CHAMPION LINE UP: The winners of the CIO Awards 2009 flanking Ross O. Storey, CIO Asia Editor and FBM Asia Managing Editor (from left): Bruce Waterfield of CCBI, Tan Sor Hoon of the ICA; Storey; Wu Choy Peng of NOL; Rosina Howe-Teo of the LTA; and, Wong Oi Mei of ComfortDelGro.
SINGAPORE, 19 MARCH 2009 - The winners of the CIO Awards 2009 have been unveiled. Out of the five recipients, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) became a three-time winner, while the rest—Coca-Cola Bottling Indonesia, ComfortDelGro (taxi business) and Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) won for the first time.
Organised by CIO Asia magazine, the annual awards, in its ninth edition, recognises the top five organisations from the CIO 100 honourees that demonstrate outstanding vision and genius in implementing strategic IT to not just meet current business needs, but transform and create new paradigms for the future.
For this year’s judge’s panel, there are three: Puni Rajah, founder of the Governance Board, Waleed Hanafi, SVP and CIO of the Global Refund Group, and Vijay Sethi, professor of IT at the Nanyang business school, Nanyang Technological University.
Hat-trick
Singapore’s LTA, the government agency that handles transport developments in the island nation, joined compatriot organisation Singhealth and Hong Kong’s MTR as organisations that have won the awards three times.
LTA’s winning project, GIS@LTA, adopts geographic information system (GIS) technologies to build an enterprise-wide information structure for decision-making and information dissemination within LTA and other government agencies. The agency’s CIO is Rosina Howe-Teo, group director, innovation and infocomm technology.
Coca-Cola Bottling Indonesia (CCBI), the sole company not from Singapore, won for its ROAM (real-time on-line application for mobile users) project. ROAM is a sales automation application that can run the sales functions on the mobile phone. Bruce Waterfield, business services director, CCBI, travelled to Singapore from Jakarta to receive the award.
“Moving business out of the data centre and into the hands of the people doing the work is a great challenge at the best of times, and CCBI has done it in an environment not normally considered for high-tech projects. Combining the ubiquity of cellular with a clever application is noteworthy,” commented Hanafi.
Happy winners
ComfortDelGro (taxi business) impressed the judges with its integrated taxi management system (ITMS). Built on a J2EE enterprise architecture, ITMS communicates between wireless terminals in the organisation’s 15,000 taxis and backend system using GPRS/GSM network. Wong Oi Mei, vice-president, IT, is the organisation’s CIO.
“They have done a good job of making the transition from proprietary networking to GPRS, and enhanced the system beyond anything that was dreamed of when it was first launched. Booking a taxi in Singapore is one of the easiest experiences to be had,” said Hanafi on the ITMS.
Another Singapore government agency, Immigration & Checkpoints Authority’s (ICA) e-Visitor programme is created to ensure a hassle-free experience for visitors. The platform allows foreigners to apply online for a wide range of immigration facilities such as extension of stay and visa application. ICA’s CIO is Tan Sor Hoon.
“This is a change management story, with long held practices being challenged to allow better service to customers. What's not to like?” commented Hanafi.
The final winner is Singapore-based global container shipping, terminals and logistics organisation Neptune Orient Lines (NOL). Collecting the award was Wu Choy Peng, group CIO of NOL. NOL’s project is called REMODEL, which stands for replacement and modernisation of legacy systems. REMODEL integrates six processing platforms across different operating systems and more than 250 applications in the organisation’s worldwide operations.
