Paul Beswick’s pathway to become Chief Information Officer of Marsh McLennan is non-traditional to say the least. He joined the company via one of its operating companies, the strategy consultancy, Oliver Wyman. He rose through the ranks at that firm to become a partner and global head of Oliver Wyman Labs and global co-head of Oliver Wyman’s Digital Practice. “It all happened because I walked into the wrong meeting one day and got sucked into the project to design Marsh McLennan’s technology strategy with Scott Gilbert, who was my predecessor,” noted Beswick. “Then got sucked into trying to deliver it, which anyone who’s been a consultant should know, you should never do: you should never both write the strategy and take responsibility for delivering it.”
When he weighed the advantages of his pathway, he noted that he has been in executive committee meetings and boardrooms since he was in his 20s. He also acknowledged that having profit and loss responsibilities in various roles along his ascent at Oliver Wyman likely gives him a better appreciation of technology’s power to grow revenue for Marsh McLennan, not just where it can lead to cost savings.
Beswick’s current post has him overseeing technology for a conglomerate that includes Marsh, the world’s largest insurance broker, Mercer, leader in human resources, benefits, and investment consulting, Guy Carpenter which is in the business of reinsurance broking, along with Oliver Wyman. When he took over as chief information officer roughly three years ago, the company was in the throes of moving from a decentralized IT department to one that exerts much more influence from the center. “That’s a fairly new development in terms of how we’ve been organized. When I took on this role, we were starting the process of bringing what had been business unit-specific technology organizations together into one overall organization,” said Beswick. “Prior to that, we’d had different teams by business, but with a shared infrastructure and security organization in the middle. It’s been an interesting journey trying to forge one team out of what were quite independent teams before.”
Beswick sees a primary job of his as increasing the velocity of the business. “We do a lot of work to understand what slows us down, how we get tangled up in our own processes, where there’s bureaucracy that’s unnecessary, where we fail to engineer solutions to problems that we can engineer solutions to that can help things move significantly more quickly,” he underscored. “A huge chunk of where I spend my own time…is focused on trying to change the efficient frontier between speed, agility on the one hand, and security, compliance, robustness, and resilience, on the other.”
A primary pathway to this for Beswick and his team has been in building a platform strategy, building template projects and defining “patterns” that can be deployed readily, streamlining policy, compliance and nonfunctional aspects of every project that his organization undertakes. “One of the things I’ve learned as I’ve come into this job is how important understanding some of the organizational dynamics are and the points of inefficient but stable equilibrium that exist in organization structure that tend to lock you into patterns that are inefficient and thinking very deliberately about how you break through some of those things,” he said.
Beswick is excited about the amount of innovation driven by technology and his team’s ability to convey the art of the possible to the rest of the company. He thinks about technology in the spectrum of hard things to easy ones. “We are not in the game of doing really hard stuff,” he said. “That’s not the organization that we’re built for, but hard things get easier over time, and there’s this constant shift from more complicated and less accessible but powerful technology into things that are increasingly easy to get our hands on. At some point, there’s this tipping point where the hard becomes easy. If we can be there at the point where things become easy and we understand how to put them into action in a real business against our real processes and our real problems, that’s the area where I think we can create the most value. That requires you to be always playing around at the edge of that transition point and make sure you recognize when that transition has happened.”
A case in point is Marsh McLennan’s foray into generative artificial intelligence. It began by partnering with vendor partners, but that proved to be too expensive. However, when Microsoft made the OpenAI back-ends available in a secure fashion, Beswick and his team discovered that with a little bit of extra engineering, they could make that available to the broader company. The goal was to mirror the remarkable uptick in the use of ChatGPT in society. “I didn’t think we needed to spend a lot of time worrying about precisely what the use cases were,” Beswick admitted. “It felt like the use cases would be emergent. Very quickly after we had access to the [Microsoft OpenAI] APIs in a secure fashion, we created the chat interface on top of that, which is what we call LenAI.”
It took only a day and a half to deliver the first version of LenAI to a pilot group within the company. The focus on making IT a driver of velocity improvements were responsible for such a fast path. Soon a few hundred people had access to LenAI and within 28 days, the entire firm had access to it. “I think we’ve identified [roughly] 300 distinct use cases that people have been putting this to,” said Beswick. “Some are very specifically related to some small part of the business. Others are more generic. We’ve kept an eye on that, capturing that information, and we’re using that to then drive our build-out agenda for some of the things that are going to be more scalable implementations of this.”
Beswick believes his team has moved farther faster by turning the typical process on its head. Typically, people gather use cases, find a business co-sponsor, build a business case, assemble a project team, and then get started. Given Beswick’s need for speed, that was too slow. “By going the other way and driving something more generic out and flushing the use cases out, I think we’ve got further faster,” said Beswick with pride. As a result, “we added a couple of extra capabilities into the basics, [such as] internet search document upload. We do a lot of work with documents, so there’s lots of stuff people are doing with document summarization, with data extraction from documents and translation between languages, which these tools are good at. Email drafting, particularly for people for whom English is not the first language when we’re a business that largely operates in English [has been another powerful use case]. A lot of people are using it to tighten up their communications and streamline things.”
