The Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Britam East Africa Ltd Mr Jack Maina, is the CIO of the Year 2015. This is an award bestowed to the CIO who receives the overall company award of the year’s annual CIO East Africa’s in partnership with PwC CIO100 Awards survey.
The CIO100 is an acknowledged mark of enterprise IT excellence. It’s a celebration of 100 organizations (and the people within them) that are using information technology in innovative ways to deliver business value, whether by creating competitive advantage, optimizing business processes, enabling growth or improving relationships with customers.
Mr Maina received the award following his leadership role in Britam’s Jawabu project. Jawabu is the company’s IT journey that started in 2011 when they formulated a new strategic plan focused on driving profitability and operational effectiveness across the organisation. This culminated in an IT enabled business transformation project whose purpose is to transform the organization into a customer-centric organization providing customers with first class service. The project has automated key processes increasing efficiency and enhancing controls.
Launched in October 2014, this project has delivered a new era of convenience through improved business processes, enhanced structures and state of the art systems. The new systems are providing a single view of the customer, as well as customer intelligence. The project team consists of 160 staff 60 of them on the project full time and 12 vendor partners with over 80 consultants.
Mr Maina was part of the 100 honorees who received awards following, a two day CIO100 Symposium that brought together over 300 CIOs and senior IT executives from East Africa. “We have seen very interesting unique submissions this year making the CIO100 survey and selection of the 100 top honoree companies and CIOs very stiff,” said Andrew Karanja, Director, CIO East Africa.
Kenya had the lion’s share of submissions and nominations followed by Uganda and Tanzania. Some of the notable companies included Bidco Refineries, Equity Bank Group, Ramco Group, Kenya Power, Kenya Airways, Sarova Hotels, Commercial Bank of Africa, Pan African Insurance, Jubilee Insurance, Nairobi City Water, Kampala Capital City Authority, Social Security Regulatory Authority of Tanzania and DHL to name just a few.
More than 50 C-Level speakers were lined up to make presentations on technology trends and advancements for business. Some of the notable highlight presentations at the conference included Cloud Computing, Enterprise Mobility, Enterprise security & Cyber Defense, Big Data and Analytics, IT Leadership, IT service delivery and IT Commoditization.
Speakers at the conference on various hot topics included opening keynote by Lain Beckingham EMEA technical Director, Business- Intel, Rafael Hukai, Group CIO of Equity Bank, Abdi Sheikh – CEO Soliton Telmec, Muchemi Wambugu partner-PWC, Sabelo Mabeno- Senior Manager Global platforms & Solutions – MTN Group, and Deon Ferreira, Data centre Segment Leader Eaton South Africa among others.
Mr Victor Kyalo, the CEO at the Kenya ICT Authority scooped the CIO100 Leadership award for steering the transition of the defunct Kenya ICT Board to the new Authority. This included a merger of several IT-related government agencies.
The other top category award winners of CIO100 2015 include:
Education: Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology
Financial Services: Equity Group
Healthcare: mHealth Kenya
Hospitality: Sarova Hotels, Resorts & Game Lodges
Manufacturing: Bidco Africa Limited
Utilities: Kenya Power Limited
Government: Social Security Regulatory Authority, Tanzania
Transport and Logistics: DHL Express Kenya
This year’s CIO100 event also saw an ever growing number of sponsors and technology providers showcase new and emerging technologies to the region. Notable at the event’s conference and expo arena included: Intel, Microsoft, SimbaNET, Dell, Britam, Kooba, Cyberoam-Sophos, Cisco, Equity bank, Soliton Telmec, SilenSec, Liquid Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Eaton, Seacom, TBM, MTN Business, Computer Learning Centre, and Mitsumi Distribution.
The entire 2015 list of CIO100 honorees can be found off the CIO website – www.cio.co.ke or @ #CIO1002015
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