On 5 August, the Western Cape's top CIOs attended the CIO Roundtable in Cape Town to discuss ICT's latest megatrend and its impact on business solutions. With 40 CIOs from the biggest businesses in the region, the roundtable is the largest of its kind in the Cape's history.
While a number of ICT related topics were covered, "Digitalisation" clearly dominated the discussions as more and more business are adopting, or planning to adopt, this emerging megatrend. Much of the sentiment from the speakers pointed to the necessity for businesses to accelerate the process of digitising their businesses or risk falling behind or becoming "extinct".
"The attendance and participation at the CIO Roundtable in Cape Town showed the business imperative digitalisation is truly becoming," said Mala Suriah, Executive of Strategic Marketing at Telkom Business. "The key themes discussed by Brian Armstrong, Lee Naik and the panellists showed that the adoption of this megatrend is growing and becoming more and more necessary for business leaders around South Africa."
The event, which was hosted by Telkom in collaboration with Accenture, featured a speech by Telkom's COO, Dr Brian Armstrong, who spoke from the company's perspective on ICT trends in South Africa and around the world. In his remarks, he addressed the digital disruption that is occurring in today's world and the important levers that enable digitalisation.
"Digitalisation is not primarily about technology. It is a social and business phenomenon enabled and underpinned by technology," said Dr Armstrong. "The people who will win in today's world are those that understand that Digitalisation is first a social phenomenon and second a business phenomenon."
Lee Naik, Managing Director, Technology Strategy at Accenture opened the event with remarks about his company's technology vision for 2014: "From Digitally Disrupted to Digital Disruptor." As part of his segment, Naik discussed global trends in the digital space and the intelligence and technology behind them.
Naik also commented on the integral role ICT plays in how businesses and governments deliver services to their customer base. CIOs have the dual challenge of industrialising the IT operating model and making it agile, lean and cost-effective, while focusing on driving business value creation using disruptive and emerging technologies.
In addition to the high-profile speakers at the event, the hour-long panel session included executives at some of the largest organisations in the country. Len de Villiers, Group CIO, Telkom, Conrad Blignaut, Head of Solution Delivery & IT Business Partner, Old Mutual South Africa and Mark Regensberg, Group Executive - Information Technology, Protea Hotels, Marriott International provided keen insights into how their organisations are using ICT solutions to meet their strategic business objectives.
Visit the Telkom Business blog this week for a retrospective on the CIO Roundtables held in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town: www.telkombusinessblog.co.za
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