The extent Automic’s group CIO goes to reconcile datahttps://lnkd.in/gHYkTUJr is the largest listed registry provider in Australia, with an integrated cloud-native platform that manages listed registry, funds, employee share plans, and investor analytics. In addition to its technology solution, it has a range of professional services that covers company secretaries, investor and media relations, employees, environment, and social governance, among others.
On the IT front, group CIO Marcelo Dantas and his team look after technology across the entire business, which includes product engineering, service, security and infrastructure. So by virtue of such complexity, it’s essential to align with like-minded and capable partners. But hard lessons were learned early on to not only seek out the right ones, but understand that partners are needed in the first place.
“I’ve been almost 23 years in the IT industry across many domains,” Dantas says. “In the early days when I had a technology leadership role, I was in an environment where we were constrained by budget and I wanted to create a team with specialized skillsets. But investors were adamant you could build a tech company with just engineers. My vision then, though, was having roles such as QAs or business analysts, so I ended up taking over those roles myself because I wanted my developers to have unlimited runway to develop so we could deliver to the business. But that created problems because I was using all my personal time. Yet from the investor standpoint, there was no problem; he’s delivering. When I reflect on it, I should’ve had some level of controlled failure; let things fall off the tracks a bit to prove there’s value bringing in additional skills.”
Today, the approach is to find partners that are, on one hand, aligned with the company and bring a similar level of care to source code or data, and on the other, a technological capability and cultural fit. “I always say I wouldn’t select a partner if I wouldn’t recruit him as a full time employee,” he says. “So they’d go through a similar process to make sure they can work with us and thrive in our environment. My preference is always to have them work embedded in our ecosystem and not to outsource the solution to them.”
Keeping up with the technology base is one of the biggest challenges facing a modern day CIO, he says, due to the acceleration of transformative tech like gen AI, so continuously modernizing to remain not just relevant but competitive is vital. “If you don’t, you get trouble recruiting people because young talent won’t work with furniture that isn’t exciting,” he says. Another issue is talent retention. “There are lots of companies competing for the same talent in Australia, so how do you stand out?” he adds. “It’s not always about the money. If you offer more to young people but don’t give an environment where they’ll thrive, it’s likely they
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