Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, big ERP vendors and systems became synonymous with the highest levels of cost and complexity for CIOs. But as the SaaS pricing and deployment model continues its inexorable spread into every level and corner of today’s evolving technology stack, the question is now being asked whether ‘monolithic ERP’ is now dead. According to our expert guests in this episode, if it isn’t yet, it’s certainly moving into palliative care. As Accenture’s respective Australi anad New Zealand leads for SAP and Oracle, Bruce McKinnon and Doug Hughes explain, the entire business of ERP has been flipped on its head compared with the bad-old days when complex, costly and exhaustively long deployments were simply an accepted part of life. Hughes notes while the transition has been ongoing for several years, COVID greatly accelerated it, with the retail sector in particular quickly pivoting to new SaaS-based systems offering the greater speed and flexibility needed to survive. In retail and other sectors where data is king, ERP is now being driven by CX, as is increasingly the case across the broader business technology stack. In stark contrast to traditional ERP arrangements, the “barriers for entry and exit” have now been effectively removed, according to McKinnon. Emerging SaaS-based challengers have made sure of that, and the big ERP giants have been forced to adapt their offerings in response. Both are now increasingly marketing directly to line-of-business managers (think finance, HR, marketing) presenting CIOs with a different, potentially more vexing ‘shadow IT’ challenge. But the opportunity for CIOs now is to embrace more ‘agile’ methodologies (see last week’s episode: Agile in Australia: Are you fast or fake?) and abandon the traditional ‘waterfall’ approaches which both Hughes and McKinnon blame for many organisations’ pre-occupation with customising core ERP modules. They contend that while the cloud makes customisation harder, that’s actually a good thing when it comes to ERP. Will Sessions, head of technology innovation with the National Maritime Museum in Sydney feels that CRM is cutting ERP’s grass, increasingly incorporating its traditional capabilities at the same time as CIOs are becoming less inclined to make big investments in the latter. Describing what he and his team have been able to achieve working with a number of different CRN providers – including one targeting the performing arts – he stresses that it’s irrelevant in his view, whether an organisation has invested in and deployed something that has ‘ERP’ on the tin if it hasn’t got a robust platform and processes for collecting, analysing and reporting on critical data in real-time.

The technology sector is notorious for its ability to constantly create new buzzwords and the word “agile” is no exception. Meaning to have quick motion and be nimble, it joins a long list of words that have been hijacked by the industry. In this episode, we speak to self-confessed Agile purist, Paul Keen, who is vice president of engineering at software firm Nuix. Keen discusses the problems that Agile methodologies solve, why they are not necessarily a panacea for the ills of traditional software development, and what he has learnt in relation to planning, selecting the right teams, doing testing correctly, and taking on customer feedback. David Bolton, who is chief technology officer at Domain, talks about how Agile methodologies are used across the digital property portal and real estate business; and the ‘grey areas’ in consulting that take Agile across discovery-driven product development right through to large scale, predictable project delivery. And finally, Stu Mitchell and Sam Bowtell, Scrum trainers and coaches at RedAgile, talk about the differences between fake and real Agile, the key traits of a good Agile practitioner, and what organisations that are succeeding with these methodologies are doing better than those that are not.

They say every organisation is a technology company these days, and this is especially the case for businesses in the financial services sector. In this our third industry verticals special, we talk to three finance tech experts about how the industry is progressing on its digital transformation journey. Chris Bell, a veteran banking tech leader, now regional VP executive programs with Gartner, shares his experiences and perspectives on how banks are dealing with the pressure to move away from their legacy systems to more integrated, data driven systems capable of supporting current demands for true customer centricity. He also ponders the extent to which banks are being spooked into action by the sudden rise of competing fintechs, whether there’s a trend emerging amongst banks hiring ‘data managers’ from big tech, and what that might mean for CIOs. Andrew Walker, a banking sector veteran who is now CEO at fintech Nano Home Loans, explains how his experiences in senior technology and business roles with Westpac and others inspired him to launch his own startup. Walker pulls no punches in assessing the true state of digital transformation amongst banks and other established finance firms, while providing a fascinating insight into how he and his team actually built their fintech. And one of our favourite tech industry scholars, Deloitte Asia Pacific's chief transformation officer , Rob Hillard, returns to talk about how the pressure now on banks to become more like technology companies. He says that this has created something of an identity crisis for banks, something that they'll experience for some time yet as they contineu wrestling with legacy systems and the threat of more agile fintechs looking for a piece of the action.

