WiseTech’s Andrew Cartledge: Australia has to develop the best tech jobs’

Andrew Cartledge says the nation needs to double down on education to train more specialist tech staff.

Andrew Cartledge Interim CEO of WiseTech Global.

CEO SURVEY 2025: FULL COVERAGE

Economy

How would you rate the momentum of the Australian economy as we head into 2025? Official forecasts have Australia trimming interest rates from the first half of calendar 2025, is that consistent with your view? What are you seeing around inflation in your own business?

The latest headline numbers around GDP certainly suggest the economy is slowing and it will be interesting to see how that shapes the key policies pushed in the lead up to the election in 2025. I’d love to have a time machine to predict how interest rates will travel into 2025, but its safest to leave that to the professionals!

For WiseTech specifically, our growth meant we were able to offset the impacts of inflation as well as generate returns on our substantial product investment in FY24. We’re aiming to continue on this path into 2025.

Outlook

What excites you heading into 2025? Are you likely to increase, hold steady, or trim your investment spend?

As a company we will continue to invest heavily in product R&D and innovation. In FY24 we re-invested 35 per cent of our revenue into R&D and added more than 5,600 product enhancements to our global CargoWise application suite in the last five years. As our revenues grow, so too does our investment spend to drive future growth.

Reform

As we move into an election year, in your mind, what’s the single biggest lever that can/should be used to lift Australia’s competitiveness or productivity?

This could be across any area from labour market, tax reform, training or other areas to encourage investment.

Education! There is a huge opportunity to encourage more young people to embark on software engineering careers, ready to power Australia’s IT sector for the long term. However, to reach a wider range of diverse candidates we need to offer a number of training pathways, from TAFE to university, combined with industry cooperation to offer on-the-job learning (such as our own Earn & Learn program), and most importantly help more school students have an enjoyable experience learning how to code (in our out of school) so that they might seriously consider it as a future career option.

Geopolitics

Will a Donald Trump presidency have a potential impact on your business or sector (tariffs or streamlined regulation)? Does geopolitics drive a bigger part of your decision-making?

The US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) are becoming increasingly vigilant, enforcing strict controls over goods that fall under their purview. The proposed tariffs mean exporters and importers to the US will need to keep on top of the changing regulations to ensure they comply with the most recent US import requirements and don’t inadvertently incur fines or penalties. In some ways this creates an opportunity for WiseTech as we provide software solutions to help companies navigate these compliance requirements.

People

Has your organisation’s approach to flexible working - including working from home - evolved during the year. Is this likely to change further into 2025?

At WiseTech, our hybrid work model combines working in the office and remotely, allowing flexibility to work where most productive and appropriate for the individual and team. An important part of this is creating an engaging and collaborative environment. As a result we’ve seen more of our team opt to spend more time in the office over the last 12 months. Our Sydney team is very excited to be moving into a new office in 2025.

Technology

Where is your organisation along the AI journey – is it in the developmental stage, or are you now using the technology at scale across your business? If so, are benefits matching the promise?

As a software company we see AI as one tool from many we can use. AI is a progression of the automation, big data and machine learning approaches we’ve applied for many years to both develop our software and build into our solutions for the global logistics industry. For example, AI will be part of our customs classification system we are building into our ComplianceWise solution that assists with export and import classification, to avoid potential fines and penalties for non-compliance.