This enterprise technology event was the first of its kind congress that discussed the changing roles of the CXO and how CIOs have to rise out of technology roles and into executive responsibilities.

The session that wrapped up promptly in three hours, gave a chance to “talk the talk” with key stakeholders, C-suite members, and executives in large-scale organizations. From what a CIO has to say, to the view a CISO has and where a CFO or COO stands, the event had something in store for everyone, including technology vendors.

The aim was to kick start the year with an event that actually assists in developing a stronger business foundation by the knowledge sharing made available to the ultimate holistic understanding of the business principles that drive enterprises.

In attendance were top CIOs, CISOs, CFOs and CXOs from cross industry verticals including FSI, Manufacturing, FMCG, Pharma and Textile. Along with this, technology vendors including Lenovo, Oracle, IBM, Cisco, Hitachi, and local players including RapidCompute, Trillium Information Security Systems, ArcPoint, PTCL, Wavetec attended the event.

Technology Sessions

In addition to two Case Files by those representing the ‘new-age’ designations in large corporations, Mr. Atyab Tahir (Head of Digital, HBL) and Mr. Faizan Laghari (Chief Disruption Officer, TCS), four back-to-back sessions of about 20 minutes each were carried out.

Moderated by Zaeem Arshad from Rapidcompute, the first to kick off was the CIO Tablet that included Yousuf Nasir (CIO HBFCL), Khawaja Tanveer (CIO Engro Corp) and the two case files speakers who joined in.

The next segment; CSO Tablet, was moderated by Mahir Mohsin Sheikh, CEO Trillium – where the conversation was led by Faiq Sadiq (Head of Internal Audit HBL), Hussein Hasanali Haji (CISO Bank Al Habib) and Syed Fahd Azam (CISO Meezan Bank).

The final session was a CXO Tablet, where a variety of industry verticals and C-suite members including those from finance, operations, administration and operations sat down to discuss the role of the C-suite and CXOs of the modern enterprise. Sohaib Irfan, Lenovo, moderated this session.

The closing note was delivered by senior thought leaders; Senior Vice Chairman P@SHA & CEO TPS Mr. Shahzad Shahid, Kashif ul Haque (CGM Cisco Pakistan), Asim Khusro (MD Oracle Pakistan) and Shariq Rehman (Software Head – IBM Pakistan), who spoke of the evolving, and very promising technology enterprise landscape for Pakistan.

The sessions also explored how organizations are managing digital disruption or what new designations that are quickly evolving and their roles to play, and ended with a networking dinner for all attendees.

The reason, as he explains, is simple. “We cannot increase export of goods as significantly as we can for services. For example, cotton exports can be enhanced by around eight per cent but exports of services can grow substantially by up to 40 per cent.”

InfoTech is one of the leading IT Systems Integrator in the country, and its CEO, Naseer Akhtar believes that Information Technology could, to a great extent help alleviate the problems of joblessness, low GDP rates, and the general economic afflictions that Pakistan faces. “We need to set a realistic IT export target?of approximately $5 billion by 2015. This could then make up nearly a quarter of Pakistan’s exports.”

Naseer Akhtar is adamant on seeing an increase of exports from the Services Sector, persisting that it is one field that is capable of bringing to Pakistan a jump up on the growth curve.? However, there are a number of factors that need to be addressed before we can actually benefit from exporting services.

“Although the industry is growing, the preset government policies and goals are not in place nor the kind of initial investment required, is currently available”, explains Naseer Akhtar. He adds further that, “there is no viable plan in place to achieve this growth, even though the industry has the capability to do so. The whole industry needs to work in sync towards IT-specific goals for the country in order to increase the country’s GDP. Everyone realizes that we have the potential and raw materials required all we lack is a proper plan to materialize these into tangible results.”

The government’s role in the entire process of making the local IT Industry a viable recourse for rescuing the country from its economic woes is crucial. Naseer Akhtar has been quite vehement in urging a greater degree of cooperation between the government and the policy-makers in Pakistan since a mutual approach will only manage to bring about a concrete change in this industry. He illustrated this point by saying that the country’s finance minister should try and pressurize the relevant officials so that they may help increase the amount of investment needed. “Investment should be the focus of the government. We have sufficient graduates coming out of universities but we must also begin to invest in their training so that we can eventually ensure that they become more productive. Because the government is not spending as much on the IT sector, it is also unfortunately depriving the industry of an opportunity to grow,” he finished. And this is why InfoTech and other similar companies are committed to the cause of taking up projects that grow the local IT Industry’s scope and outreach both internationally and at home.

“We have seen that even the less developed African countries, where we operate today; have an average spending of approximately $100 million on the IT sector. Pakistani authorities are unaware of the huge potential of increasing tax revenues by implementing smarter, more transparent automated system. By not investing us such projects, they consequently ignore the IT industry, to their own disadvantage.”

At present, Infotech is involved in small-scale projects in Africa, Middle East and South & Central Asia. These include various Tax Automation Projects whereby the tax bases of the countries above will be facilitated with a transformation from a manual to an automated tax processing system since it slashes their processing costs drastically. Infotech hopes to work on similar projects for the Pakistani government.

Naseer Akhtar proudly exemplifies World Bank’s support for InfoTech’s projects, as it is often the financier. “Pakistan had $150 million allocated during the last decade by the World Bank to improve its tax system. Sadly though, the funds were not utilized, in fact, the government only used a fraction of the allocated amount,” Naseer Akhtar stated. “For now, all that we need are a few million dollars that could be spent on Automation. This will help to make the system more efficient, as well as give the local industry the required experience and track record to market similar services globally” explains Naseer Akhtar.

On this note, Naseer Akhtar reinstated his vision for the IT Industry of Pakistan indicating that, “a substantial amount of spending could effectively revamp the technology side of the tax system and would also lead to creating job opportunities for thousands of people from the IT industry and enable them to accumulate functional knowledge that is exportable. Pakistan should aim to be a model of success for other developing countries” he concludes.