Code writing is another layer of value. Beswick noted with excitement that different parts of LenAI were written by LenAI. This will increasingly become the norm. Additional functionality that has been defined has included calculators, stock price lookups, weather lookups, database querying, and the ability to pull from a variety of news sources. “There are clearly some use cases where you can see transformation of various processes that we would run through today and would be fairly manual where we can really divert resources into much more high-value-added work,” said Beswick. “Those are starting to spin out. A lot of it’s around things like document ingestion, processing, and data extraction. Cross-mapping data from one data source to another, one data structure to another turns out to be a pretty tractable problem as well. I think we’re just scratching the surface as to what those sorts of things will be.”
Beswick and his team have made substantial progress in a short amount of time, living up to his goal of being a force multiplier. He believes he and his team are setting a sound foundation, but even higher levels of value will be achieved by building upon that foundation.
Following a year defined by the rise of generative AI, join us virtually on February 27 for our first Digital Symposium of 2024 where global technology influencers and business leaders share progress on their AI journeys, the challenges and opportunities of adopting AI, and the future ahead for digital experiences.
C-level technology leaders, to reserve your spot and stay tuned for agenda updates. We look forward to seeing you!
(Click here for highlights from our most recent Digital Symposium, and stay tuned to our YouTube channel for videos of our panel discussions.)
12:00 – 12:10 p.m.
Welcome and Introductions
Welcome and introduction to the Metis Strategy team.
Peter High, President, Metis Strategy
12:10 – 12:35 p.m.
Technology, Digital, and Operations Leaders as Drivers of Speed
Jen Felch, Chief Digital Officer & Chief Information Officer, Dell
Mojgan Lefebvre, EVP, Chief Technology & Operations Officer, The Travelers Company
Moderated by Peter High, President, Metis Strategy
12:35 – 1:00 p.m.
Advancing Digital Capabilities in Non-Digital-Native Organizations
Srini Krishnamurthy, Chief Strategy & Information Officer, FM Global
John Russell, Chief Information Officer, Northrop Grumman
Moderated by Alex Kraus, Partner & East Coast Office Lead, Metis Strategy
1:00 – 1:15 p.m.
Entrepreneur Spotlight: Codeium
Varun Mohan, CEO & Co-Founder, Codeium
1:15 – 1:40 p.m.
Optimizing Workforce Composition for Digital Maturity
Neelu Sethi, Global Chief Information Officer, Brinks Inc.
Barry Perkins, Chief Operating Officer, Zurich North America
Moderated by Michael Bertha, Partner & Central Office Lead, Metis Strategy
1:40 – 2:10 p.m.
Building Resilience Through Technology
Diego Silva, Chief Information Officer, Gates Corp.
Shobie Ramakrishnan, Chief Digital & Technology Officer, GSK
Moderated by Chris Davis, Partner & West Coast Office Lead, Metis Strategy
2:10 – 2:35 p.m.
Digital as an Enabler of Scale
JP Saini, Chief Digital & Technology Officer, Sunbelt Rentals
Jonny LeRoy, Chief Technology Officer, Grainger
Moderated by Steven Norton; Co-Head Executive Networks, Research, and Media; Metis Strategy
2:35 – 2:45 p.m.
Closing Remarks and Adjourn
Click here for highlights from our December Digital Symposium, or watch the panels on our YouTube channel. We look forward to seeing you!
It’s been a big year for technology, with the rise of generative AI sparking new conversations about how tech will shape the future of work and society at large. The books below offer a range of perspectives on recent developments in data and AI, as well as resources to help leaders navigate an increasingly complex and fast-moving technology landscape.
The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century’s Greatest Dilemma, by Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar
Suleyman, the co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI, has been a pioneer in artificial intelligence. Bhaskar and he believe the coming decade will bring a diverse selection of intensely capable and fast-proliferating new technologies. In The Coming Wave, they explain how these technologies present an existential dilemma as we work to control them: unregulated use on one side, and overbearing surveillance on the other.
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, by Michael Lewis
Lewis’ latest book tells the psychological story of the dramatic rise and fall of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, the world’s youngest billionaire, who became a leader in crypto almost overnight before losing it all. Lewis tells his story from the vantage point of being in the room to witness the rise and the fall first hand.
Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems, by Frances X Frei and Anne Morriss
The informal Facebook motto “move fast and break things” gained a lot of traction across businesses but in a somewhat skewed way. It implied that breaking things, no matter the cost, is simply the price organizations pay for innovation.
Best-selling authors and leadership experts Frances Frei and Anne Morriss believe this way of thinking is deeply flawed and hinders leaders from building a truly resilient company. They argue there shouldn’t have to be a tradeoff between speed and excellence, and that companies can solve difficult problems quickly and fix things at the same time. Drawing on work with leading organizations like Uber and ServiceNow, Frei and Morriss identify five key steps, one per each day of the workweek, that leaders can take to solve their organizations’ most complex problems quickly.
Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson
Acemoglu and Johnson revisit a thousand years of history and economics to demonstrate how technological progress doesn’t have to lead to a loss of human empathy. Power and Progress explores how technology was once – and could be again – brought under control and used for the benefit of most people.
All-in On AI: How Smart Companies Win Big with Artificial Intelligence, by Tom Davenport and Nitin Mittal
All-In on AI is an insightful look into the magic behind the success of the technology’s leading adopters. While most companies are placing small bets on AI, a select few are embracing the technology to transform their products, processes, strategies, and customer relationships and experiences. Using examples from organizations including Anthem, Ping An, Airbus, and Capital One, Davenport and Mittal explore what AI looks like at the cutting edge and help organizations understand what’s needed to take AI to the next level.
