5 learnings from business and technology leaders

5 learnings from business
and technology leaders
Building the digital business:

As businesses come under increasing
pressure to transform, there is
frustration with IT’s inability to
deliver on basic digital priorities.

Companies are locked
into operating
methodologies and
legacy infrastructures
which severely
restrict their ability
to change.

Yet the disruption
of every industry
and every company
is inevitable.

You need to become super-fast and
customer-obsessed with an ability
to ruthlessly prioritise to lead your
business into digital transformation
and execute like a digital company.

That was a key
theme at this year’s
CIO Summit in
Auckland on 8-9
June, which looked
at how to lead
digital business
transformation.

Here’s our take on
the top 5 learnings
for New Zealand
businesses
from the cast
of international
and local leaders
speaking at
the event.

LEARNING #1
Get to know your customer

We’re now in an experience world,
NOT a product world, and digital
transformation has to support a
customer-centric business strategy.

Sandra Ng says the
key question you need
to ask yourself is:
How can I engage
consumers in
a completely
different way?

Whether your business is B2B or B2C,
at the end of the day you will eventually
sell to a consumer. Your understanding
of customer centricity from a consumer
perspective becomes very important.
Sandra Ng, Group VP, IDC Asia Pacific

Paul Keesing bravely
shares an old tweet:
Well done State
– you have the
least s**t online
car insurance
experience.

Most insurance policies are pretty much
the same. So how do you differentiate?
We’re still figuring it out, but working with
our customers, suppliers and internal
teams to ensure we differentiate ourselves.
Paul Keesing, GM Digital, IAG

Vernon Turner asks
the question:
With a connected
society, and the ability
to ‘talk’ to millions of
people very quickly,
how do you create
personalised customer
experiences?

You need to build an infrastructure that
understands it’s not about the product,
it’s all about the customer. Put the
customer at the middle of everything
you do.
Vernon Turner, SVP of Enterprise Systems, IDC

Siim Sikkut shares
how the Estonian
government has
delivered a dazzling
range of digital
services for its
customers – the
citizens of Estonia.

We’ve received international praise for the ease
with which Estonians can access public records
online, with President Obama saying:
I should have called the Estonians when
we were setting up our healthcare website’.
Siim Sikkut, Digital Policy Advisor, Government of Estonia
‘

LEARNING #2
Culture is critical

One of the priorities for technologists looking
to change team culture is moving the focus
from technology to business outcomes.

Sandra Ng says that
people are the biggest
challenge during
transformation, so it
requires leadership
from the top.

People resist change, saying ‘this is
something we have been doing for years’
or ‘it is not going to work’. CEOs should
lead digital transformation because they
set the tone for the entire organisation.

Winners of the ‘Best ICT
Team Culture’ Award,
Westpac CIO Dawie
Oliver says that as soon
as he started allowing
people to operate in a
way that they chose, not
their managers, team
engagement scores
went off the chart.
TBC

There’s no mystique to this. When
people are allowed to figure out how
they must do that thing that they
aspire to do, happiness breaks out.
Dawie Olivier, CIO, Westpac

Paul Keesing speaks
about the importance
of aligning culture,
describing how IAG
created a culture of
cross-contamination
to share resources
across the group.

I love the notion of remote working
and collaborating over distance in
geographically distributed teams,
but there’s nothing more powerful
than a team that also sits together.

Paul Keesing says
attracting and
retaining talent
has also become
an enormous
focus for IAG.

You don’t get smart people by
giving them dumb stuff to do.

LEARNING #3
Shake up your
integration strategy

Just as we all got the hang of 2-speed or
bi-modal IT, IDC has introduced a new
framework called ‘Leading in 3D’, spanning:
Innovate, Incorporate and Integrate.

IDC’s research found
that integration is the
top desired outcome
for over 50% of
CIOs in 2016/17.

