Brett McDougall qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2003 but chose not to practise in the field, instead pivoting to technology strategy and governance the following year. Since then, he has held a series of senior roles in information technology, combining financial discipline with strategic and operational leadership in large, complex organisations.
Most recently, Brett served as Chief Information Officer at SPAR Southern Africa, a role he assumed in the wake of a failed ERP implementation and several governance challenges. Over the past two years, he has led the stabilisation of the SAP environment, secured Board approval to proceed with a full systems transformation, replatformed SPAR’s Value Added Services and Rewards, rebuilt the organisation’s data analytics capability, and restructured the technology function to deliver stronger outcomes at lower cost.
Prior to joining SPAR, Brett led the reorganisation of the Information Technology function at Massmart, integrating five disparate technology organisations into a unified capability. His work included re-architecting shared services to unlock R230 million in savings and initiating the development of digital capabilities to position the business for future growth.
DataIQ asked: “How do you see the role of the data leader evolving over the next 12-24 months?”
“Data leadership requires that we move rapidly from governing and controlling data, to using it to drive strategy. To achieve this, we need to understand the possibilities of AI and generative AI in our organisations – develop the Art of the Possible – but also build our organisation’s confidence by finding and championing use cases that quickly drive business value. This will require us to be both visionary and practical. We will need to understand technical capabilities but then make these available to our organisations in a language that it understands.
“Lastly, our initiatives will only be successful if we foster cross-functional collaboration and ownership to drive their implementation.”