The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI, by Fei-Fei Li
In her memoir, Stanford professor and AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li describes how a Chinese immigrant living in poverty in the United States overcame adversity to become one of the leading contributors to modern artificial intelligence. Whether sharing her own journey or exploring the incredible dangers and opportunities AI poses, she tells a story Reid Hoffman describes as “a testament to the power and possibility of humanity.”
Elevate Your Team: Empower Your Team to Reach Their Full Potential and Build a Business that Builds Leaders, by Robert Glazer
Being a leader is a balancing act. Not only must one find and retain top talent, but he or she must also ensure those teams perform at the highest levels and deliver results while avoiding burnout. A follow up to Glazer’s 2019 book, Elevate, this book provides strategies and tools to help leaders unleash their teams’ full potential and build the leaders of tomorrow.
Data Is Everybody’s Business: The Fundamentals of Data Monetization, by Barbara Wixom, Cynthia Beath, and Leslie Owens
The authors, leaders at MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research and UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business, provide a guide to help people across organizations (not just on data teams) think more expansively about how to turn data into money. Covering approaches such as wrapping products with data and selling broader information offerings, show how leaders can drive positive outcomes and generate excitement around new data opportunities.
Think Like a CTO, by Alan Williamson
In this book, Williamson highlights the common themes CTOs should consider as they work to become the trusted leader their company needs. He also adds commentary from industry experts and veteran CTOs to illustrate the book’s focus areas, which include establishing strong relationships with C-suite peers, architecting future-proofed systems, and leading with data rather than passion.
Wiring the Winning Organization: Liberating Our Collective Greatness through Slowification, Simplification, and Amplification, by Gene Kim and Steven J. Spear
Drawing on years of research and insights from organizations such as Amazon, Apple, and NASA, Kim and Spear show how leaders make the “social wiring” that drives results and allows others to thrive. They describe their system for moving problem-solving from risky danger zones to low-risk winning zones and provide a playbook for leaders to rewire their own organizations.
As 2023 quickly comes to a close, here’s a look back at some of the tech stories that caught my eye in the past year. These articles deliver perspectives on the evolution of the technology landscape and the roles of the leaders guiding the way; why overlooking security has disastrous results; and how the rapid evolution of the AI arms race is evolving.
A Timeline of Sam Altman’s Firing from OpenAI – and the Fallout
By Kyle Wiggers, Tech Crunch, November 29
Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, was abruptly fired from his job. It kicked off a frenzied weekend in the tech community as observers tried to piece together what happened at what Altman’s ouster might mean for the future of the company. By the end of the weekend, the company announced plans for Altman’s return, along with a slate of new board members. The drama opened up a broader discussion about how to manage the opportunities and risks posted by AI as startups and tech giants alike race to commercialize it.
Reshaping the Tree: Rebuilding Organizations for AI
By Ethan Mollick, One Useful Thing, November 27
To explain the future of organizations, Mollick takes us back to the New York and Erie Railroad of 1855, where the need to organize a massive, distributed workforce led to the development of the world’s first org chart. Fast forward to today, and while technology has advanced, many of the challenges leaders face remain the same, namely, how to rebuild companies to adapt to a major shift in how work gets done. This piece offers organizational leaders with a few guiding principles for shaping the future of work in the age of AI.
How Jensen Huang’s Nvidia is Powering the AI Revolution
By Stephen Witt, The New Yorker, November 27
Jensen Huang has been leading the way in supercomputing since he signed the paperwork for Nvidia at a San Jose Denny’s in 1993. Today, the chipmaker provides a critical backbone for the AI generative revolution. This piece digs into the company’s history and provides a glimpse at what it has planned for the future, such as unifying the company’s computer graphics and GenAI research, anticipating that more sophisticated image generation and language processing capabilities will enable “digital twins” of the world that can be used to, for example, train robots and self-driving cars.
Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig on Why AI and Social Media are Causing a Free Speech Crisis for the Internet
By Nilay Patel, The Verge, October 24
After 30 years teaching law, the internet policy guru, Lessig, expresses concern about AI and TikTok, and he offers an interesting assessment about how to balance free speech while protecting democracy.
Chinese Spy Agency Rising to Challenge the C.I.A.
By Edward Wong, Julian E. Barnes, Muyi Xiao and Chris Buckley, New York Times, December 27
At the tail end of the year, these four Times reporters offer an analysis of the Chinese Ministry of State Security deployment of artificial intelligence among other advanced technology in competition with the United States to achieve Xi Jinping’s goal to become the world’s preeminent economic and military power. The article highlights the intersection of technology, geopolitics, global economics, and military might.
The CIO’s New C-suite Mandate
By Stacy Collet, CIO.com, February 28
Amid economic uncertainty and a rapidly evolving technology landscape, today’s technology leaders are mobilizing strategic internal partnerships and taking on the role of both business strategist and changemaker as they transform the way their organization’s drive business outcomes. CIOs must still manage core technology, to be sure, but today “…it’s more about how we drive customer expansion, how we improve margin expansion, reduce friction by improving overall productivity of the organizations, and how each of these ties into our business strategy priorities,” says Max Chan, CIO of Avnet. CIOs “need to understand all those. We need to take interest in every single strategy priority in the business. This is table stakes.”
The Mirai Confessions: Three Young Hackers Who Built a Web-killing Monster Finally Tell Their Story
By Andy Greenberg, Wired, November 14
This article takes us behind the scenes how a bored 19-year and his friends dove into the world of cybercrime, creating a network that would be used in the major DDoS attack that took down major swaths of the internet, including notable sites like the New York Times, Netflix, Twitter (now “X”), and PayPal.
