South Africa’s top IT executives gathered at the chic Sandton Hotel on 12 February for the CIO Connected Intelligence Summit, opening the community’s annual event calendar with an evening focused on the issues keeping CIOs awake at night.
Set against Sandton’s skyline, IT leaders arrived at the contemporary venue ready to reconnect, as conversations began over drinks and canapés before moving into structured group discussions.
CIOs split into three breakout sessions to explore a central question: how can organisations break down siloes to enable connected intelligence across technology, people and data? Each group approached the challenge from a different angle, but common themes soon emerged. Leaders agreed that true connected intelligence depends on unifying people around a shared vision and culture as well as strengthening communication across the business.
Opening the debrief session, Sharon Maasdorp, COO at MakwaIT, emphasised integration as the foundation of connected intelligence. “Most organisations have invested in platforms and systems that use data but they are not seeing results because their data, services and people are not connected. Additionally, the way most organisations are structured doesn’t foster cross-functional collaboration but culture can also be a major inhibitor to true connectedness. Leaders at the top must drive integration and break down siloes.”
For Ryan Norris, AI and data partner for Africa at Deloitte, people were the biggest barrier to connected intelligence. The group’s primary solutions to the people issue was enhancing communication across the organisation as well as incentivising connection.
“Technology is not the barrier but people are. In some organisations, power dynamics are a huge issue, people will build systems that they then control and gatekeep which reduces collaboration. We believe that a culture shift is necessary to circumvent this. People also behave how they are measured, so organisations need to move from tracking KPIs to OKRs,” Ryan explained.
The third group focused on organisational design, noting that most enterprises are not structured to enable connected intelligence, with silos and fragmentation often embedded for governance purposes. Boyd Chislett, chief business officer at Liquid Intelligent Technologies South Africa added: “Similarly to the other groups, culture and leadership also emerged as the key differentiators in driving connected intelligence, but we also noted that the way organisations operate must shift quickly as AI enters the discussion. Business, not CIOs, needs to be the change catalyst to enable true connected intelligence.”
Intelligence in motion
Following the thought-provoking insights, CIOs took a brief networking break. The summit then moved into a lively panel discussion titled Intelligence in motion: building a seamlessly connected digital enterprise featuring 2025 CIO Awards winner and Nutun group CTIO, Hans Zachar, 2023 CIO of the Year and Standard Bank group CIO Jörg Fischer and MTN group CIO, Nikos Angelopoulos.
Hans kicked off the discussion saying the concept of a connected enterprise is not new, but the expectation of speed is.
“As IT professionals we have always connected parts and people of an organisation using different systems and tools. What is new is AI and its value in shortening the time from when a task is assigned to when it is executed. AI can compensate for not having enough APIs to connect different parts of an organisation. This creates new opportunities to build a different kind of connected digital enterprise.”
When asked about the barriers preventing a flow of intelligence across organisations, Nikos took an interesting approach, simply stating that our imagination is the real barrier. “The biggest constraint we have is our own imagination. When people stay in one organisation for too long, they begin to believe the stories they tell themselves about why things must be done a certain way. A major disruption like AI forces organisations to reimagine how they work,” he explained.
Nikos added that collaboration and experimentation are critical to overcoming this barrier.
Alignment at scale
For Jörg, building a connected digital enterprise of scale comes down to one simple factor: alignment. “At Standard Bank, alignment is crucial and we always ensure we are operating around common goals across all our business and service lines. This comes from demonstrating collaboration from the top, which trickles down into the rest of the business,” he said.
He also highlighted the need for technology standardisation and information integration, while maintaining enough autonomy to stay competitive in large organisations. As the discussion turned to AI and its disruptive potential, Jörg closed with a final remark on implementation and speed. “It is better to receive a speeding ticket than a parking ticket.”
The evening concluded with IT leaders gathering around the buffet table for delicious dessert canapes, a final round of drinks and high-level networking.
The event was supported by CIO South Africa’s principal partners, Cassava Technologies, Deloitte, Entelect, iOCO, and MakwaIT, alongside executive partners Equinix, HCLTech, Hyland, Kaspersky, and ServiceNow, and Communication Genetics and Workday as the community’s associate partners.