‘Integrate’ means taking new capabilities
and technologies and combining them
with your legacy environment to bring
digital transformation capabilities
across your entire organisation, and
potentially across your entire ecosystem.

Stefan Preston
explains that there is
frustration because,
while there is
pressure to transform,
legacy technologies
restrict the ability
to change.

There is an ‘us and them’ thing between
technology and marketing and there
are very few people who have a foot
in both camps. That results in an
inability to adapt, which sees billion
dollar companies going into the bin.
Stefan Preston, Director, Spring Business Accelerator

Paul Keesing shares
his CDO view of the
CIO’s priorities and
how a common
‘language’ was
developed at IAG
to integrate and
align the teams.

If we are going to deliver with
urgency, we have to be super-
fast and customer obsessed
and ruthlessly prioritising.

LEARNING #4
Be ready for the Internet of Things
(IoT) and cybersecurity attacks

After all the hype, the IoT is moving
away from toys for the consumer
and is now a priority for business.

The biggest challenge for IT professionals
is to use the IoT to create business
value and support business goals.

The speakers shared many examples.
IoT technology is used to monitor 2 million
trees around Singapore to determine
how weather impacts tree health.

A connected cow produces 200MB of
data per year, helping to increase milk
yields and breeding cycles to create
savings of $500 per cow each year.

IAG now has drones in its arsenal to assess
fire damage in Australia, taking 60-70
assessors out of harm’s way, providing better
data and more accurate pictures of loss.

Alex Bazin says
it’s not just about
the devices, it’s
the connections
that matter.

The IoT is less about things,
and more about people
and processes.
Alex Bazin, VP and Head of IoT, Fujitsu

As the numbers and
lifespans of devices
exponentially increase,
you need to consider
how you will support
them over 15 or more
years, when you’re
used to supporting IT
for only 3-5 years.

How will companies move their
IT to support 10 million users,
when they’re only supporting
10,000 users today?
Alex Bazin, VP and Head of IoT, Fujitsu

Vernon Turner says
you no longer have
a choice of being
connected – you
will be connected.

While we need to focus on cloud,
social, mobile and big data, IoT is
the game changer. It is the fuel for
all the things we’re going to do.

Sean Duca says
don’t use 2006
techniques to
protect against 2016
security threats.

Security is like brakes on a car –
they make the car go faster
as you have the ability to
control when to slow down.
Sean Duca, VP and Regional CSO Asia Pacific,
Palo Alto Networks

Carl Woerndle
provides a frank
and personal
account of a hacker
destroying his 9
year-old business
in only 3 weeks.

We didn’t think about the Armageddon
option. Decide what to protect, put in
place protection and plan your response
when you are hit with an incident. It’s
not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.
Carl Woerndle, CEO, My Empire

LEARNING #5
Who will lead the digital way?

There’s a lot of competition within the
C-Suite for the digital lead role, so
which executive is in the best place
to drive digital transformation?

Sandra Ng believes
that the CIO is best
placed to lead (and
she says that’s not
just because she
was speaking to a
room full of CIOs).

The CIO is in the best position because
you understand technology and what
you do is cross-functional. The rest of the
C-Suite only have one function, sometimes
two, so aren’t truly multidisciplinary.

Vernon Turner urges
us not to miss
the next wave of
innovation, saying
that there is a gap in
the CIO qualification.

There’s a danger of CIOs being too focused on
running the business and not embracing the
innovation coming from the next generation
of millennials. That’s a skill we definitely need
to have (and we missed it 10 years ago).

Every leader
needs to become
a digital leader,
and every business
needs to become a
digital business.

The CIOs who
digitise today’s
business, while
also looking for
opportunities
to innovate for
tomorrow’s business,
will be the leaders
of the future.

For more insights from the leading business and technology
executives speaking at the CIO Summit 2016, watch
the full-length videos of their presentations here.
For further articles, opinions and industry viewpoints,
see www.sparkdigital.co.nz/insights

5 learnings from business and technology leaders

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