Technology leaders at the first Johannesburg CIO Summit of the year said speed has become the critical differentiator in the AI era, as organisations work to build seamlessly connected digital enterprises.
A panel discussion at the summit held on 12 February featuring 2025 CIO Awards winner and Nutun group CTIO Hans Zachar, 2023 CIO of the Year and Standard Bank Group CIO Jörg Fischer, and outgoing MTN Group CIO Nikos Angelopoulos examined how enterprises are accelerating integration, decision making and customer engagement through AI.
The session, titled Intelligence in motion: Building a seamlessly connected digital enterprise, focused on the operational and strategic shifts required to enable intelligence to move across organisations without friction.
Hans said connecting organisational systems is not new, but AI has fundamentally changed the speed equation.
“We’ve been connecting people through systems, but when you work through people there’s an email and there’s a lag. We’re seeing API shorten that lag,” he explained. He further explained that AI adds judgement, speed and integration capabilities that compensate for imperfect APIs.
“When you take an organisation of a thousand integration points and start putting in the APIs and integration, it shortens the time between any particular task, enabling organisations to consider new business models and instantaneous product delivery,” Hans said.
Imagination limits intelligence flow
Nikos took a different approach, identifying organisational mindset as the primary constraint. “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.
He pointed to conversational engagement in local languages as an example of new capability enabled by AI. As human beings, we have spoken for the last few thousand years. If you send a message in a particular place of the world you get a certain reaction. If you talk in person in Nigeria, you get a completely different level of interaction and engagement. Suddenly you can do it when there was no way you could do it before."
Breaking down internal barriers requires collaboration, he said. "The biggest constraint is not governance or leaders, it’s actually our own imagination,” he reasserted.
Strategy alignment across the enterprise
Jörg outlined the alignment challenge within a large, geographically distributed organisation like Standard Bank. “At Standard Bank, alignment is crucial and we always ensure we are operating around common goals across all our business and service lines.
He also rejects the notion of a standalone IT strategy, stating that the IT strategy must work in alignment with the business strategy to drive customer value.
He predicts significant change in how customers interact with financial institutions as AI becomes more embedded in enterprises.
“I think that internet banking and online banking in years to come will not be a major channel for customers to deal with the bank. They will probably have their own chatbot which will tell the bank what they want.”
He does warn that this will require internal alignment to ensure the enterprise is truly connected. “It’s crucial that organisations work off the same information, data and systems to ensure they can provide the best customer value in a connected digital enterprise,” he further explained.
Governance and decision latency
The audience discussion focused on whether governance models can match the pace of technological capability.
Hans said organisations without an AI first engagement strategy would struggle to compete. “If you’re not a company with an AI first engagement strategy to your customer, and that customer expects the speed, efficiency and pricing of that service that AI provides, I don’t think you're going to be competitive.”
Jörg shared a perspective from a recent American AI discussion. “Someone said they would rather have a speed ticket than a parking ticket. I thought it’s a beautiful saying for the era we’re going into because we get held back by governance, risk and legal, even though these are still important,” he added.
Another audience member questioned the implications of prioritising speed: “What is the speed limit?” emphasising the importance of data protection and governance as enterprises are competing to scale AI and build connected enterprises.
Jörg responded by emphasising the importance of strong foundations. “This is also not about experimenting with many use cases. You have to think about the technology platform you're building and whether it has the right guardrails, risk processes and compliance built into it. Organisations should spend more time on building solid foundations rather than just chasing speed.”
Hans added that competitive markets will ultimately define acceptable speed. “The speed is market competitiveness so you can provide that customer experience, but the organisations who have data breaches or downtime won't win, as consumers have more choice than ever.”
Foundations for AI adoption
Responding to audience questions about implementation, Nikos emphasised structured experimentation and data quality.
“You have to try things, guided by a clear methodology: understand why you’re doing them, what you’re targeting and the value you aim to create. Equally important is the reliability of the service you provide, which depends on data, whether it is reliable, clean, accessible, and supported by a dependable API layer. In this context, traditional IT disciplines become critically important,” he said.
Hans rounded the discussion off by urging organisations and IT leaders facing disruption to acknowledge the scale of change and consider how they will respond responsibly while still delivering the best value for their customers.
Finally, Jörg stressed internal education as a priority. “The key advice I can offer is internal education. Everyone needs to be aligned on what AI means, what it does not mean, and what it means for the organisation. That shared understanding is essential, and it is something many organisations are still missing.”
