Apart from the lush landscapes and natural beauty that draw thousands of tourists, New Zealand has gained global recognition for clean governance. The country is ranked No. 1 in the world for ease of doing business and transparency —in part because of the government’s readiness to adopt new technologies and digitalization. This achievement, however, was not reached overnight.
Operating for more than 50 years, locally owned, IT-based service provider Datacom has played a huge part in the New Zealand government’s journey to digitalize processes and records in a citizen-centric manner.
“New Zealand, as a country, is very innovative. It embraces new technology and we generally lead in the world when we try new things,” Datacom New Zealand Managing Director Vernon Kay said.
With a local workforce that has grown to almost 3,000 and a global workforce of more than 6,000, Datacom collaborates closely with both the private sector and government, with the former taking up around half of the workload on its private cloud service, which is backed by a network of highly secure, reliable tier-four data centers.
“We build solutions. One of the most successful parts of our business has been our payroll system. Today, one out of every seven people in New Zealand gets their salary through a Datacom system,” said Kay, who oversaw the rollout of that same payroll system in Australia.
Datacom has seen sharp growth in its professional services business because of the continuing trend of digitalization across the country.
“We probably have close to 1,000 people assigned to that side of the business,” Kay said.
Backed by its success in helping New Zealand’s government agencies, Datacom is hoping to expand further in the region and in Southeast Asia, particularly in Malaysia and the Philippines, where it already has offices.
“Our international markets are really important to us. We have a strong presence in Australia and New Zealand, and we are growing our markets in Asia, Europe and the Americas,” Kay said.
