The changes complement the appointment of Phil Neutze, who joined Datacom in March as Group CFO.

“In addition to the leadership changes, we are introducing strategic roles to our in-market leadership teams on both sides of the Tasman,” Davidson said.

These roles include customer strategy and consulting, commercial service improvement and enablement and proposition development and would play a key role in leading a “refreshed” Datacom.

With AI adoption globally surpassing expectations, Davidson said the group’s focus for the coming year would be to not only continue implementing AI into its own operations, but to take a leadership role in identifying opportunities and potential pain points when it comes to effective implementation of AI across New Zealand and Australia, including cyber security, data storage and governance.

“We know there is huge opportunity around AI – for our business, our customers, and the economy,” he said.

“More than a decade ago we made a strategic decision to invest significantly in data centre facilities and today our four New Zaland-based data centres, which operate on renewable energy, are well placed to cater for the surge in AI data requirements.

“When it comes to AI adoption, ensuring we get it right is critical, as is upskilling the workforce so that we can bring our people and our customers along on the journey.”

Davidson said the group was well down the path of implementing and exploring AI and identifying use cases to enhance business operations and processes, including in its finance division, cyber division, SaaS products and customer delivery teams.

“In our payroll business, Datapay, we’re using AI and machine learning for anomaly detection to improve payroll compliance and leave calculations and reduce the impact of common payroll errors,” he said.

“We recently launched a new payroll assistant which helps trained payroll professionals do their jobs efficiently by providing safe, intelligent access to the full body of payroll regulations.”

More than 20 pilots and proofs of concept were in place across the business, some internal, some external, but all designed to enhance user experience, drive efficiencies and optimise operations.