Agenda

Welcome to ADAPT’s 27th gathering of Australian CIO and IT leaders from Enterprise and Government responsible for over 1/3 of AU GDP and 10% of the workforce. The #1 Business Goal articulated by over 1,000 executive surveys in 2024 is ‘Tech modernisation and Simplification’. So many Australian organisations are struggling to run such complex, customised, and fragile IT estates – with operating challenges, technical debt, and siloed problems.

Modern CIOs must lead with confidence and visibility, while articulating the value of technology to secure resources to solve these challenges – to be able to deliver on business outcomes.

What is possible? – what is the future? – what is the opportunity if we get it right over the next 5-10 years? What will be the cost if we get it wrong? Join the CIO community, experts and ADAPT for the day to find answers to these critical questions and enable business led change.

ADAPT’s research team reveal the latest local fact-based insights from over 1000 detailed surveys of our region’s top CIOs, CISO, CFOs, CTOs, and digital leaders. This session will assist you in comparing the resource allocation, investment priorities and unique challenges of Australian CIOs for you to benchmark and validate your priorities and thinking.

Gabby will reveal the core findings distilled from your aggregated pre-event surveys and examine the technology strategies that are generating value – focused on what the top performers are doing differently.

How mature is your AI use and what are your aspirations as CIO? Peter will share the findings from MIT CISR’s study of the maturity, capability, and performance impact of AI. In this digital and AI world of exponential change, CIOs need a framework to make sense of the hype – benchmarking where they are today and providing a line of sight into where they need to go.

To help provide this guidance, MIT CISR has created a four-stage Enterprise AI Maturity model with data from over 700 firms globally.

Peter will exclusively:

• Identify the % of firms in each stage
• Describe the key characteristics and financial performance by stage.
• Illustrate the journey with case studies in financial service, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Later in the agenda, Peter will workshop with CIOs to identify which stage participants are in now, exactly what capabilities they need to progress through the stages to become top performers – and how to build them.

As Chair of CISR at the MIT Sloan School of Management in Boston, Peter’s work centres on the role, value, and governance of digitisation in enterprises. Peter works with several of Australia’s and the world’s leading CIOs, ExCos and Boards and is a senior advisor to the New York VC firm Insight Partners. Peter was nominated for the 2023 Thinkers-50 based on his new book, Future Ready, and was ranked by Ziff Davis as the 24th most influential person in IT and the highest ranking academic. MIT CISR undertakes practical research on how firms generate business value from digital.

Coles is one of Australia’s success stories. Their transformation journey has led to operational excellence, growth, and profits in a hyper competitive sector.

In this interview, John reveals the lessons learned in their transformational tech strategy:

• Modernising the Tech Stack by Stealth
• Building Learning Agility in Tech Teams

CIOs must foster efficient and effective IT operations and security strategy aligned with organisational goals. The future of AI, machine learning, and automation are revolutionizing endpoint technology to reduce downtime and burnout while accelerating progress.

Learn the latest tactics and trends for:

• AI as a Force Multiplier: smarter decision-making and improved operational efficiency, the future state of converged IT operations and security.
• Proactive Patching & Hardening: Eliminating the stress of Patch Tuesday and reducing vulnerabilities.
• Empowering IT Teams: Providing actionable insights, reducing burnout, eliminating manual tasks – all while maintaining confidence and control.
• Accelerating Business Outcomes: by improving security, reducing downtime, reducing team burnout, and optimising resource allocation.

McKinsey research shows that 9 out of 10 companies have recently launched a digital or technology transformation, but only 3 out of 10 were able to get scale benefits. As CIO, how to get users to adopt your technology solutions and successfully scale them across the enterprise?

Alexey is a leader in McKinsey’s Technology practice for AU/NZ and South-East Asia, and will debate:

• The role of the CIO in enabling organisation wide change.
• How to accelerate and derisk tech adoption
• How to effectively scale value

How organisations across Australia leverage data and AI to drive innovation and growth is now the ultimate lever for success. In this marriage of data, analytics and AI – the fundamental building block for success is fast, flexible and secure connectivity.

With 40% of Australian businesses prioritising improved connectivity to boost automation with AI, it’s astonishing that 57% still face weekly network downtime from outdated wired systems, and over 40% have experienced security breaches. For CIOs, this reality underscores the urgent need to elevate network performance as a strategic imperative.

Join this presentation to explore how robust connectivity unlocks the full potential of data-driven decision-making and AI capabilities. Discover how one-third of organisations are turning to cellular connectivity for critical operational failover and how 25% are leveraging it for fleet management resilience.

This session will cover:

• Why organisations see connectivity as enabler for AI
• The balance between satellite and 5G connectivity
• The future of connectivity and security through SASE
• How hybrid WAN solutions enable 5G to complement wired connections
• Strategies for ensuring network security with AI