CIO South Africa caught up with hospitality CIOs Gona Rajoo and Nkosenhle Ngongoma, and insurance sector CTO Mbusiswa Nyuswa, to find out what areas they’ll be prioritising in the coming year.
For Mbusiswa Nyuswa, CTO at Old Mutual iWYZE, Gona Rajoo, CIO at Peermont Global, and Nkosenhle Ngongoma divisional director of IT at City Lodge Hotel Group, 2025 will focus on fostering a data-driven culture, developing AI business cases, and leveraging AI-powered predictive tools. Each leader emphasises the importance of technology in driving innovation and operational efficiency in their respective sectors.
According to Nkosenhle, City Lodge Hotel Group IT staff members are on tracked and managed training initiatives to further equip them to be able to meaningfully contribute to digital transformation projects and also provide support to them when they have been implemented.
“From time to time we recruit experienced staff who will contribute to furthering our digital transformation initiatives,” he says.
Gona Rajoo, on the other hand, says that a culture for learning and growth must be fostered. “This intention for this is to create lifelong learning, which also rubs off from employees to their immediate communities,” he explains. “It is equally important to provide relevant exposure to employees providing additional samples of insight that helps stimulate growth and development. Cross-functional, integrated experiences also go a long way in creating visibility and experiences for staff to set goals and strive for more.”
Meanwhile, Mbusiswa believes that all these new technological capabilities require new capabilities from employees.
“We’re intentional with career development, ensuring that we continue to cross-skill and upskill our technical staff; our budget in L&D has continued to increase in the past years demonstrating our commitment and investment in our staff’s personal development,” explains
“What has been very nice to observe is the commitment in the part of individuals in the team in growing their knowledge, ability to invest time in various Udemy courses (luckily they have access to all Udemy course for free via Udemy business) and people asking their colleagues for more knowledge and most importantly the eagerness to understand the insurance landscape and our business operations. I find that when IT professionals fully understand the operations, their knowledge grows exponentially and they are able to add more value and grow more careerwise.”
Integrating AI
AI integration is a central theme for these leaders. Mbusiswa highlights the insurer’s focus on rolling out more customer-centric innovations powered by AI, improving operational efficiency, agility, and security.
Gona outlines critical steps for seamless AI integration:
- Cloud investments must be constantly re-evaluated and need to be fit for purpose. A multi-cloud and hybrid model will be among the considerations.
- API-driven models will become key focus in connecting disparate systems and reducing the moving pieces and complexity layers between systems.
- Adopting a unified data management strategy will ensure that data from different sources is accessible, consistent and that the integrity is maintained.
- Cybersecurity initiatives will be consolidated and work under a common framework and umbrella driving the effectiveness of these.
“We are also modernising our productivity solutions (Microsoft Office), upgrading our core IT infrastructure to be more modern to support the new data and resource heavy solutions we aim to implement. There is also a big drive to review our legacy systems to ascertain their relevance and ease of integration with more modern solutions,” Nkosenhle adds.
Adapting to business needs and emerging tech
As businesses face rapid change, IT strategies must remain agile. Gona stresses that stakeholder involvement is key, as business objectives can shift quickly. “Customer-centricity must be at the heart of IT solutions, and cybersecurity will continue to be a top priority,” he says.
Mbusiswa reflects on the modernisation efforts at Old Mutual iWYZE over the past two years, including a cloud migration that has enabled the company to leverage emerging technologies. “Driving operational efficiencies with AI is a key focus for us,” he notes. Looking ahead, AI will be the biggest enabler in supporting the company’s digital transformation and driving business success in 2025.
