The Right Technology And Reliable Partners; The Business Next Frontier

By Luke O'Brien, CIO, ISS Facility Services Australia & New Zealand

Luke O'Brien, CIO, ISS Facility Services Australia & New Zealand

In light of your experience, what are the implications that technology implementation can make in terms of advancing your industry and upscaling the services that your organization provides?

Being the CIO of an organization, my experience is that the implementation of the right technology in a systematic manner does help the company become more efficient and manage risk better. Importantly it has to be the right technology and to get that demands close partnering with the business so it is appropriate and practical. I think it can be too easy to push the wrong technology solutions on to a business.

As a company, ISS Facility Services provides services like security, facility management, catering, and cleaning to large clients across the health, aviation, education, mining, and commercial sectors. For some of these sectors in particular, compliance and risk management is absolutely critical to ‘safe’ service. If things are not done properly, the consequences can range from user physical safety and health through to brand risk and insurance claims.

An obvious example is if someone slips and falls in an area inside the hospital, which is not cleaned properly, exposes the hospital management to an insurance claim.

A more critical and complex example is the serving of food to patients in hospitals. The food delivered at hospitals needs to be clinically correct with the right dietary requirements for each patient. In this scenario, technology allows us to control and manage all those risks much more effectively compared to the manual processes, which were in practice just a few years ago. Manual processes in risk management had proved inefficient, considering the possibilities for serious errors associated with them. Therefore, it is imperative for us to deploy advanced technology solutions to manage risk, compliance, and security. On the efficiency front, similar trends prevail in other industry sectors as well. All of these examples convince me that the deployment of the right technology needs a proper understanding of the demand in the market through surveys and data analysis, as well as the needs of our business.

From an operational perspective, what are the significant challenges that CIOs face?

For a CIO, most days first begins with addressing high priority operational challenges. My team of course help in this, but as we are close to the business, that also means we cannot insulate ourselves from the business! So first is operational priorities, then longer term planning and management. In general, the challenges we face are related to the industry that we are serving and our position on the technology curve. Technology is becoming more affordable and relevant to us, but we are going through a learning process and culture change to do it in a smart way and help users who might not even own a personal smart phone. We see part of this challenge through very high support desk calls from inexperience users on things like resetting passwords.

It Is Important For All Enterprises To Have Reliable Business Partners, Who Can Understand The Business Needs And Support The Operational Requirements

For instance, at the moment when more technologies have been rolled out to users, that creates an increase in support demand, and I need to balance resourcing that with energy improving our product solutions.

In terms of time management, I spend up to 70 percent of my time on managing operational activities such as managing support, resolving people issues, and handling budgets. That leaves about 30 percent of my time working with my team leaders, building out solution options, roadmaps, and strategically consulting with senior leaders across my business.

Could you please tell our readers about the latest initiative that you are working on and what are the technologies that you are leveraging to make those initiatives successful?

As a firm that provides services to several crucial industry verticals, it is necessary for us to have a comprehensive approach in meeting our client’s needs. Firstly we are refining our solution development processes to make sure we get the balance right between good initial scoping with strategic direction along with agile execution. I am conscious of the risk that without good initial scoping, subsequent agile development runs the risk of not properly understanding the initial opportunity and losing direction.

One of the significant solution that we are developing with the business, is for our clients in the mining sector. We have a core focus on the mining sector as it is one among the industry vertical that has a massive impact on our national economy. Mining is a large industry sector in Australia, and we are providing catering services to these mining camps, which are miles away from cities. There are often more than a thousand miners in these remote camps who have to stay there for two or three weeks at a time which can make it a difficult home away from home for them.

Our goal is to improve the experience and safety of these mine site residents with the solution being a combination of mobile technology, IoT, and integration to some core service systems. We believe this will deliver better site resident experience through its immediate services as well as helping us tailor future experience better by using the anonymous data we collect. In a nutshell, our goal is to offer the benefits of technologies to our clients and the users of their facilities to make them happy.

What according to you will be the next frontier for organizations to achieve success?

Technology wise, machine learning together with IoT has the potential to provide breakthrough efficiencies but it is important to undertake this with trusted business partners who can understand the business needs, and support the operational requirements. Even the best technologists cannot solve for everything, but I think the right business partnering company almost can!

What are the strategies that you adopt in finding the right partner for your business?

A right partner is someone who has the potential to add value to our organization. Therefore, I always look for their capabilities demonstrated in similar companies to our own and credible descriptions of the deliverables. That opens the door for further investigation. In terms of technology providers, if we are implementing technology into our ecosystem, it should provide us with cost savings or a service advantage. I am naturally cautious about technology for technology’s sake. And, when I am with my business stakeholders, I am looking for ways to save money through technology. That adds value, which can be recognized and measured.

What would be the piece of advice that you give to your colleagues to guide them in building a powerful strategy for the organization?

Business partnering is critical to driving an organization to success. It is all about understanding the business both operationally and to at least some extent financially. That is how you can shape your technology into an economic business solution. It’s common to read in industry material about how CIOs should have a seat at leadership team level and strategic input for the board level. I would say that if you want to have inputs at that level, you cannot just bring your technology experience, you must be a good business person, understand the business, and be financially savvy. Those things together take you from just technology advisor to business leader with a technology toolset!