Business Technology Leadership Roles in SMEs

Join us for a panel discussion where we explore the 4 strategic business technology leadership roles in SMEs.

This event will expand on the blog article why every mid-sized business needs at least 4 strategic IT leaders (http://www.xuviate.com/blog/2015/12/15/a-mid-sized-business-needs-least-4-strategic-leaders/) written by Mark Geschke, CEO of the digital transformation company Xuviate (http://www.xuviate.com).

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The panel will be made up of seasoned business IT leaders (one for each of the 4 Value Propositions of IT) who will share their experiences and answer questions relating to their roles (see short bio's at the end).

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The idea is to not only better define the 4 Value Propositions of IT but to also understand why different leaders are needed and, perhaps more importantly, why all business IT leaders have to work together to make IT part of the fabric of the future business.

Join us afterwards for some beers and networking with like-minded business technology leaders. Be sure to invite anybody you believe might benefit or otherwise add value to the group! Attendance is free of charge.

Short Bio of the 4 Panellists

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Eric (https://za.linkedin.com/in/ericedelstein) has co-founded many of South Africa's largest Internet marketing & product companies such as global search marketing agency Click2Customers (http://www.clicks2customers.com) (& other companies in the holding group incuBeta (http://www.incubeta.com)) & evly.com (http://www.evly.com/)

He has particular strength in performance marketing, conversion optimisation, product design and development, scaling startup's & raising funding.

Making use of technology to transform business models is what he does best (Value Proposition 4 of IT).

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James (https://za.linkedin.com/in/jamiegodwin) is an experienced engineer with over 20 years of experience in web development, software development, IT management and telecommunications.

He has extensive knowledge of the fin-tech industry as the founder and CTO of two mobile wallet companies. At Star210, he built a switching solution to enable secure online payments via debit cards. The company built the first USSD based mobile wallet which serviced over 7 million customers to buy and sell airtime. In order to top up wallets, James also created the first online debit order processing service that was then adopted by SMEs to manage their debit orders.

Differentiating within a market using technology is his game (Value Proposition 3 of IT).

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Ruhan (https://za.linkedin.com/in/ruhanneethling) has more than 20 years of experience in various positions. He enjoys driving change and resolving difficult problems, relating not only to the financial environment but business operations in general. He has special affinity for working with data, from investigation and discovery through to visualisation and presentation.

Previous roles include, Financial Director of Space Age Technologies (http://spaceage.co.za/), Financial Controller Coca-Cola Amatil Papua New Guinea.

Automating and optimising business processes using technology is his value add (Value Proposition 2 of IT).

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Glenn (https://za.linkedin.com/in/glennhurlow) has recently joined UCT as a Senior Manager in the Systems Division of ICTS.

For the last 6 years he has been heading up IT for Mazars Southern Africa (http://www.mazars.co.za/). In this role he has been devising and implementing IT strategy for the business and managed all operational aspects of their business technology systems.

He makes the IT platform hum so others can do their magic (Value Proposition 1 of IT).

Directions:

For those of you who don't know where Mazars is exactly, you can find a more detailed map here (https://goo.gl/maps/kQ7izU38ist).

Parking is available at the Canal Walk Woolworth entrance. To get to Mazars walk through the mall, then over the bridge and Mazars will be next to the Crystal Towers hotel. Otherwise park at the Woolworth Food over the road from Mazars.

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