As the CIO of Eskom – a government-owned company and South Africa’s main energy supplier – Faith Burn is responsible for IT across the entire business. This spans two major divisions, (Generation, and Distribution) several subsidiaries including National Transmission Company South Africa, and is made up of around 40,000 users. Having previously worked in a CIO role at TSEBO Solutions Group and Novartis, she’s no stranger to spearheading IT projects and managing a broad technology landscape.
As the business looks to improve its tech systems, Burn is careful to call it a digital business transitioning journey and not a digital transformation journey. “So often people get too wrapped up in the technology. I recently engaged with a service provider, and it was all about technology. But you can have the best technology and the best strategy around how you plan to use that technology but if it doesn’t talk to a broader business outcome, what are you actually doing? Technologies that aren’t aligned to business objectives are just nice, shiny toys,” she says.
As such, their digital transitioning efforts began with looking at the strategic objectives of each business division, as well as their challenges and opportunities. They then assessed what digital solutions are available and how these solutions can help users achieve their objectives. Armed with this information, she and her team came up with different use cases and then divvied up these use cases into different priority focus groups. According to Burn, they are currently focusing on two of these – asset performance management and the employee experience. The former is all about improving the use and performance of the assets across the business’ many power stations. Which marks a major step in the right direction given the country’s energy security challenges.
When discussing the latter, Burn stresses that their outcomes are determined by employee output, which is why they are passionate about making it simpler for employees to give their all.
Forget digital transformation, Eskom is on a digital business transitioning journey as the South African energy company looks to rewire the business and up effectiveness by deploying tech at scale. Burn talks about the company’s journey over the years, its transition and the role she plays in it. She further gives advice to companies that are looking to do a digital business transitioning on how they should go about it.
Get to read more about Eskom’s journey as well as Faith Burn’s on the September Issue of the CIO Africa Magazine.
This article was originally published by a cioafrica.co . Read the Original article here. .