In this episode we talk to two CIOs who’ve been right at the coalface of helping organisations manage large scale transitions to the cloud as to why we’re still talking about ‘hybrid cloud’. Has it become something of a euphemism for ‘digital laggard’, given so many organisations, including many of the biggest and with arguably the most to lose from losing control and or losing face, have resolved to go 100 per cent public cloud? Elizabeth Wilson, CIO at the Victorian Department of Education and Training, and former tech chief at Edith Cowan University, is quite sceptical of any established organisation retaining data and applications on-premise, given how advanced the top cloud providers are today. Wilson and her team are close to finishing a platform that will harvest data on children from across all Victorian government agencies. They are confident about running fully in the cloud despite the highly sensitive nature of this type of information. Andrew Lawrence, founder of cyber consultancy, Secureroo, and former CIO of challenger telco Superloop, is also surprised at organisations that still have hybrid environments today, although he explained there are still many valid reasons for doing do, from regulatory requirements, to latency and a desire for control. However, he predicts that the move towards edge computing and 5G will drive construction of larger numbers of smaller data centres across Australia. This will bring the cloud closer, especially to companies operating outside of major cities, potentially obviating the need for hybrid cloud in the future for many. And David Kissane, managing director, APAC lead for enterprise cloud at tech business consultancy, Protiviti, feels the debate about hybrid cloud simply reflects the reality of today’s cloud marketplace, in that it’s just not as simple and straight forward as many think or hope that it should be.

In this episode of the CIO Show, we talk to tech leaders and analysts about the fast-evolving SD-WAN space, the role it played in helping organisations better manage the challenges of 2020, and how it is poised to become a core pillar for any sensible digital transformation strategy moving into the future.

In this the first episode of The CIO Show for this year, we talk to two leading analysts and one of last year’s top performers in the CIO50 about what they expect to see on the digital horizon for 2021, as well as musing on some of the dud predictions from 2019. Rob Hillard, Deloitte Asia Pacific chief transformation officer expects to see more examples of consumer tech infiltrating the enterprise, in the form of more user-friendly UIs and simpler cloud platforms and applications, along with a deeper understanding and appreciation of the cloud’s potential to help unify and synchronise supply chains in massive industries like automotive. In fact, Hillard believes one of the reason’s predictions Tesla would fail last year was arguably the biggest ‘dud’, was the company’s ability to fully harness the cloud for vastly greater efficiencies and scale. Kudzai Kanhutu, deputy chief medical information officer and infectious diseases doctor with The Royal Melbourne Hospital thinks 2021 will be defined by deeper thought and consideration of digital projects, as organisations – especially in healthcare – recover from the madness and trauma of 2020. She hopes the experience might inspire better strategies for improving performance and uptake of the beleaguered My Health Record but isn’t holding her breath.   Tim Sheedy, principal advisor with analyst firm Ecosystm predicts vendors will talk less about ‘AI’, as the feeling grows that if it’s not already built into your stack you shouldn’t be talking at all. And he predicts this year we’ll see not only growing acceptance and deployment of hybrid-cloud models, but also better tools to manage them. Likewise, for multi-cloud.