How to Train Generative AI Using Your Company’s Data
By Tom Davenport and Maryam Alavi, Harvard Business Review, July 6
In the summer of 2023, technology leaders raced to figure out the best ways to bring generative AI capabilities to their organizations. This article outlined a variety of approaches for applying genAI to internal knowledge management capabilities, highlighting projects by Bloomberg, Google and Morgan Stanley.
Google: “We have no Moat, and Neither does OpenAI”
By Dylan Patel and Afzal Ahmad, SemiAnalysis, May 4
A leaked memo from a Google researcher-made waves this summer in its assertion that the tech giant didn’t have the right stuff to win in the AI arms race. The memo stated that open-source models “are lapping us,” and encouraged the company to establish itself as a leader in the open-source community and create new paths to innovation.
Silicon Valley Bank Collapse Explained: What You Need to Know
By Amanda Hetler, Tech Target, April 20
On March 10 Silicon Valley Bank was seized by state regulators due to its inability to pay its depositors, marking the biggest bank failure since Washington Mutual in 2008. Its downfall had a big impact on tech companies large and small that depended on the bank’s services and raised broader questions about the stability of the financial system.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the 15th Metis Strategy Digital Symposium. Check out some event highlights below, and stay tuned to the Metis Strategy YouTube channel and Technovation podcast in the coming weeks for full sessions.
For businesses across the globe, 2023 was the year of generative AI. Since ChatGPT’s launch and meteoric rise last November, digital leaders have been experimenting with a range of new GenAI products and services as they searched for the most effective, and least risky, way to bring the technology to their organizations. As GenAI (and the hype around it) took off, it prompted important and complex conversations about the future of work and how to accelerate innovation while managing new and significant risks.
A little over a year in, leaders continue to experiment with new tools as a means to drive new value and improve the experience for customers and employees. They are also turning their focus back to the fundamentals, building strong data governance and data hygiene practices to ensure their organizations have the strategic and operational foundation needed to take advantage of their data.
GenAI is still the shiniest thing out there, but as technology leaders look to 2024, they are focused on integrating it, and AI more generally, into their organization’s operating model and championing use cases that can produce tangible value at scale.
If year one of generative AI was about deciphering its risks and enabling organizations to experiment safely, year two will be about finding ways to drive value at scale. With new use cases emerging regularly, technology leaders are figuring out how to prioritize the initiatives that show the most promise to the business.
At BNSF Railway, CIO Muru Murugappan and his team use a value feasibility matrix to assess technical feasibility, timing, and complexity of new AI initiatives versus the expected payback. Some companies are also using business interest and executive sponsorship as criteria for deciding which initiatives to pursue. One overarching lesson: the more ambitious the project, the more challenges it is likely to face.
In addition to delivering on generative AI’s opportunities, CIOs now are contending with a new set of costs as well. Speakers also highlighted the fact that simply “turning on” a new AI tool does not guarantee value.
For many, the path to unlocking AI’s value means getting back to basics. “This is reinforcing the need for analytics fundamentals,” said Filippo Catalano, Reckitt’s Chief Information & Digitisation Officer. “If you don’t have good data practices, at best you’re going to use whatever others are using, but you will not be able to generate competitive advantage. Great data practices … become even more important.”
While new AI tools have helped organizations explore the art of the possible, they also have created a number of new risks, from more advanced cyberattacks to the negative impact of training algorithms on biased data. Just over one quarter of attendees cited data privacy as the largest AI-related risk to their organizations. The delicate balance for CIOs: managing the new risk landscape while empowering teams across the organization to experiment and innovate.
Martin Stanley, who leads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency R&D portfolio, is currently assigned to the Trustworthy and Responsible AI program at NIST. Among his team’s goals is promoting adoption of the AI Risk Management Assessment Framework, which provides a construct for deploying AI responsibly and managing risk among a diverse set of stakeholders. The framework means to address a few key concepts: building a language around AI risk beyond simply monitoring potential vulnerabilities, creating a shared understanding of how to manage that risk across the enterprise, and driving a trust-driven, “risk- aware culture” that influences how people interact with the technology.
CIOs are working to build trust into every layer of the process. As Vishal Gupta of Lexmark noted, technology is only as good as people’s ability to adopt it and trust what it’s saying. “Otherwise, you really can’t do much with it.” At Lexmark, Gupta is taking a layered approach, creating trust in the underlying data via stronger governance and management practices; driving trust in AI and machine learning models by setting up an AI ethics board and rigorously vetting use cases; and continuously testing to validate AI’s ability to truly drive business outcomes.
New AI tools such as developer copilots have the potential to drive significant productivity gains and reshape how many of us do our jobs. As humans and technology continue to interact in new ways, CIOs are focused on optimizing the digital employee and customer experience while helping teams navigate a changing world of work. Indeed, 50% of MSDS attendees plan to apply AI and generative AI to impact employee experience and productivity, with 30% planning to use it to improve the customer experience.
At TransUnion, CIO Munir Hafez and his team are taking a human-centered approach to the digital experience with a focus on ensuring tech equity and establishing policies that allow teams to safely experiment with new tools, among other initiatives. When investing in employee experience, “our goal was to create a consumer-grade experience that enables employees to be engaged and productive in an environment that is integrated, modern, frictionless, and connected anywhere,” Hafez said.
