Telstra appoints new CIO

By Ry Crozier on Oct 11, 2010 3:01 PM
Filed under Telco/ISP

Former Westpac CIO returns to Australia.

Telstra has appointed former Westpac and Seek.com.au chief information officer Patrick Eltridge as its new CIO, according to an internal memo.

Eltridge was due to step into the new role on November 22, 2010.

He replaced John McInerney who quit the CIO post at Telstra in late June. Executive director of IT infrastructure and services Ashley Lazaro had been acting in the role.

Eltridge is currently working as the head of strategy, group technology and operations at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore.

But he was best known for previous CIO roles, including four years each in Westpac business and consumer banking, and with online job board Seek.

"Patrick is ideally suited for Telstra's CIO role as his wide experience in the banking sector includes managing significant system changes, performing in a global architectural role and operating in a customer facing business unit," Telstra's chief operations officer Michael Rocca said in an internal memo sighted by iTnews.

"Patrick's deep knowledge and support of a customer led business with a particular focus on online customer experiences and workforce productivity will add significant value to the position."

Rocca said Telstra's IT team would "continue to drive the agenda of our customer-centric transition - building out our online capability, giving our front of house business units the tools they require to serve our customers and supporting our company wide efforts to improve our productivity.

"Patrick will lead the IT team to deliver on this significant program of work," Rocca said.

Telstra recently kicked off a three-year restructure of its business called Project New - said to be the most comprehensive restructure undertaken since the company was privatised.

It aimed to simplify Telstra's internal business processes and improve to the way it approached - and delivered - customer service, with a view to cutting underlying fixed costs and becoming more competitive.

It followed a five-year, $11.9 billion IT transformation project completed late last year under the guidance of previous CIO John McInerney.

4 comments in this discussion

"I used to work closely with Patrick at Seek (which had an IT team of 35). On the plus side he is a nice guy who is very smart, strategic and politically astute. On the minus side he can be an ..."

By DaveArneson

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Comments: 4

walteradamson Oct 11, 2010 5:32 PM	He's obviously a smart man and should be an asset for Telstra. Philosophically though I'm not sure that a banking CIO would aid a "single customer view" initiative as the banks are all woefully unable to deliver it themselves, particularly Westpac. Another note: While it's true that Telstra just completed it's "$11.9 billion transformation project" it's a project which the AFR's Chanticleer 2 days ago described as an "abject failure" (Weekend AFR Oct 9/10). Having last week spent 3 hours on the phone with 7 local Telstra contact centre agents and 3 in the Philippines none of whom could see all the information about me which had to be resolved I can empathize with Chanticleer's view. More amazingly, not one of these people could provide an answer to my question "well who is a person who can see all my information to resolve this problem (of double billing)?. They were all literally speechless in response to this question. You just wish you had a recorder running for the whole saga, but then you'd rather just actually get the issue solved than spend more time on lampooning them...
BrettWinterford Oct 12, 2010 7:34 AM	@walteradamson - agreed, I won't be calling it 'finished' until all info about my business with Telstra is available from one call centre agent.
dubious Oct 13, 2010 1:40 PM	Or... you could do what I did over 5 years ago (and have never regretted for a minute even after having to pay over $1k to wind everything up) VOTE WITH YOUR FEET!
DaveArneson Apr 5, 2011 1:20 PM	I used to work closely with Patrick at Seek (which had an IT team of 35). On the plus side he is a nice guy who is very smart, strategic and politically astute. On the minus side he can be an irrelevant academic who does not provide any leadership to his team. He will probably support the ideas of good people who report to him but he won’t resolve any of the major issues Telstra has with IT outsourcing and infrastructure. You can expect the infighting, backstabbing and authoritarian bullying of his managers to get worse under his leadership because he won’t recognise it or do anything about it. I am astonished that he got the gig.