CIO 100: Mighty River Power

MIGHTY RIVER POWER is one of New Zealand’s leading electricity companies, selling electricity through multiple channels and consumer brands. These include f lagship brand Mercury Energy, as well as GLOBUG (pre-pay) and Bosco Connect (for apartments).

Mighty River Power also owns New Zealand’s second largest metering business, Metrix, and this year purchased a leading solar business to introduce a solar offering to its customers.

The company operates nine hydro stations on the Waikato River and five geothermal power stations in the Central North Island.

Mighty River Power has a centralised ICT department, led by Allan Lightbourne.

Lightbourne says this year the ICT team is focused on progressing a number of large initiatives and developing further capability in the information security and information management space.

He says key technology projects will centre on customer experience, information security, digital transformation, asset management and cloud services.

“We will continue to leverage cloud technologies for positive business outcomes,” says Lightbourne.

These are all in support of the goal to become a “truly customer centric organisation, with digital at its heart”, as described by Mighty River Power CEO Fraser Whineray.

Lightbourne says the biggest benefit for the business delivered by the ICT team in the past year was their work on improving customer experiences.

In addition to customer experience, Lightbourne says other initiatives that will drive ICT investments this year are business intelligence and analytics, and security and risk management technologies.

He sees the opportunities of using data from various systems to improve services and interact with customers in a different way.