AI’s ability to deliver frictionless employee experiences and deliver real productivity gains far beyond IT is likely to be a big focus for 2024. Many panelists noted how access to accurate, AI-enabled real-time data can help field managers make decisions more quickly, and how technologies like digital twins can streamline design processes and speed time to market.
Navigating an uncertain economic environment and rapid technological advances are top of mind for CIOs in the year ahead. The convergence of these two factors continues to underscore the importance of bringing a strategic, value-based lens to AI development and adoption.
The hype around generative AI may come back down to earth in 2024 as companies begin to understand its complexities in the enterprise. “I think there is going to be…a little bit of a trough that we’ll hit with GenAI,” said Graphic Packaging International CIO Vish Narendra. “The commercialization of that is going to take a little longer in the enterprise than people think it’s going to.”
As technology becomes embedded across a broader range of products and services, the spotlight will be on CIOs to show the art of the possible, create future-ready workforces, and manage risk. Given their broad purview that spans horizontally across organizations, CIOs are well positioned to influence and shape enterprise strategy in the year ahead, setting their companies up for continued resilience and growth.
Our final Digital Symposium of the year is rapidly approaching. Join us virtually on December 13 as global technology leaders discuss the changing AI landscape, enabling data strategy at scale, the future of customer and employee experience, and what’s ahead for 2024.
Transforming Organizations for a Data-Driven Future
Vish Narendra, Chief Information Officer & SVP, Graphic Packaging
Filippo Catalano, Chief Information & Digitisation Officer, Reckitt
12:35 – 12:50 p.m.
The Future of Secure, Responsible AI with NIST’s Martin Stanley
Martin Stanley, Strategic Technology Branch Chief, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
12:50 – 1:15 p.m.
Optimizing the Digital Employee Experience
Munir Hafez, Chief Information Officer & SVP, TransUnion
Muru Murugappan, Chief Information Officer, BNSF Railways
1:15 – 1:30 p.m.
Entrepreneur Spotlight: Pankaj Patel, Co-Founder of Nile Security
Pankaj Patel, CEO & Co-Founder, Nile Secure
1:30 – 1:55 p.m.
Driving the Enterprise AI Mindset
Vishal Gupta, Chief Information & Technology Officer, Lexmark
Sumedh Mehta, Chief Information Officer, Putnam Investments
1:55 – 2:10 p.m.
Entrepreneur Spotlight: Gustavo Sapoznik, Founder of ASAPP
Gustavo Sapoznik, CEO & Founder, ASAPP
2:10 – 2:40 p.m.
Scaling Your AI Operating Model
Yasir Anwar, Chief Technology Officer & Chief Digital Officer, Williams-Sonoma
Cisco Sanchez, SVP & Chief Information Officer, Qualcomm
2:40 – 2:45 p.m.
Click here for highlights from our September Digital Symposium, or watch the panels on our YouTube channel. We look forward to seeing you!
This article was written by Marjorie Freeman.
A data strategy is a plan of action to manage an organization’s data assets across its technology, processes, and people. In practice, that entails understanding how data is generated, where and why it is consumed, and how its use helps organizations achieve strategic objectives.
On Metis Strategy’s Technovation podcast, Peter High has interviewed many global, digital-forward CIOs about their data strategies. Below are insights from those leaders about how companies can use enterprise data assets to their fullest potential.
Artificial intelligence has been top of mind for many organizations, even more so in 2023 with the rise of ChatGPT and increased discussion around generative AI. This has prompted a multitude of conversations around AI’s core facet: data, and how it can drive the business forward.
During the February 2023 Metis Strategy Digital Symposium, Krzystof Soltan, the Chief Information Officer of Vulcan Materials Company, and Anupam Khare, the Chief Information Officer of Oshkosh Corporation, shared their experiences building data strategy into complex, scaled organizations.
At Oshkosh, Khare leads with the question: “How do we extract financial value from data by bringing people and data together?” The company is working to become what Khare calls a predictable enterprise, using four fundamental principles to guide the journey:
For Vulcan Materials, data strategy is linked to the organization’s technology strategy. “It always comes back to business value, the time to value, how fast we are able to provide the insights” Soltan said. Vulcan Materials’ looks to the following principles to guide its data and analytics work:
Both Khare and Soltan’s stories underscore the need to tie data strategy to business value, work toward a common tech stack, and engage people at every level of the organization in the data journey.
OneDigital, which provides customizable and cost-effective HR solutions to organizations and their workforces, acquires around 30 organizations per year. This is no easy feat, but CIO Marcia Calleja-Matsko strives to create a seamless experience for every organization that is onboarded.
When acquiring a new organization, especially one in a different vertical or industry, it is important to ensure there is a consistent record across multiple platforms, Calleja-Matsko says. Cue the single source of truth, or what she calls the “golden record.” Once that record has been created, it must be maintained.
Over the years, Calleja-Matsko has been working to build OneDigital’s data strategy in three key ways:
If data is the new oil and speed is the currency of business, then data governance is the link that fuses the two. For more, see Michael Bertha’s commentary: Data Strategy at the Speed of Business.
CIOs play an instrumental role in creating a common language around data and making sure teams across the enterprise have the tools and concepts they need to harness data effectively. To develop this data literacy, many organizations have built enterprise-wide curriculums and training resources.
Monica Caldas, the CIO of Liberty Mutual, which has its own professional development training programs, including one specifically geared toward executives, said it well:
“Technology is everybody’s responsibility these days in terms of understanding what it can do. … Everyone that sits around the table needs to be beyond, ‘How do I click this?’ and [be] somewhat well versed [in topics like] what can an API do, and why does that matter.”
