Keeping accountants at the cutting edge
Rakesh Beekum, CIO of the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants, is focused on integrating business objectives into IT strategy.
One of the biggest challenges for technologists is to resist technology that can't benefit business. Rakesh Beekum has never had that problem. He says he is a business executive first, and then an IT executive.
"I'm an entrepreneur, helping organisations to excel and grow rich. I have become rich in the knowledge I gained, and I'm passionate about sharing it with others."
He is credited with having transformed the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA) from an inward-focusing IT operation to a member-centric information management organisation.
Beekum has implemented more than 30 applications at SAICA over the last five years and he says with confidence that his IT projects are always delivered within time, cost, quality and scope. His IT innovations include the development of an IT governance toolkit (GovernIT) that enables chartered accountants to assess their own organisations' or their clients' IT governance maturity; the implementation of a member relationship management system; mobile applications for BlackBerry, Apple and Android; member thought leadership events; and revenue-generating products such as TaxSuite and CareerSuite.
"My business philosophy is to build trust, grow relationships, and build credibility through absolute high-performance delivery, minimising business and IT risk for all stakeholders."
Transcending IT, changing business
Trevor Harding, group CIO of Rainbow Chicken, believes IT executives need to transcend IT to be successful.
What can tech do for a chicken production line? You'd be amazed. Trevor Harding has transformed Rainbow Chicken's processes, and in his own words, it was "a journey of transforming good to great".
Harding achieved this by fast-tracking the adoption of SAP Global Best Practice templates. Rainbow has been credited with achieving a global first go-live, with the SAP Advanced Delivery Management (ADM) rapid deployment approach. The Rainbow SAP project has named the Gold Winner of the SAP Quality Awards and represented Africa in the SAP EMEA awards.
He is described as a visionary who demonstrates strategic, business-focused leadership combined with an uncanny appreciation for detail - the qualities that have seen Rainbow driving value to its business through faster and more affordable technology solutions.
Harding is one of the rare CIOs who have always been part of the board of directors - from Remgro and Unilever, to current positions at both Rainbow and Vector Logistics as the IT Strategic leader.
"The key part of my journey is that I always question the status quo," he says. "I like to be a change agent, transcending IT and looking how to change business, making sure we measure every last bit in our business.
"Business is about creative, positive change and everything we do needs to be focused on creating the right environment for that change. It's also about people - getting people to work together so we can make the difference."
Belief in shaping the future
Sakkie Janse van Rensburg, executive director of ICT at the University of Cape Town, is keen to build the next generation of CIOs.
Izak (Sakkie) Janse van Rensburg has a long and impressive track record of developing ICT strategies in the higher-education sector - before joining UCT, he was director of ICT at the University of the Free State.
At UCT, Janse van Rensburg's role is to apply technology to benefit academic, administrative and research functions at the university. He is responsible for the transformation and optimisation of business processes and the use of ICT to deliver improved capabilities.
With over 25 years' of experience, he sees his role as continuing to require an in-depth knowledge of the higher education sector, university strategies, operating models, research technologies and trends in the market and their potential applicability to the university. Some of his focus areas include the development of mobile applications and the shift to cloud computing.
He laments the lack of CIOs in the country and encourages knowledge sharing. "Transformation is not happening fast enough," he says. "CIOs must give back to the community by passing on their knowledge to the next generation of CIOs." His many drives include a Leadership Institute, and an initiative to give all UCT students free Internet access.
"My role is to understand what my stakeholders want and making sure that happens," he says. To succeed, one needs tenacity and confidence. "My philosophy is to believe in yourself, believe that you can shape the future."
Mandate: Use technology to deliver information
Lesiba Ledwaba, CIO of SA's National Library, has rolled out Internet to libraries in rural areas.
Soft-spoken Lesiba Ledwaba says he is self-taught in IT. He has a library science degree and started his career in 1994 at the library of the then University of the North. Since then, he has become a specialist in the application of ICTs in libraries.
"My business philosophy is to make sure that whatever I do, I take people along," he says.
Ledwaba has completed a number of important IT projects, such as setting up the IT department of the National Library and integrating the country's university library systems. He has demonstrated his leadership qualities by co-ordinating different spheres of government to be involved from project inception to project handover. But he is most proud of enabling poor communities to access the Internet. "This project will see even the most remote public libraries in the country connected to the Internet, using satellite technology," he says.
The National Library of South Africa is delivering on its mandate to deliver information to the citizens using technology. Ledwaba is also credited as being the only public sector CIO who has migrated his organisation's environment from proprietary to open source software.
Ledwaba says he would like to see a concerted effort by government on improving education, and an integrated communications strategy - an integration of the roles that various ministries and agencies play in governing information and communications.
First published in the December/January 2013 issue of ITWeb Brainstorm magazine.
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