Haren Samarasekera Head of Greenfield, Commercial, at Amazon Web Services (AWS) New Zealand.
Haren Samarasekera Head of Greenfield, Commercial, at Amazon Web Services (AWS) New Zealand.
Having battled through multiple recessions, New Zealand companies need to be prepared for what looks like a shallow economic recovery over the next few years.
That means businesses will need to create growth opportunities and be bold in their investment strategies, rather than rely on broader economic conditions tosupport them. Companies that have invested wisely during the tough economic times will be better positioned for growth when the economy improves, says Haren Samarasekera, head of greenfield, commercial at Amazon Web Services (AWS) New Zealand, sponsor of the Deloitte Top 200 Company of the Year award.
“These companies invest in scalable infrastructure that allows them to scale up and down to meet different economic conditions and customer demand, data analytics and real-time insights to get a really good understanding of their business and customers, and they invest in enhancing customer experience, which help them to be more agile, innovative and make better decisions as the economy grows.
“Companies that outperform their peers tend to differentiate through the strategic use of technology, a focus on long-term innovation and growth, and focus on the customer experience.”
This year’s finalists for the Deloitte Top 200 Company of the Year award are Fonterra, Port of Auckland and Turner Automotive.
All three have achieved impressive results over the past year, with Fonterra and Port of Auckland demonstrating much improved operational and financial performance after years of underperformance. Meanwhile, Turners has shown an ability to innovate and grow market share despite challenging economic conditions.
Samarasekera says balancing short-term business needs with long-term strategies is a critical challenge for companies.
“We’ve seen companies that succeed at this embrace a culture of innovation while leveraging technology and data.
“For example, cloud technology can enable flexibility with scalability, which supports short-term needs by allowing businesses to rapidly scale up to meet sudden increases of customer demand.”
The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) is creating both opportunities and threats that business leaders must get in front of.
Most businesses recognise that maintaining a human touch is incredibly important when considering this technology.
They also recognise that with proper guardrails in place, generative AI can unlock new opportunities and speed up, scale, or otherwise improve existing business cases.
Samarasekera says there are some key things companies should be looking at to benefit from AI.
“Find use cases that offer clear benefits to your business — there are a lot of case studies that can inspire this — ensure you have the right talent, and then choose the right large language models (LLMs) and foundation models (FMs) to build generative AI applications that deliver new customer and employee experiences.
“At the core of this is building a robust data strategy that powers AI initiatives in the business.”
When it comes to cyber security companies can minimize risk by adopting a “zero trust” security model, he said.
“This approach emphasizes strict identity verification, continuous monitoring, and least-privilege access to protect data, applications, and networks in the cloud.”
The Deloitte Top 200 Awards were established in 1990 and are held annually to recognise and applaud outstanding individual and management team performances among New Zealand’s largest companies and trading organisations.
All the Deloitte Top 200 winners will be revealed at a gala event on December 5. The event will be live-streamed from 7pm on the NZ Herald website.
Last year’s winner of the Company of the Year award was Xero.
Company of the Year finalists - Sponsored by Amazon Web Services
Fonterra. Photo / Supplied
Port of Auckland. Photo / Michael Craig
Tuners Automotive Group. Photo / Supplied
- This was produced in partnership with the Deloitte Top 200 Awards and sponsors
