How Intuition CIO Kevin Sweeney juggles IT stability and need for change

With cloud technology adoption accelerating in the wake of the pandemic, the ability to balance IT and business continuity with digital transformation is a top concern for all CIOs, no matter what industry they are in.

This is something that Kevin Sweeney — currently CIO at Dublin-based Intuition, a provider of e-learning and knowledge applications — knows well from 35 years in IT and from serving as CIO across various industries as diverse as automobile manufacturing, oil and gas, and financial services.

The role of CIO generally involves a type of juggling act between keeping a company’s applications and IT processes up and running smoothly —so they can, in turn, ensure the business runs similarly — and switching things up, adopting new technology and optimizing systems for an organisation’s evolving business needs.

“You’re constantly trying to balance those two together,” Sweeney says. “Because you know you’re going to change — you’re constantly going to change — but you have to ensure reliability as well. “

Crisis sparks technology adoption

This can create some tension within an organization, and sometimes it takes a crisis for a CIO to get employees to embrace the technology available to make doing their jobs and achieving business goals more efficient, Sweeney notes.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and Intuition’s staff was sent home to work, Sweeney says, most of them already had registered for Microsoft Teams, which the company uses internally as its cloud-based collaboration and communication tool.