iOCO
iOCO AND THE SECRET OF PARTNERSHIPS
Alex Pryor explains her partnership philosophy : “ I suppose it ' s honesty and communication . Be honest about what you ' re hoping to get out of it on both sides , communicate and keep the communication open . You need to make sure you are building that relationship and that doesn ' t just mean that you ' re doing the work for them . It means that they ' re also doing the work for you . So it ' s about being committed to that shared vision and acting on it , making progress on it and confirming and meeting milestones on both sides . Then you ' re going to have a great partnership .”
considers what technology it has at its disposal that can help . Once the solution is in place , it ’ s about encouraging a change of mindset and , crucially , fostering a culture of innovation .
Pryor loves data , but she ’ s the first to admit that , in the real world at least , it ’ s “ not sexy ”, focusing heavily as the industry rightly does on data security and compliance . iOCO helps companies follow the Protection of Personal Information Act ( POPIA ) regulations , the South African version of the EU ’ s GDPR . “ If I speak to a 20-year-old , they say ‘ I want to be a data scientist ’ and I say ‘ great , let ’ s go into data governance ’. But it ’ s an area that ’ s incredibly important .”
Industry 4.0 Like many working at the cutting edge of enterprise technology , Pryor is anticipating the fourth industrial revolution with a mixture of gleeful wonder and human caution . The first part is self-explanatory . The caution is about people and their attitudes to a digital future that might take their job . She cites call centres , which are set to be decimated by chatbots , as an example , before moving on to shop checkouts .
“ What I always think about is that every industrial revolution we ’ ve had to date has ultimately resulted in more jobs being created . It ’ s just that the jobs are different
318 September 2021