TowerXchange: Congratulations on your recent appointment as Chief Information Officer at Indara! Could you tell us about your responsibilities and priorities in the new role?
Tanya Whiteing, CIO, Indara: In my role at Indara is Chief Information Officer, I will be heading up the technology function for the organisation. I've been in the role since the beginning of July, and I am looking forward to getting to know the company in a greater detail. As to the key priorities, they are primarily focused around streamlining our current technology stack, due to recent mergers and acquisitions. The intent is to create a unified approach to our technology strategy. In parallel, we are targeting specific opportunities in our deployment, operations and property management functions. Specific areas that we will target in terms of technology, is digital twins deployment, leveraging Salesforce as a broader platform and the use of predictive data analytics. Together these will assist us with our go-to- market strategy improving the experience for our customers, landlords and broader communities.
TowerXchange: How has your prior experience prepared you for this role and the challenges ahead?
Tanya Whiteing, CIO, Indara: My career can be divided into two halves with the first being in consulting and secondly in IT corporate. During my consulting career I have gained considerable experience with transformation programmes across multiple industries leveraging technology. During my IT corporate career, I have been focused on increasing the maturity of IT teams with the goal of achieving high performance in low cost environments. Balancing my experience in leading transformation programs and understanding how IT functions can enable organisations is what I am hoping to bring to Indara in terms of value.
TowerXchange: You’ve outlined some of Indara’s current priorities in terms of digital transformation, could you tell us a little more about specific challenges and projects you will be focusing on in the next year?
Tanya Whiteing, CIO, Indara: As mentioned earlier we will be targeting technology opportunities in our deployment, operations and property management. The key objective is to streamline the processes that integrate these functions and also leverage the wealth of data to enable our forecasting process via predictive analytics. A number of these initiatives have commenced prior to my joining Indara for example the roll out of digital twins to our tower structures. As we are rolling out the digital twins, we are also reviewing how we can best utilize the data produced and integrate these with our existing applications. The use cases in terms of advantages for our business are huge and the challenge is the speed in which we can enable these opportunities.
TowerXchange: In the longer term, how do you see this digital transformation benefiting your company?
Tanya Whiteing, CIO, Indara: Digital transformation will continue to drive both how we work internally as an organization and how we provide services to our customers. As the number of tower infrastructure scales, we will need to leverage technology to manage our internal overheads by automating processes where appropriate. We will also be improving decision making by linking data from digital twins and embedding emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning in our ‘day to day’ operations. Our goal is to retain the agility in our business through digital technology without significantly increasing the number of employees.
TowerXchange: You mentioned that you want to keep the number of employees working for the company and in this particular function, fairly stable. What sort of skills do you need to develop in the team to be able to go through this transformation?
Tanya Whiteing, CIO, Indara: From my standpoint it is not just about skill but also will. Will is about having people who want to continue to learn because that's one thing that we know about technology, it doesn't stand still. Learning is not just about technical capability but also about how we can work differently and even creatively. A team that can harness this will be successful.
In terms of technical skills, we will be developing capability in the more emerging digital technologies as previously discussed. However, it is critical that we will also retain skills in the technology that I would consider as back end, for example ERP. All technology must work together and therefore the technical skills within the team must be representative of this.
TowerXchange: It sounds like digital transformation isn't just about technology, but also about managing people, managing change. How are you planning to work with people in the organisation, both in your team and also in another functions?
Tanya Whiteing, CIO, Indara: I think that’s very simple. It's about being collaborative. It’s not the IT function solely driving digital transformation for the organization but the entire organization being on the digital journey. The IT function plays an integral role in being able to work well across the broader business. Strong collaboration is driven by having a clear purpose. If you look at what Indara does within the telecommunication industry, it is about connectivity. And connectivity is all about people. We are privileged that what we do as an organisation benefits broader communities.
From TowerXchange Who’s Who in Asia Pacific guide
Indara: Towerco formed from the merger of Australia Tower Network (ATN) and Axicom. Indara owns 4,383 towers and is owned by Singtel (30%) and AustralianSuper (70%). ATN was the tower carve out of Optus, while Axicom was the former-largest independent towerco in Australia. Indara have since acquired the street furniture businesses of HUB and ENE.HUB.
Indara and other leading wireless infrastructure companies in the APAC region will be speaking at the 10th annual TowerXchange Meetup Asia on 28-29 November 2023 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
