Carter Holt Harvey (MIS100 2012)

Senior IS executive: Jonathan Iles, CIO
Address: 173 Captain Springs Road, Onehunga, Auckland
Website: www.chh.com

Against a background of tough economic conditions, the focus for Carter Holt Harvey (CHH) ICT is on managing costs and increasing productivity. “In the current challenging NZ and Australian markets, with residential building activity at very low levels and imports taking advantage of strong NZ and Australian dollars, the focus remains on market share, price and operating costs, as it did in 2011,” says CIO Jonathan Iles. Reflecting the tight economic conditions in which CHH is now operating, ICT budgets have dropped slightly on last year.

During 2012, the IT team will focus on a collection of structural projects, which are needed for risk mitigation or improved productivity. These include a webMethods upgrade (working with SoftwareAG), improvements to disaster recovery capabilities for the second large business group, and next generation client computing (working with Microsoft and Citrix). In addition, focus will be placed on the basics, such as improving business performance through better decision making at business unit level. Moves to in-memory computing (SAP HANA) and SAP mobility will be watched with interest, but not actioned until the cost/value trade-off looks more attractive.

CHH continues to run a centralised shared services model for all IT infrastructure demand, combined with group shared services for application and business intelligence. This provides a low total cost of ownership, while being responsive to local business unit needs. The organisation will continue to leverage IT solutions such as cloud computing, VoIP, FMIS, wireless, business intelligence, ERP, virtualisation, e-business, mobility, business continuity/disaster recovery, knowledge management and CRM.