The road to digitisation is filled with both challenges and opportunities, but it’s the people you have on your team that will ultimately determine your success.
Over the past two decades, Mario Tieppo has held six Chief Information Officer or equivalent roles, most recently at major Australian utilities such as AusNet, Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO), and SA Power Networks.
Now retired from executive life, Mr Tieppo focuses on helping essential service providers navigate the digital transformation, and sits on audit and risk committees across government, water, agriculture and technology.
He’s also joined the new Advisory Board at Nucleus 3 – an Australian consultancy and systems integrator that takes a bit a novel approach to digitisation.
“I started my own advisory business four years ago, and now I’m part of this recently established Advisory Board [too]. And what I do is impart my knowledge around [not just] technology strategy, but also delivery – which is where a lot of organisations actually fall over,” Mr Tieppo said.
“We always talk about the why, the what and the how, and I think most organisations have a reasonable handle on why they want to [digitise] and what they need to do – the [challenge] is the how. They often struggle in terms of delivery, and that’s where costly mistakes can be made.”
According to Mr Tieppo, this ‘how’ comes down to three things: the people, the innovation and the outcomes.
“[Many companies] don’t know where to start, and I’ve encountered large organisations where either the objectives aren’t clear, or lot of different executives have different ideas about what those objectives are,” he said.
“And one of the first things I try and do is get people aligned and on the same page about what those objectives are.”
A digital transformation is by no means easy, utilities have to grapple with escalating costs, cyber security risks, implementation challenges – all while trying to decipher the best solution for them in a market flooded with hundreds of different technologies.
However, Mr Tieppo said that perhaps one of the biggest challenges is finding people with the experience and talent to navigate this transformation.
“[For example], for a lot of councils and water authorities, besides the big tier ones, water is only one part of their responsibility as an organisation, and they have [to stretch] their budget across [these different responsibilities] – which [makes it difficult] to source the right person with talent and the knowledge [they need],” he said.
“It’s about investing in people, systems and innovation – and that’s why I think Nucleus 3 always focuses on those things.”
Three heads are better than one
When Nucleus 3 CEO, Louis Limnios, founded the company more than a decade ago he realised that in order to help utilities with their digital transformation, he needed to be able to walk in his customers shoes and see things from their perspective.
And the only way to do this is by investing in the right people.
The establishment of this new Advisory Board might be the latest chapter of that journey, but Mr Tieppo said that energy Nucleus 3 puts into its own team are what drew him to the business.
“I’m really excited to have the opportunity part of Louis advisory panel, because I think it’s a great business, I just love the energy of it,” Mr Tieppo said.
“Louis has a lot of energy, and he’s very passionate about his people and his clients and his technology – probably in that order.”
Ted Turner also sits on the Advisory Board, but he brings a vastly different wealth of expertise.
“I stepped out of university and went into public practice, specialising in business services and then into more strategic and advisory work, which I’ve been doing now for around ten years,” Mr Turner said.
“During that journey, I met Louis more than 30 years ago, when he was a simple tax return, and over time, built up a relationship of trust as accountant and advisor.
“Then in June 2024, I sold out my accounting practice and took on a number of board positions with the mantra that I wanted to choose the people I wanted to work with.”
Just like Mr Tieppo, Mr Turner found Mr Limnios’ energy infectious.
“I have a lot of trust in that energy and drive. And one of the things that always attracted me to what Louis was doing is how he talks about his team, his customers, and his outcomes – and I always like that idea of team coming first. If you’ve got a [bad] team, you can’t put the customer first,” Mr Turner said.
“I’m really excited to be on this advisory board in part because of Louis energy, but also just recently being introduced to Mario as well – knowing he comes from a different background to me allows me to keep learning and as well as contributing within my area of expertise.”
The right kind of people
Nucleus 3 has a team of more than 125 consultants and engineers, who each contribute their own extensive industry experience across the entire spectrum of the delivery model. By empowering this team to innovate and working closely with customers to understand what they actually need, Nucleus 3 is able to put together industry-specific solutions.
“We shouldn’t be looking at technology as the fixer and you shouldn’t change your organisation to suit the technology – technology is only an enabler to give you the outcome you want,” Mr Limnios said.
Nucleus 3 works with a huge network of technology partners (the N360) so it can offer an agonistic service to its customers.
“We picked leading providers who have been in the industry for a long time who are already invested in future-proofing their own technology,” Mr Limnios said.
In response to feedback from small and medium water authorities and local councils, Nucleus 3 developed Water Bureau – a IoT service specifically tailored to utilities with limited in-house resources or immediate access to the capital required to undertake large-scale projects.
By eliminating the complexity and upfront capital expenditure, Water Bureau helps makes IoT and smart meter projects accessible for all water authorities. Powered by Itron Temetra AMI, this integrated platform enhances operations with superior data capture, quality, analytics and visualisation.
It includes pre-built API adapters for integration with key enterprise and operational systems, offering an end-to-end view of a business’ entire asset and customer operations.
“So, when we developed Water Bureau, we worked with our water customers, looked at what they’re telling us they need, and took those requirements back to N360 and asked for the top two or three leading capabilities that the customers are asking for.
“From that feedback, we went and chose a handful of products, and we spent a fair bit of time and investment in integrating those systems together to give the customers that interoperability and that flexibility that they were asking for in the one solution.”
“And we built a lab has an evidence-based capability, because we wanted to be able to show the strength of our interoperability, our networks and our platform beyond a PowerPoint presentation – we wanted to show the customers real evidence of it working.”
This lab also empowers the team at Nucleus 3 to innovate and test new ideas.
“Failure is a first attempt at innovative learning, and I want people knowing they’re part of a team that empowers them,” Mr Limnios said.
“If we can, as a business, enable, empower and provide them with the relevant skills, toolsets, environment and culture to build capability, then we’re three quarters of the way to having a good team.
“You can always teach skill, but the right motivating factors and the right attitude towards what you’re trying to achieve is a hell of a lot more important than how good you are as an IoT engineer or how good you are as an executive.
“The team is what actually makes the business. Being able to put ourselves in our customer’s shoes and create Water Bureau is truly derived from our own team’s experience and capability to actually identify and draw those requirements out of the customer – if it wasn’t for our team, we would have never been able to build the capability we’ve built.”
For more information, visit nucleus3.com.au
