at Centrepoint Alliance).
Part Two gave us the delight of speaking to Jeremy Gupta (CTO at CarsGuide.com.au) Jeromy Joseph (CIO at Volkswagen), Vladas Leonas (previous CIO at Sydney Motorway Corporation), Andy Welsh (CIO at Booking Boss) and Russell Wright (previous CIO at Gilbert + Tobin).
Hope you enjoy …
Part One
Question 1
What are you currently doing or have most recently done with technology?
Roy: Like many other people around the world, I grew tired of the constant pop-ups suggesting upgrading to Windows 10 and finally relented.
After backing up all systems which had various versions of Windows 7 or 8.1, we commenced the upgrade and were relatively pleased with the smoothness of the overall process.
The only major problem encountered was that the standard Windows DVD Player stopped working on some PCs after a few days. So after doing some research, we installed the free VLC DVD player and made it the default, replacing the standard Windows DVD Player and problem solved.
Other than that, the new versions of Windows 10 have been stable and operate faster than Windows 7 and 8.1, so we have been pleased with the result so far.
David: My primary focus has been on technology transformations. This may be organisational, architectural, procedural, or technological. It requires a very broad knowledge of the technological landscape whilst being deep enough to talk turkey with other developers, engineers, etc. I love having a good knowledge of technologies and the industry and then being able to use that to help people provide the technology that will allow a business to deliver on it’s strategy.
Faheem: We developed an intuitive iPad application for visitors to sign in and out at our major sites, replacing manual entry in a ledger.
Peter: I recently tried to setup a fancy new router to boost the wireless signal across my house, coupled with some additional monitoring so I could find out which one of my kids was taking all the data. I set it up but in typical Mgt fashion I could not get it stabilised sufficiently and had to call in the intelligent to do it properly.
Bruce: Technology is all around us now, so it’s hard not to be involved in new technologies or finding new ways to use existing technologies. Recently, within work, I’ve moved the company away from Office 365 products to Google for Work (E.g. moving to Gmail rather than Outlook, Google Docs rather than Microsoft Word). This was something the team wanted to experiment with rather than for cost reasons. Results are broadly positive so far.
Other largescale technology initiatives have been bringing in Salesforce.com as the core Cloudbased CRM and workflow platform. Development of a variety of financial advice technologies to be more engaging and easy to use for customers as well as more efficient for advisers and their staff to use.
I also have my eye on a Samsung Gear VR. The world of augmented reality is now commercially viable and there are very exciting applications of this technology to come.
Question 2
What do you think is the most important consideration CIO’s have to currently make in terms of their technology strategy over the next 1 – 3 years?
Roy: One fact of the IT industry is that it is becoming more commoditised and platforms, infrastructure and applications have either moved to be “cloud-based” or are on their way to being delivered in that manner.
For CIO’s it is important to have a clear roadmap of what will be moved to cloud and in what timeframe, and then get on and start the implementation, focusing on those areas where early cost savings can be made so that savings can be reinvested into providing further value for the business.
David: Flexibility – being ready to take advantage of the next “useful” (game changing?) technology. Many organisations lock themselves into architectures, structures, technologies and processes which make it difficult to take advantage of things which may give them a competitive edge. When we think about cloud hosting/computing, microservices, agile development, single-page apps, mobile, NoSQL and a bunch of other things, most companies had to make fairly significant changes to take advantage of them. Those who have a flexible approach that allows for quick adoption will have an advantage. A close second is finding and keeping good staff!
Faheem: Is your IS strategy aligned and fluid enough to change with times to ensure your business always stays a step ahead of the competition ?
Peter: An important consideration for CIO’s at the moment is how to position their strategy so that it can continue to rapidly evolve and in some cases radically shift in a natural manner. With many organisations needing to fundamentally shift components of their business, technology is often a critical enabler and it needs to be able to change and respond with fluidity while maintaining it’s planning and preparedness.