Many organizations have launched digital academies to train employees on digital skills, including technology and data literacy. In 2019, for example, Toyota launched an academy to knock down the invisible wall often found between IT and the business and give end users greater knowledge of the software they use every day. “The idea was to not just train IT, but everyone across the organization.” said then Chief Innovation, Strategy and Digital Officer, Vipin Gupta. The approach has empowered associates across the business to truly understand how to capitalize on the tools, data, and processes at their disposal.
Data literacy is also key to enabling citizen development, an approach that encourages those outside IT to contribute to software development, often via low-code/no-code tools. Paired with increased data literacy, this can make it easier for teams across organizations to apply data and analytics to their work and accelerate time to insight.
Chief Information and Digitization Officer of Reckitt Benckiser Group, Filippo Catalano encourages executives to create opportunities for properly governed self-service data access:
You want to also make sure that, as much as possible, everybody in the company becomes a data scientist. … Get out of the way so you can unleash creativity, empower people everywhere in the organization to do what they need to do on data and analytics, but also to do it on the right platforms so that things are done in a fair way, but also in a safe way.
CIOs, CDIOs, and CDOs are in incredible positions to influence the change they’d like to see within their organizations. Directly engaging individuals in the company’s data journey through hands-on learning opportunities can not only build knowledge and morale, but also can catalyze new competitive advantages.
Any successful data strategy needs a compelling, ambitious vision and a clear path to success that resonates across an organization. CIOs, then, need skillful storytelling to get buy-in from multiple stakeholders and create forward momentum.
Telling the story effectively means, once again, putting business outcomes front and center. “I can talk all day about ‘hey, you should have data governance and you should think about a data lake or a single view of the customer,’” said Dak Liyanearachchi, Head of Data and Technology at NRG Energy. “All of those are really interesting, but what does it really mean to the organization?”
One useful move includes thinking about data as an enterprise asset that requires strong partnership across every part of the business. While companies can notch small wins leveraging data within silos, the real benefit comes when that great work logically connects across the organization.
“If you think about connecting the dots across the value chain, that’s where you start to see some significant business opportunities,” Liyanearachchi said. When that happens, “the value you bring multiplies at a faster rate.”
Our next Digital Symposium is just around the corner. Join us on September 20 as technology executives and business leaders from across industries share insights on high-priority topics including data as an enterprise change agent, developing and scaling AI-led products, new approaches to talent development, and the future of customer experience, among other topics.
12:10 – 12:40 p.m.
Strategic Automation Across the Enterprise
Amy Brady, Chief Information Officer, KeyBank
Ryan Kean, Chief Information Officer, Total Quality Logistics
12:40 – 1:10 p.m.
Developing and Scaling AI-Led Products and Services
Dak Liyanearachchi, Chief Data and Technology Officer, NRG Energy
Salumeh Companieh, Chief Digital and Information Officer, Cushman & Wakefield
1:10 – 1:25 p.m.
Entrepreneur Spotlight: Domino Data Lab
Nick Elprin, CEO & Co-Founder, Domino Data Lab
1:25 – 1:55 p.m.
The Future of the Digital Customer Experience
Fahim Siddiqui, Chief Information Officer, The Home Depot
Kristie Grinnell, Chief Information Officer, DXC Technology
1:55 – 2:25 p.m.
Data and AI Strategy as an Enterprise Change Agent
Rajan Kumar, Chief Information Officer, Intuit
Sesh Tirumala, Chief Information Officer, Western Digital
2:25 – 2:55 p.m.
Talent Strategy in the Age of AI
Lakshman Nathan, Chief Information Officer, Paramount
Shubham Mehrish, Global Vice President, Mars
2:55 – 3:00 p.m.
Click here for highlights from our May Digital Symposium, or watch the panels on our YouTube channel. We look forward to seeing you!
Sastry Durvasula has an unusual title and remit at TIAA. As Chief Information and Client Services Officer of the Fortune 100 company, with more than $1.2 trillion in assets under management, he manages global technology and client services, including all the front office, middle office, back office functions and shared services of the firm that serve the company’s clients. Thus, Durvasula and team build solutions on the technology side that are used by colleagues on the other sides of his organization that serve the clients across the businesses, including retirement, asset management and wealth management. This responsibility gives him an opportunity to see the positive impact of his team’s work first-hand. The clients represent four constituent groups:
Therefore, Durvasula and his team support customers that include business-to-business, business-to-consumer, and business-to-business-to-consumer models. There is a fintech ecosystem that he helps bring to life: RetireTech, focused on building solutions for retirement participants on the accumulation side, and SilverTech, focused on the decumulating side. Managing through the complexity of different constituent groups, representing different generations together with a century old company that has forged contracts across decades is extremely complex. “The mission statement for my organization is ‘Power the business’ strategic shifts, fuel the innovation, while transforming the core,’” he noted. “The transforming of the core is as important and complex as fueling innovation and powering it. These strategic shifts enable us to provide lifetime income, delighting our clients and strengthening how we operate.”
Given TIAA’s size and breadth of offerings, Global Technology is divided up to reflect that breadth. “We have the unit CIOs that face off to the CEOs across our primary businesses in retirement, asset management and wealth management. Same thing with our client services side of the house where our client services officers are serving these specific business units, ” Durvasula explained. “Then we have global technology shared services like information security, data, AI, infrastructure and architecture, as well as shared client services like fraud and financial crimes management, serving all business units and affiliates. That’s my organizational grid. We have verticals and horizontals.”
