Interview – Simon Reiter, Chief Information Officer, Defence Health
Simon is a business transformation leader with more than 20 years of ICT industry experience along with seven years of experience operating at the CIO level, demonstrated success in leading transformation programs that enhance the customer experience while delivering organisational strategic change.
Team Leadership: Managed crossed functional teams of up to 60FTE’s, transforming underperforming departments to high performing teams, recently at Defence Health this saw an improvement from 58% employee engagement to 98% for the past three years under my mentoring and leadership
Business Transformation & Process Improvement: Led large scale transformation programs, through the adoption of business processes management which have improved organisational customer satisfaction and business efficiencies through the adoption of CRM, Omni Channel, Digital, Cloud and AI platforms
Strategic development: Successful track record in leading, developing & executing business aligned ICT strategies to deliver the maximum return on technology investment, while position ICT as a strategic business enabler.
Industry leader: Seen as a leader in the Industry, current member of the Private Health Insurance IT Industry Committee, and mentor to the Victorian ICT for Women organisation. Additionally, my experience is often called on to present as an Industry expert at conferences, recently including the 2018, CISO conference on the ethics of Artificial Intelligence within the Insurance industry and chairing the 2018, Insurance Claims management & Customer experience conference. Additionally, in 2013 I was privileged to be nominated for ITSM Project of the year in 2013 for my “Business Transformation’ project.
As an IT leader, what do you feel businesses continue to get wrong when it comes to their IT strategy?
I see lots of organisations that invest significant organisational resources into developing a five year strategic plan and then either take a set and forget attitude or don’t develop metrics to report the strategic plans success and how it is enabling the organisation to grow/transform.
What are the latest trends and behaviours you predict will be surfacing on the market over the coming 12 months?
With the increase of digitisation, transformation we will continue to see a rise in cyber security incidents while many organisations continue to view security as an afterthought rather than incorporate security from conception, through design and into the final systems go live
What is the best piece of advice you have received within your job over the years?
Making time to build and maintain relationships within all levels of the organisation, this is critical to ensuring that IT is seen as a valued business partner and ensuring that the business works with you when they face a problem and your able to then demonstrate the value of how technology can assist them in improving their process.
What is one key takeaway you hope our IT audience leaves with after hearing your presentation on site?
How as a CIO you can gain confidence from your executive peer group to play a key role in leading the emerging technology & digital frontier for organisations.