Australian CIOs dish dirt on vendor engagement

Chief Information Officers at ANZ, CBA and the Greater Building Society have called on tech vendors to ditch pre-sales brochures and bring their engineers to pitch meetings instead.

Speaking at an Irish trade mission breakfast in Sydney yesterday, ANZ Banking Group CIO Anne Weatherston said IT vendors looking to work with her should "be honest and understand what my objectives are."

"You also expect them to have the right resources and to give us priority over those resources," she said.

Greater Building Society CIO Bruce White said vendors should be prepared to "bring their A-team" if they want to win business.

"Being a smaller part of the financial services sector, some of the vendors tend to leave their best people looking after their larger accounts," White said.

"What I'd like to see them do is bring more of their technical expertise with them when they come and talk to us and for them to understand what part of the market we're in.

"Bring your technical expertise instead of your pre-sales brochures."

CBA's executive general manager David Curran echoed calls by the panel for vendors to understand CBA's business drivers before trying to meet with him.

"There's nothing worse as a buyer of a service for someone to phone us with a solution looking for a problem," Curran said.

"But if someone understands your problem and what you're trying to solve and they have the expertise, then there's nothing better than getting a phone call [from them]."