Guiding these teams is a six-pillar strategy:
Durvasula notes that client-obsessed products and services refers to products both on the technology side as well as on the client services side of his responsibilities. “Whether it’s 403(b) solutions and products in the Higher Ed and Healthcare markets, or on the 401(k) side that we are getting very active on from a retirement perspective, as well as wealth management and asset management and so forth; that’s where we are focused on building those next-generation products and services,” he offered.
Digital first refers to modernizing a heritage company for the digital age, building the next generation of digital platforms, and providing solutions and client experiences, working closely with the company’s chief digital and client experience officer, Jessica Austin Barker.
To bring to life the integrated data and AI strategy pillar, Durvasula hired a chief data and AI officer, Swatee Singh, who’s focuses on that, to build the next generation of the data foundation and providing AI solutions to create those experiences for plan sponsors and participants.
Building the talent and culture needed to operate effectively includes key hires, like the ones noted already, but also creating a learning culture that strives to build the skills that will bring to life the digital vision he has articulated.
The best-of-breed ecosystem helps rethink the mix of buy versus build versus partners decisions across the technology landscape. “We want to build for differentiation, but we also want to buy and partner for parity,” Durvasula noted. “While I do that, obviously I have to uplift the technology ecosystem which is a big job for our teams.”
Finally, like all CIOs, he must do all the above while being secure by design and be on top of the regulatory and compliance demands. Given the emergence of numerous cyber threats, he must remain vigilant to ensure that the most valuable asset: the company’s data, does not get into the wrong hands.
Durvasula lingered a bit longer on the data piece, given the sanctity of sound data practices in a company that is awash in data. “The advantage we have is, because we have been at this for a long time and we are a highly regulated firm, we do have a number of data assets that actually are within the firewalls of TIAA that we can capitalize on,” he said. “How do we bring all the data from our global data assets and build that platform? While we do that, obviously we want to be cloud-first as we do.” Durvasula and team focus on leveraging open-source tools wherever possible. They have also focused on developing what he referred to as “killer use cases” that are powered by AI for each of the aforementioned constituent groups that TIAA serves. “As an example, we forged a strategic partnership with Google AI that we are now actively deploying solutions starting with our client services area,” he said. “It’s made it easy to deploy at scale.”
Additionally, Durvasula and team use conversational AI solutions to minimize client wait times. He believes this is a major customer enhancement, removing friction from their experience. Many of these new solutions are conceived in TIAA’s client tech labs, which leverage a multi-cloud/hybrid cloud environment to pilot ideas, work with clients to co-innovate and test beta versions of solutions, course correcting some to optimize them while canceling others that prove to be of insufficient value for customers. For those that go into production, Durvasula and team proceed with greater confidence.
Durvasula and TIAA more generally work closely with universities as strategic partners. “We want to have a different level of engagement and conversation with [universities],” he noted. “As an example, we have a partnership with NYU where we have launched programs, and we have over 70 cyber graduates that are going to be graduating from NYU – employees of our own – who are going through this coursework. We have something similar at [the University of North Carolina], but we also have a robust internship program. As an example, at the client tech labs that I mentioned earlier, we’ve had over one hundred interns actively hacking in our client tech labs and coming up with solutions. Some of them are winners of our hackathons and have opted to continue with us during their semesters as well. That’s is representative of the strategic advantage we have to build [a strong] talent pipeline.” By giving interns interesting work, the program has proven to be a rich source of full time recruits. This has developed a solid, long-term talent pipeline for the tech and digital team.
The connection with students and professors at universities are critical for the company given its history in the industry. (TIAA is an acronym for Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America.) “When it comes to client co-innovation on emerging technology and research projects with faculty and their students because that’s what we do for our business,” Durvasula offered. “With client advisory councils that we have, we open doors for our clients where faculty and students can come and conduct research with us and partner with us on a number of ideas. That’s exciting because it not only adds more talent to our pipeline, but it also opens the dialogue with our clients in a differentiated way for impact.”
Finally, Durvasula has taken a much longer-term view in the development of female talent in technology by serving on the board of Girls in Tech, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating the gender gap in tech. “I’ve had the opportunity to learn and benefit from the wisdom of the board as well as the founder, Adriana Gascoigne, who started this several years ago with a few thousand people in the West Coast,” said Durvasula. “Now, it has grown almost 100,000 members across 50 different countries. I’ve had the privilege to work with Adriana and the leadership team and the broader chapters to grow the impact of Girls in Tech.” He notes that the power of the organization is to foster empowerment, learning, communications, networking and especially mentoring. He believes Girls in Tech will be a pathway to building the diverse and inclusive tech workforce the world needs. He also forged strategic partnerships with non-profits including Blacks in Technology Foundation, AfroTech and Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers.
Durvasula has enacted remarkable, long-term change across TIAA in a relatively short amount of time, and he and his team remain ambitious about the future.
Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written three bestselling books, including his latest Getting to Nimble. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
Thank you to everyone who attended and participated in the 13th Metis Strategy Digital Symposium. As 2023 approaches the halfway point, leaders convened to discuss the rapidly changing economic, technological and geopolitical landscape and its impact on strategy in the months ahead.
Highlights from the event are below. Stay tuned to the Metis Strategy Youtube channel and Technovation podcast in the coming weeks for recordings of individual panel discussions.
