Peter Griffin, Editor. 28 October 2021, 12:31 pm
Between having to fend off cybersecurity threats and convince tight-fisted managers to invest in digital transformation projects, the life of a chief information officer or IT manager is no bed of roses.
That’s why industry news outlet CIO sets out each year to honour the country’s IT leaders with the prestigious CIO50 Aotearoa New Zealand awards. I’ve interviewed enough CIOs in the last year to know that the pandemic has produced some of the biggest challenges our IT leaders have ever faced.
But they’ve also seen the crisis as an opportunity to get the ball rolling on exciting and transformative projects, some of which have been completed in timeframes unimaginable prior to Covid-19’s arrival.
This year see’s Mary Simpson, Z Energy’s chief digital officer, take out the top place. Z’s ingenious smartphone app introduced the ability for drivers to virtually fill up at any Z station within a 30km radius and bank the savings no matter what station they actually ended up going to.
According to CIO editor Sarah Putt, “the judges commented that her programme of work is innovative, is customer-centric, and demonstrates effective leadership in her organisation. ‘Now that’s innovation. Some excellent concepts brought to life and by studying the customer. And that’s leadership!’ one judge says.”
In 2nd place this year was Fulton Hogan CIO, Brian Northern. Among the projects he helped bring to life at the construction company, was an Internet of Things platform, collecting sensor data in one place.
Northern told CIO that “IoT solutions are changing how the business works-from manual, costly, and inefficient reactive processes to more efficient, automatic, and proactive business processes”.
3rd place was claimed by Jason Mangan, chief digital officer at the University of Auckland. Mangan oversaw projects to “ensure business continuity, protect existing revenue and allow for diversification of revenue streams, and ensure the best possible experience for all customer groups (current and future students, teachers, researchers, and professional staff) through varying levels of disruption,” CIO noted. Rounding out the CIO50 Awards top ten places were:
Here’s the full top 50 in the CIO Awards 2021
