'Automation is the explosive opportunity of the year' - CIO of Kier
Duncan Stott, CIO of Kier, cites automation as the key trend CIOs need to understand and develop a vision for, or risk falling behind
Automation is the key technology which CIOs need to understand and leverage today.
That's the opinion of Duncan Stott, CIO of construction firm Kier, speaking exclusively to Computing today.
"Automation is the explosive opportunity this year," said Stott. "CIOs need to know where it's going. That menas we've got to think ahead about what machine learning will do and how it's relevant to our company," he added.
Computing's AI & Machine Learning Live event will be held on 19th November 2018 in Central London.
He argued that IT leaders can no long afford to spend time tinkering and experimenting, but rather need to very quickly understand the fundamentals and apply that to their organisations.
"We can't spend two years experimenting, we've got to make a call as to where it'll lead us and how it'll change both the IT organisation and the business. It's not just about implementing systems in the old traditional way, but looking across the entire business and seeing what jobs cannot be automated.
"Then you plan backwards and create the organisation that will need to exist in two years time.
"We need to have a vision for how that technology will change. The tendancy is to sit on the fence and do some proofs of concept and a few easy implementations and see what works. But we need a vision as to what it'll ultimately be, we don't have the luxury of going tentatively at these things. CIOs must make a judgement as to what the impact of automation will be."
Stott explained that automation isn't the only way of doing things, and CIOs need to weigh up what works for their organisations.
"All competitors will go at roughly the same pace, but automation is still a great opportunity for driving change. And you can make changes in lots of ways, so will automation be the way for you? You can offshore resource, but even better is to replace people with computers.
"So have to make a choice, which way do you go? You can do a bit of both, but you need make sure you do them properly.
"You have to know which trends will make a real difference, and I'm calling out automation as the game changer," he concluded.