As tensions continue to escalate around the world, technology leaders must understand and prepare for new geopolitical dynamics. Jared Cohen, Co-Head of the Office of Applied Innovation and President of Global Affairs at Goldman Sachs, argued that the notion of hyperglobalization ended before the COVID pandemic and that the world now faces a reorientation of supply chains and capital flows.
Technology executives are playing close attention to changing value chains and alliances. “Technology is changing geopolitics, and geopolitics is changing technology,” said Cohen. One of the biggest areas where technology is currently influencing geopolitics is in the area of generative AI, which Cohen dubbed as the “most disruptive experiment in anarchy” since the internet. He warned about the risk of people deploying large language models for “bad use cases” to cause real problems in international systems. While there is significant discussion around which companies have superior large language models, he noted a desire for the conversation to focus more on the implications of generative AI for the world.
George Lee, another Co-Head of the Applied Innovation Office at Goldman Sachs, said generative AI is dominating discussions with boards and management teams around the world. While its rapid growth offers many fascinating possibilities, it has also disturbed the human desire for order and linearity. Lee noted how creators are being constantly surprised as the emerging technology develops. “Anyone who tells you they know where this is going, how fast it’s going, and what our destination is, is just wrong.”
While conversations around generative AI have taken the world by storm, technology leaders today play a key role in translating the hype into reality. That means not only vetting new use cases for the technology, but also educating their teams about the benefits and risks of generative AI and creating policies that encourage innovation while ensuring responsible use.
“It takes courage to take a step back and say, maybe let’s not fall into the hype, let’s go about this in a methodical way,” said Digi-Key Electronics CIO Ramesh Babu. Babu created a community of practice around AI that includes stakeholders from across the organization and a list of key terms with consistent definitions to keep everyone on the same page. He also created a network of influencers within the company that serve as “education ambassadors” for the organization.
Allen Smith, CIO at Baker Tilly, recommended leaders approach generative AI like they would any other technology. “There is a difference between home runs and singles. Singles in this case are your front. Go do something, show it, have a tangible example,” he said. “Now, it can be used to fuel the really good ideas.” He also expressed concerns about the security and privacy risks that generative AI poses, noting the dangers that may arise from inputting sensitive data into services like ChatGPT and the need to identify and mitigate potential bias.
As companies continue to navigate an increasingly complex and competitive landscape alongside shifting customer demands, innovation will be a key source of differentiation for industry leaders. Many organizations find that design thinking frameworks help to formulate the strategy and direction that will help ensure they can harness that innovation effectively.
Michael Newcity, Chief Innovation Officer at ArcBest and President of ArcBest Technologies, highlighted the importance of empathy and deep listening to uncover unsaid user needs. To advance design thinking, Newcity has sponsors responsible for thinking through ROI, teams, timing, and other tactical factors that will help gain executive sponsorship and drive innovation initiatives forward.
Rob Krugman, Chief Digital Officer at Broadridge Financial Solutions, discussed the importance of understanding the value proposition for their customers’ customers, then working backwards to deliver value for Broadridge clients. “If we can solve the needs of that end customer, our client’s customer, the likelihood of us being correct is more likely than not,” he said. Across the ecosystem, “we’re all generating value, and we have a much better understanding of how to actually present and tell that story around value.” His team also works with the VC community to stay on top of emerging technologies and asks hypothetical questions to try and understand their impact on Broadridge.
Krugman laid out two different types of innovation: sustainable innovation, led by the product organization, and disruptive innovation. The key to both: “iteration, iteration, iteration, all based on validation.”
No matter the scope of a change initiative, whether adopting an emerging technology or implementing agile ways of working, leaders must act as role models for change within their companies and drive cultural transformation from the top down.
Hyatt Hotel Corporation’s CIO Eben Hewitt, who is working to nurture a product mindset and drive enterprise-wide behavior change, said engagement starts with the CEO and executive board. “When you see a boss acting that way, then you act that way,” he said. “You have to model it.” Hyatt also uses a “people playbook” to easily guide teams to resources they need for specific use cases, and Hewitt has encouraged the development of high-level cultural principles that inform behaviors throughout the organization.
Ultimately, culture is the most important driver of any organizational change. While many are familiar with Peter Drucker’s quote,“culture eats strategy for breakfast,” Ascension Chief Digital Officer Rajan Mohan added that “culture eats transformation for lunch.” At Ascension, Mohan has helped lead a transformation that includes a digital product orientation, end-to-end accountability and a focus on Ascension’s mission to reach underserved communities. With that shift has come a new mindset, as well as metrics that are more closely tied to business outcomes. “We’re not just measuring for measurement’s sake,” he said. “It is to demonstrate and deliver continuous value.”
Kathy Kay, CIO at Principal Financial Group, said driving cultural change requires leaders first and foremost to be their authentic selves. That includes a willingness to be vulnerable. “If you can’t show vulnerability…I think it sets a tone for people feeling less open,” she said. In addition to bringing that openness to her role, she works with peers at Principal to ensure leaders are giving teams necessary support, removing blockers, and helping them understand how their contributions matter. Kay also discussed the importance of adapting communications to local norms, particularly when working with teams across the globe.
Building a high-performance culture is of course linked to finding and developing the best talent. World Fuel Services CIO Josh McLean said some of the best people typically look for three things in their work: aspirational goals that give a sense of purpose; challenging work that helps them learn and grow; and being surrounded by other highly talented people. “I try to make sure those things are all present and in harmony, or a work in progress to get there.”