Bruce: Just like ‘we’re all Marketers now’ in today’s organisation, we’re all Technologists now. There has been and continues to be a dramatic move away from the old IT versus business paradigm. This business revolution is not only in IT. It is happening across Finance, HR, Sales and every other traditional business function. Those that embrace this will succeed. For IT/Technology I think this means becoming even more of a partner and trusted adviser with our colleagues. The top priority will always be to put the customer first when considering the role of technology. The power of digital and moving to mobile and cloudbased solutions and the ease in which customers can access information will continue to be a top priority.
Question 3
What do you think is going to be the biggest challenge for Technology Professionals over the next 3 – 5 years? Why?
Roy: I don’t think that any company should regard itself as being safe from more nimble organisations that have used newer or different technology to build new and improved business processes that can be automated and optimised to be more competitive.
One of our biggest challenges is therefore to drive digitisation of our business processes and self-disrupt our organisations to be more competitive and I think that technology professionals are well placed to take the lead that’s required.
David: It relates to the above and that is selecting those things which are going to have some legs in them. There are a lot of very cool things that are somewhat competing against each other yet it is doubtful that they will all be around in the years to come. If you think, for example, front end frameworks, there are a stack of them. Do you bet on the one that has a go community but not much commercial support, those with a lot of commercial support which means that their primary sponsor could drop them or change track very quickly (think Angular v1 to v2 or Microsoft Silverlight) or somewhere in between ?
Faheem: Providing the workforce with mobility tools to enable them to work from anywhere but at the same time safeguarding the organisation with the ever increasing cyber threats.
Peter: I think the biggest challenge will be keeping pace with sufficient breadth and depth of the technology changes, developing areas of interest and ensuring you understand how they fit together within an industry, business in general and the broader society. This is a challenge now but it’s getting harder with ever increasing volumes of data
Bruce: Breaking preconceptions of what a Technology professional is and can do. It’s akin to the transition accountants went through in the 90’s where they were seen as purely ‘bean counters’ rather than strategic thinkers and partners with the business. Today we see accountants in diverse roles and using the skills that their accountancy experience has given them and leveraging them in other disciplines such as Marketing, Sales, Operations, etc. The other challenge is more practical as we move more to managed services, SaaS and cloudbased environments the need for inhouse infrastructure teams is being replaced with the need for vendor management and procurement skills and ability to integrate a variety of cloudbased technologies.
Question 4
What do you think (and hope!) we will be able to do with technology in the year 2030?
Roy: I like to keep things simple, so by the year 2030 I’d like to see that the world of speech recognition and the ‘internet of things’ has progressed far enough, that I can dispense with all of the remote control devices around our homes. We will simply be able to ask our home-based voice recognition system, be it Siri, Cortana or whatever they will be called, to play what we want, when we want and it will happen seamlessly, without having to search for that misplaced remote control.
Think of Star Trek and Captains Kirk or Picard talking to their computer systems on the USS Enterprise. That’s what I’d like to see in the year 2030 in our world.
David: Technology should and will become more invisible. We think it’s cool now that we can arrive home, pull out our smartphone, fire up an app and turn the lights on, etc. What is our primary goal here, using our smartphone or having light? It’s having the lights on so the technology that does so should and will be invisible to use. This will be across the board. GPS to get us where we are going or a car that knows what we have on and gets us there?
Faheem: App Driven cars, smart homes that cleans itself, mind reading apps (way too hopeful!)
Peter: By the year 2030, I think wearables will be “insertables” or something similar and we will be able to pool all the data together from what we eat, activity, exposure to UV, posture, genetics, medical history etc etc and using a combination of predictive analytics, medicine, bioscience, chemistry etc to provide early lifestyle adjustments, perhaps earlier diagnostics and improve the quality of life for everyone, allowing them to live longer and more enjoyable lives.
Bruce: I hope that by 2030 we will see a new wave of technologists who were born after the iPhone launched and for them mobility, 24/7 access to services from banking, pizza delivery and healthcare will be seen as dated ‘old’ technology. I look forward to seeing what amazing new technologies will be developed out of Internet of Things and global connectivity and where we big data and analytics becomes commonplace and leveraged to help all of us live better lives.
Question 5
What #1 piece of career advice would you offer somebody who has recently embarked on a career in the Technology industry?
Roy: Never stop learning and developing yourself. You are the key person responsible for your career, so always continue learning and developing your technical, business and leadership skills and knowledge.
