CIO Edge panellists from Village Roadshow, Rest, and Department of Customer Service share how CIOs drive architecture, value, and AI with guardrails.

The panel of three long‑serving IT executives, Arul Arogyanathan – CIO at Village Roadshow, Jeremy Hubbard, Chief Technology and Data Officer at Rest, and Aarti Joshi- CIO at NSW Department of Customer Services, argues that the CIO now holds a firm mandate to drive organisational and operational change.

Technology now sits at the core of modern service delivery, from licensing and identity to customer experience and regulatory reform.

As a result, the CIO increasingly shapes business strategy rather than simply supporting it.

Reporting lines continue to shift closer to the CEO, which strengthens the CIO’s influence.

KPIs now focus on customer centricity, business value and growth.

This puts technology leaders in a front‑foot role and reflects the reality that digital capability now underpins almost every organisational outcome.

Turning to AI, the panel argues that organisations must prioritise progress over perfection.

Even with incomplete data foundations, targeted and contained AI use cases still deliver meaningful value.

Jeremy cites their contact centre, which handles 2,000–2,500 calls a day, where AI already automates call wrap‑ups and reduces handling time, well before full data modernisation is finished.

They also note that only 22% of AI ROI barriers come from technology and 14% from data; the remaining 64% arise from business readiness, prioritisation and value understanding.

To move faster, Arul promotes democratising AI, giving every team the ability to use it within clear guardrails of “centralised governance, federated execution”.

The panellists emphasise disciplined prioritisation in a tight economic climate.

They assess investments through business and technology strategy, regulatory obligations, growth potential, cost efficiency and sustainability.

Jeremy allocates funding across core operations, transformation and a protected innovation budget to ensure experimentation continues.

Aarti prioritises based on citizen impact, regulatory risk and service operability, acknowledging that public‑sector benefits often unfold over several years.

Across all sectors, they agree that focusing on a small number of clear metrics, and aligning every initiative to them, is essential for directing scarce resources to the work that delivers the greatest value.

 

Key takeaways:

  • CIOs now lead organisational transformation, with technology embedded in every part of service delivery and reporting lines shifting closer to the CEO, giving CIOs greater strategic influence.
  • AI progress depends more on business readiness than technology, with only 22% of ROI barriers linked to tech and 14% to data, while 64% stem from prioritisation, capability and understanding value, making “progress over perfection” essential.
  • Disciplined prioritisation is critical in tight economic conditions, with leaders focusing on clear metrics, aligned investment pillars and protected innovation budgets to ensure resources flow to the initiatives that deliver the greatest impact.
Contributors
Arul Arogyanathan Chief Information Officer at Village Roadshow (#1 in CIO50 2025)
I am a transformational top 50 CIO (#13 in 2024 and #1 in 2025) with extensive experience in hypergrowth and turnaround situations.... More

I am a transformational top 50 CIO (#13 in 2024 and #1 in 2025) with extensive experience in hypergrowth and turnaround situations. Seeing the full picture in the development of strategy and practical solutions, I have provided critical direction to organisations in times of pressure and urgency, bringing together a mix of commercial and tech knowledge to drive performance, market position and profit through simplification, optimisation and innovation. In every leadership role I’ve held, I have radically altered tech environments, modernising enterprise system and infrastructure landscapes while seamlessly immersing tech solutions into business processes to enable business decision-making, goal setting, and the achievement of essential business results.

In short, I’ve moved IT away from a back-office function and made it a key driver of business strategy. This is demonstrated in a solid track record in delivering year on year cost savings, reducing technology debt and creating lean and scalable technology operations that can adapt to constantly changing business needs. Key achievements include repositioning technology as a strategic value driver for Village Roadshow with multimillion-dollar cost savings and significant simplification and maturation of the IT landscape; architecting and delivering one of the largest cloud-native data platforms in ANZ for Flybuys; securing Board endorsement and multi-million dollar in funding for a three-year technology and data transformation roadmap for Sigma; and preventing extortionate monthly penalties by rescuing a multi-million-dollar, multi-vendor transformation program and delivering an integrated customer platform ahead of a high-risk deadline for EnergyAustralia.

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Aarti Joshi Chief Information Officer at Department of Customer Services
A passionate, dynamic leader with a proven track record of delivery across large scale enterprise, Aarti’s strengths are in leading and motivating... More

A passionate, dynamic leader with a proven track record of delivery across large scale enterprise, Aarti’s strengths are in leading and motivating people, and she is driven to achieve results.

Having led diverse, multidisciplinary teams across geographies, Aarti is committed to maximizing engagement across all levels of the business.

Aarti’s ability to co-innovate and collaborate makes her a trusted advisor, whilst her focus on strategic business and technology alignment makes her a catalyst for true partnership and change.

With an MBA from Macquarie Business School (Sydney, Australia), Aarti brings a global mindset to her role.

It is her relentless pursuit for excellence that ultimately enables Aarti to improve business outcomes, transform business models, modernize technology and enhance customer experience.

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Jeremy Hubbard Chief Technology and Data Officer at Rest
I’m a disruptive, delivery-focused technolgy leader with over 25 years’ experience driving digital strategy and solutions across Australia, China and the United... More

I’m a disruptive, delivery-focused technolgy leader with over 25 years’ experience driving digital strategy and solutions across Australia, China and the United Kingdom. I’m currently leading technology, data and information security at Rest where I’m driving rapid technology change and innovation across the organisation. Prior to working at Rest, I played a key role in the development and deployment of UBank’s digital and financial products since 2008. I led the implementation of UBank’s market leading digital home loan capability which launched in 2011. I spearheaded UBank’s AI journey including the launch of Australia’s first ever virtual assistant to support the home loan application process.

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Peter Hind Principal Research Analyst at ADAPT
One of the ICT industry’s foremost analysts and commentators, Peter Hind has spent over 25 years advising and talking on topics across... More

One of the ICT industry’s foremost analysts and commentators, Peter Hind has spent over 25 years advising and talking on topics across the technology industry. His primary areas of interest are the potential of technology to transform the way organisations operate, the change management obstacles executives encounter in realising this potential, as well as the tactics and techniques leaders have deployed to overcome these difficulties.​

With roles across IDC, Unisys, NCR, Sigma Data, and others, Peter now takes on multiple roles within ADAPT including the moderation of private events and roundtables, interviewing business executives about the strategies they are pursuing and assisting with the structuring of delegate surveys.​

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leadership transformation management