The final episode of The CIO Show for 2020 is on automation.    It’s a fast-growing area, accelerated by COVID-19 as CIOs have sought ways to maintain and increase agility as organisations looked to mobilise entire workforces and pivot their operations in ways never seen before.  We talk to senior technology leaders at two of Australia’s leading universities about their experiences deploying automation; what problems were they trying to solve, how successful were they, and what insights have emerged to inform future work.  Will Calvert, director of technology and enablement for RMIT Online talks about how he and his team dealt with an almost 30 per cent rise in online course enrolments this year, and the increased role being played by ‘learning analytics’ in better understanding student wellbeing, and course and career objectives.    Shiv Chandra, process automation team lead with the University of Melbourne talks us through the past three years since the organisation embarked on its automation journey, and how it’s using the technology the serve up ‘proactive offers’ to students, often before they themselves receive their results.    And Ghislaine Entwisle, managing director of tech consulting at global consultancy firm, Protiviti shares her expert insights garnered from years working at the coalface of automation across multiple industries, giving something of a deep dive into a current project with one of Australia’s biggest children’s hospitals.

Australia's public sector is in the process of a wide-ranging digital transformation which is changing how people, communities and businesses engage with government, while public services of all kinds are being delivered with increased speed and efficiency.   However, while digital technologies have huge potential to further transform the public service, its size and sprawling bureaucracies create unique challenges for the deployment of large-scale, complex systems.  Public-sector tech veteran and former CIO with South Australian and Northern Territory governments, Rowan Dollar, says there’s still a long way to go before genuine ‘transformation’ occurs, largely blaming rigid and outdated funding models for stifling innovation and agile practises.   By contrast, our first state government chief data scientist, Dr Ian Opperman outlines the work he has led over the past five years developing a sophisticated data analytics capability for NSW, in parallel with creating a robust governance framework – including ‘ethical’ AI - that takes account of the unique and evolving risks facing governments today.  Gartner’s Dean Lacheca reflects on his 10 years as chief digital officer with Workcover Queensland, admitting his experience of driving digital transformation with strong executive support and the right culture was one of few exceptions that prove the rule for most tech leaders working in government today.  And Jason Hutchinson, Deloitte’s government digital transformation lead stresses that in order for digital technologies to reach their true potential in government, agencies need to do more than just get their own houses in order and foster strong digital relationships across agencies, levels of government and even with the private sector.

Australia is a world leader in quantum computing, attracting interest from the biggest tech companies in the world, the best academics and researchers looking to advance their understanding of this important, albeit largely inaccessible discipline for most. RMIT associate professor, Nicolas Menicucci, explains for us how quantum computing actually works – and how it doesn’t – its different iterations including laser/optical, where the technology is today, the recent advances and key hurdles, as well as what the technology might mean for all of us, especially in businesses and the enterprise.   And Dr Ben Brown, quantum computing researcher at The University of Sydney, explains the importance of his and others’ work in addressing ‘decoherence’, which describes the high levels of noise or errors in quantum systems. These can occur as a result of entanglement, which is when different quantum elements come together in ways that weren’t predicted (seems little is in this area) and produce unexpected results. It’s a critically important area of quantum computing, the success of which will largely determine whether the technology will live up to expectations.

In this episode we’re circling back to one of the key themes to emerge from our debut two-part episode on AI, being natural language processing. We begin talking to Hannah Sakai, director of analytics strategy innovation division with IAG, Australia’s largest general insurer, about a powerful NLP solution her and the team developed inhouse to speed up processing of ‘total-loss’, or ‘write-off’ motor vehicle claims. Sakai explains in detail how they applied NLP to bring this down from three weeks to three days, and how the solution is now primed to be rolled out across IAG more broadly. Dr Rhoda Abadia, program director for the University of South Australia’s online bachelor of IT and data analytics takes us on a deep-dive into an exciting NLP trial aimed at better understanding how online students are coping with their studies – and life in general – by analysing words from chat forums and emails. As with IAG’s project, Uni SA is poised to roll-out NLP across the entire university, driven partly by the fact regular students are now having to adapt to virtual learning situations. And we welcome back to the show Sharon Hakkenes, senior director analyst at Gartner and former healthcare CIO, who explains the incredible NLP applications being conceived and deployed for improving how hospitals and healthcare professionals operate, leading ultimately to greatly improved health outcomes, and even saving lives.