You should consider your individual development planning an essential activity to keep your skills and knowledge relevant and to enable you to get the most out of your chosen career.
David: Be creative. I see a lot of ridiculously clever technology professionals who will write some amazing code to satisfy the exact requirement that you have provided them but not so many that are able to critically analyse a problem and provide meaningful feedback. Those people are gold. A close second is code. It doesn’t matter if you’re a test analyst, developer, infrastructure engineer, these days it’s all just code to most of us.
Faheem: Technology is no good if it’s not adding any value, either to you or your customers (internal & external) so always think in value add terms regardless of your job title.
Peter: Don’t forget how important soft skills are and work out early the habits you will use to keep yourself up to date. Don’t neglect your networks, people contact matters.
Bruce: Pat yourself on the back. You’ve picked a growth industry! I would say ensure you balance your technical abilities with your leadership, communication and people skills. This has always been important and will continue to be. I’d also say try and avoid becoming too deep in one particular technology or framework as things are changing so rapidly it pays not to put all your eggs in one basket.
Part Two
Question 1
What would you implement if you were given an unlimited budget for the Technology department? Why?
Jeremy G: I’d move everything to SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS so that we could be flexible in our technology choices and not be restricted hardware wise. The way that digital is moving, there is no need to manage hardware and if you can abstract that out via managed cloud based offerings, it’s OPEX that the conversation turns too.
Jeromy J: Well, if I am given an unlimited budget then, I will initiate a project called business data project. The purpose of the project is to ensure that the key data of the business is consolidated, mainly the customer, the product or services, all touch points of the data is identified, validated, proper business rules will be in place, and the necessary quality checks are in place so that it can be used by all sub systems for business usage. The output of this project will then make sure that we have a central repository of key business data which is the master for all systems and business processes, and all the data flow to multiple systems are built on a business logic which makes sense from the master repository. Once it is done, other systems can be placed over this solution. examples; 1. feeding data to a data warehouse, 2. Integration with all systems will make it easier.
Vladas: I actually don’t like the notion of unlimited budgets – far too often this approach creates waste with minimum business outcomes for the organisation. Having said this, I would focus on three aspects – immediate migration of provision commodity ICT services to “as-a-service” model, accelerated replacement of legacy systems (again – ideally in “as-a-service” mode) and growing maturity of the business to make the business “agile-ready”. In my view this “three-legged stool” is going to deliver maximum “bang for your buck” in today’s environment.
Andy: Technology R&D – without a second’s hesitation. IT and internet tech is evolving, and the number of people who’re giving away strong platforms is skyrocketing; and it would be great to make the time and effort to see how these platforms address business problems, and how best to incorporate them into the tech pipeline; applying key platforms to problem areas would generally make a massive difference to every part of the IT department, but good, solid decisions take time to make.
Russell: Artificial intelligence, my view is that it is on the cusp of commercialisation and that it has the potential to fundamentally alter the structure of the “white collar” professions. Why, a large component of all “white collar” processes driven from and supporting strategy are in effect code “if this – then that” AI has the ability to take the drudgery and cost out of these events, I am sure many organisations have the view that “we should do AI before its done to us”
Question 2
What do you think will be ‘trending’ over the next 5 years in Australia technology wise? why?
Jeremy G: The main one will be IoT. It’s talked about a lot but no one has really nailed it in the Australian market – it’s ROI is immense. Imagine the cost savings with smart cities and smart buildings and where that money could be invested back into. It’ll take a brave decision from a state or council to get the ball rolling but once it’s proved as a viable solution, wider adoption will snowball.
Jeromy J: There is a lot of focus for digitalization and analytics everywhere today. I believe that Australia is also not different to the rest of the world. Digitalization is a very broad term to provide the best and simple customer experience through web technologies, mobility and social technologies, with the usage of cloud technology. Organisations are focusing in these areas to have the competitive advantage over their competitors. In a similar way, BI and analytics are also trending in Australia. Globally there is a lot of focus on data scientists, data labs, data lake, data warehouse, etc with very competitive data analytics and reporting tools available in the market. In addition to these 2 areas, the cloud and IT security also will trend upwards as with the digitalization and data analytics, there will be focus around how easy and scaleable the IT infrastructure can be and also how secure the IT architecture and systems can be.
