Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 35 | Page 52

PROFILE FOCUS ON THE SPACE BETWEEN OUTCOMES AND TECHNOLOGY. YOUR SPECIALISM COMES FROM USING TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE CUSTOMER AND EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCES FOR THE BETTER. using technology to change customer and employee experiences for the better. What is the most important lesson you have learnt in your career? Be humble and never be complacent. What have been the main IT achievements of your organisation in the past year? We have materially improved IT service. We have deployed customer solutions in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost we could, using the latest generation of technology. We have won innovation awards and have touched the lives of well over 300 school 52 INTELLIGENTCIO kids in South Africa though technology immersions we continue to sponsor. We have some of the strongest partnerships worldwide with some of the leading technology companies on the planet. Have you done any implementations that you can talk about? We are now deploying a pioneering, fully online solution to our advisers and customers in South Africa and Namibia. It takes the process of reviewing financial needs, refining recommendations and deciding which protection solution meets our customers’ needs entirely online. There is no paper involved at all. It is better from an experience perspective, gives customers more choice and is of course unlike any process that involves paper. You have chosen Amazon Web Services (AWS) as your preferred cloud provider. Can you explain the relationship you have with AWS? AWS provides us with the depth and breadth of services we need to innovate like a startup, with the security expected from Africa’s oldest and most trusted financial services company. With AWS, we can rapidly experiment at lower costs and push the successful experiments into production faster, allowing us to improve the experience for existing customers and attract new ones. AWS understands this high level of customer focus, which is why we see it as far more than just a technology supplier. We are working closely with AWS to not only serve our customers, but also support the www.intelligentcio.com