For more than 100 years National Pharmacies has been caring for the wellbeing of Australians. Today its chief information officer, Ryan Klose, supports the IT needs of more than 300,000 members using 50 pharmacies and 20 optical stores spread across Australia.
What is an example of a recent IT project you have deployed using partners?
We recently implemented the Oracle identity management platform, working with our partner NEC. That was rolled out to support 300,000 members over about nine months and went well.
How do you ensure that projects run to plan when working with partners?
The biggest challenge we find is there is always a gap in knowledge between a product vendor and an integrator about the latest version, and typically that is the area where you get burned. So we put pressure back on Oracle to ensure that NEC had the right resources and support for the version they were implementing.
What do you see partners do that impresses you?
What we like is where they come in and leverage their existing experience in implementing that particular product, and come with a solution approach. There are integrators who are just engineers, who will do what you ask. And there are ones who are more experienced and will listen to what you say, and look to provide a solution. These are the people we prefer.
How do you determine if a new partner has this capability?
We look at recent projects or recent companies they have worked with. I need someone who is a little more solution-oriented, who can drive. And we will look to see where they have resources local to South Australia.
One of the challenges of implementing a brand new technology is the need to have confidence that we can continue post-project with what is being done. So we would like the majority of a brand new project to be done in the office.
A successful project these days is less about what is engineered than how it is engineered, with a way of working that is effective for both teams – people get to the point quickly, agree quickly and move forward quickly.
What do partners do that annoys you?
Change resources during the project. We invest our time in bringing these resources up to speed, then they change the resources. And often the costs aren’t reflected, or the time schedules aren’t covered. A lot of project blowouts can be the fault of the partner by doing this. We find it difficult to find partners with experience and expertise.
A lot of partners back the wrong technologies, or aren’t modernising to meet the needs of IT departments and find it very difficult to engage.
RESUME
- Dec 2013 – present GM of Technology and Innovation/CIO, National Pharmacies
- Jul 2012 – Dec 2013 Strategy & Governance Program, SA Police
- May 2009 – Dec 2013 CIO, Pernod Ricard
- Jan 2005 – May 2009 CIO, Australian Vintage Limited
- Jan 1999 – Jan 2005 Founder & CEO, Uptimark Consulting
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