Peter Finch leaves CIO post at Gen-i

'CIO in waiting' looking for new challenge following restructuring at Telecom

Peter Finch has left his CIO role at Gen-i after 10 years after a restructuring of its parent company Telecom.

“I am now a CIO in waiting,” says Finch, whose role was disestablished after Telecom established Chorus as a separate company, and rationalised and centralised many of its functions.

Finch has worked with Gen-i for 10 years, and was CIO for the past three years. His previous roles included head of ICT solutions at Gen-i and GM information systems at Telecom.

He says a key function of the CIO is to be an enabler to the business, more so as technology allows more capabilities and more businesses go online and see shifts in the way consumers acquire products and services.

“There is more onus for the CIO to provide reliable technology and provide competitive advantage through technology,” he says.

Looking back on his years as CIO at Gen-i, he says one of the most satisfying aspects of his role was “being able to deliver capabilities and services” that caused Gen-i to win business for their customers, and having his team work with customers.

Finch was a finalist in the CIOof the Year in 2010. “Because Gen-i’s business is all about delivering ICT, the role of CIO takes on a very unique aspect,” he said during the awards ceremony at the CIO Summit “We are a case study for the products and services we take to our client base, which spans 3000 public and private sector organisations in New Zealand and Australia.”

The CIO role at Gen-i was disestablished in June 2011 but Finch stayed on until the end of the year working through his notice period on various projects, explains Carmela Salisbury, corporate communications manager at Gen-i.

She says Gen-i started a transformation programme in December 2009, which resulted in a review of the business. In mid-2011, a new structure was designed to move the company towards an integrated solutions and hosted services business model. This occurred as part of the wider Telecom group reorganisation to structurally separate Chorus and create it as a completely new listed company, and “to increase competitiveness through a leaner and more agile organisation,” she says.