Vladas: I can see a couple of definite trends happening today – one is a re-birth of “build” and software development, the other one is “cloud” … I do believe that “cloud” (a horrible term, by the way as everyone has a different interpretation of it) will be overtaken by “as-a-service” model. Why? Well, as a customer I am not interested whether my plumber is issuing DeWalt or Makita power tools – I am interested in timeliness, accuracy, quality, price, warrant, responsiveness, advice etc – e.g. in the business outcomes, rather than in architectural debates. Having said this – yes, I acknowledge the need for an architecture review, leaning probably more towards the independent one, rather than an in house one.
Andy: Wow; if only I really knew! In all seriousness, however, there’s key industries which are not tech adverse and are under great pressure to cut costs- I’m looking at you, mining- so I’m sure on the less glamorous side, I think making platforms to support these industries is a winning bet- there’s a lot of room for disruption. It’s not glamorous, and it’s lots safer.
Russell: Putting AI aside, mobility and digital security. The catch cry “you don’t commute to compute” is building in volume. Open plan – activity based working is becoming pervasive, outsourcing and offshoring are running out of steam, mobilising your workforce is a great way to reduce overheads deliver work life balance and preserve the knowledge asset an organisations people represent. Digital security goes hand in hand with mobility and it stands in its own right as a major risk issue for all organisations, my view DLP will become a particular focus.
Question 3
In terms of IT decisions, what are the biggest mistakes you are currently seeing organisations make?
Jeremy G: Thinking that what got you here is what will take you forward and being risk adverse. Management teams need to be curious by nature and dots will only be connected if you put the dots out there. Use technology as an enabler, don’t treat it as a constraint and see what it can do for your organisation.
Jeromy J: Technology is growing and changing so rapidly, so the organizations need to involve IT much more today in all technological related investments. There are so many IT solutions available in the market, where business units may be convinced to invest in their solutions. By involving internal IT, the business units will get the benefit of consulting through which the external service providers are asked and assessed about the best possible way before the commitment by the business. The reality is that the business units need a solution as soon as possible, and they may commit to a solution based on what they see in the paper or in a presentation, however the internal IT teams can provide additional quality checks and add value, provided they are competent. This also means that organisations must see competent and skilled technology staff as a strategic investment and not a short term solution only to be used for support tasks.
Vladas: In my observation there is still a lot of “old school” thinking, ranging from in house (box-huggers) to traditional outsourcing. This thinking (as well as lack of real understanding of the pace of the change happening at the board level and Board’s key focus on traditional risks, rather than disruptive ones) does not allow early embracing of the new models of ICT provisioning and creates potentially risks that may be very difficult (and costly) to deal with later.
Andy: Not spending enough on IT; it’s often seen as the place to cut corners; and it can be a sound short term strategy, it will bite adherents in the ass later. Balance the conflicting needs out, and you’re on to a winner. With regards to Booking Boss, we’re not perfect, sure, and we do a lot more than most in terms of IT delivery, development and process refinement.
Russell: Client service standards are slipping, for both an organisations user community and their clients. Shareholder value and profitability initiatives inevitably end up in headcount reduction and or offshoring initiatives, as a result Service Desk, IT support staffing is cut to a bare minimum or dumbed down through offshoring or outsourcing. End result is that an IT group loses not only its user community connectivity but its root cause analysis capability for both issue resolution and development opportunity prioritisation. The fact that roles are still advertised for people to become “the bridge between IT and the business” is profoundly disappointing statement about the IT profession
Question 4
In terms of technology innovation on a world wide scale where do you see Australia? How do we improve?
Jeremy G: We’re not at the forefront but at the same time, with the accelerators and incubator spaces set up in the past few years, we’ve made strides in the right direction. We can continue to improve by remaining open to new concepts and new technologies – backing by the C level in organisations of course will also help as without experimentation, there is rarely innovation.
Jeromy J: Without going into the details or results of any research, I believe Australia can be improved in here, even though we are doing well based on the mass population that we have when compared to other countries. There are many technology start-ups happening here in Australia and there are many technology companies providing multiple solutions. However we also hear stories of successful Australian technology companies based overseas.
