CIO 100: AsureQuality

ASUREQUALITY IS A commercial company owned by the New Zealand government. It provides food safety and biosecurity services to the food and primary production sectors worldwide.

The company has around 1700 people based at more than 140 locations throughout Australasia, Singapore, Middle East and China. AsureQuality experts work with customers in more than 40 countries to assure the safety and quality of food being produced for millions of people.

A focus of the organisation is moving its systems into a “cloud-first, mobile-first world”. Last year, one of its major projects was moving AsureQuality’s systems into the cloud.

This allowed the 30-member ICT team to focus on activities that add value, and easily deploy applications globally.

AsureQuality CIO Darren Wilson says among the significant projects he and his team have recently completed are a new Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and a refreshed CRM system.

In upcoming months, the IT team is scheduled to work on a job management and scheduling system, data analytics, an assurance portal and knowledge management. Wilson says he and his team will also continue to enhance the new LIMS and integrate instrumentation.

AsureQuality will also have significant investments in business intelligence and analytics, mobile technologies, cloud services, application modernisation and content management, he says.

It has recently forged a strategic alliance with Australian product authenticity, protection and traceability technology firm, Authenticateit. By downloading the Authenticateit app and scanning the code on product packaging with a mobile device, AsureQuality customers can access the item’s real-time GPS track and trace function. The app checks product authenticity at both port of entry and point of sale.

AsureQuality InSight verifies the information on food safety and quality.