We have to encourage technology education in our schools, we have to attract our kids to be more interested in maths and science, where we have a lot of opportunity. We have to develop technology related drive in kids and younger generations to take on technology topics and units across schools and universities. We need to encourage and promote technology start-ups even more than today, especially if we compare the number of start-ups happening in here and then in China, US and also in other European countries.
Vladas: Unfortunately over the last 25 years, in my observation, Australia has significantly lost its traditionally strong place in the innovation game… In the early 90s there was a real opportunity to create an “innovation continent”. Unfortunately, the “clever country” approach was not implemented to its full potential – for a number of reasons. Today, unless some really well thought through and complex multi-prong approach to support innovation/R&D/commercialisation is put in place – there is no chance for success in this area. Sadly enough, Government run NICTA and CSIRO are not demonstrating a lot of success in this area. I suspect that instead of direct funding creation of a truly supportive environment would help a lot. Requires a lot of thinking and maybe stealing and borrowing from, for example, Israel’s approach?
Andy: I’ll buck the trend and say that Australia is pretty average; yes, access to money is more challenging- however you can’t be suprised in a smaller market. That said- there’ve been more than a few Australian unicorns, so there’s evidence here that it can be done.
Russell: I long had the view that Australia was a leader in technology innovation, distance was a great sponsor of this as “those who would always say no” were offshore or when issues arose you had to sort it out yourself as the vendor support experts were asleep. This view is supported by many US based vendors who have often commented that the Australian market has a much greater depth of product knowledge and capability than anywhere else. However, in recent times Australia has gone backwards in terms of innovation, globalisation has operationalised many Australian based IT teams.
Question 5
What #1 piece of advice would you offer somebody who has 5 – 10 years current experience in the Technology industry?
Jeremy G: Remain curious, aim to be a smart generalist and don’t ever stop learning. There is a risk that once you are at that career stage that you begin to specialise but that can lead to you being pigeon holed in your career. The advantages of being a smart generalist are that you can flex with the times.
Jeromy J: The best advice I could give to any of my technology colleagues is to engage much more with the business users than today. Technology professionals are often very good in doing their technology related tasks, and what I have seen is that their biggest weakness is to have a non-technical and user friendly dialogue with the business users. All technology professionals must improve their business consulting and communication skills so that the business users will get the confidence to talk to the technology professionals in the same level and therefore the business will see the value. We have to also remember that today; the users themselves have a lot of knowledge in technology through internet and other social networking/media. So we need to understand the environment we are in and we need to drive the discussion with the business, create the confidence in the business that we are not a cost center anymore and we are here to value and drive revenues and bring efficiencies.
Vladas: There is only one thing that is permanent – it is change and the pace of change is constantly increasing. Be prepared for change, embrace it and exercise maximum flexibility. There are no “sacred cows” left anymore and 30 year old wisdom of “nobody has ever been fired for buying from IBM/Microsoft/etc.” does not work anymore. The other advice is around developing the “soft skills” and collaboration skills, especially for geographically distributed collaboration – importance of those keeps growing.
Andy: Keep going 😉
It really depends; I liken being a developer to being a tailor, yes, you can follow the pattern and make a sharp suit. That makes you a capable tailor. Are you able to design something that’ll stand out in a crowd? That makes you something else.
I know many competent tailors- I don’t know many fashion designers; and you have to know which side of the coin you feel best at.
The market for ideas is saturated. The market for their great execution is significantly less competitive.
Russell: “Client service is king”, if your user communities day to day experience with IT is rubbish they will not listen to nor fund your ambitions or ideas
Thank you
This brings us to the end of Lumika Five with Five: Insights from the CIO and CTO in 2016.
A massive Thank You to Jeremy Gupta, Roy Hawke, David Higgins, Jeromy Joseph, Vladas Leonas, Faheem Shah, Peter Smith, Bruce Sweeney, Andy Welsh and Russell Wright for taking the time out to provide us with these invaluable insights.
What were your thoughts? Any suprises? Did anything in particular stand out?
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Thank you for reading.
