Our next Digital Symposium is just around the corner. Join us on May 11 as technology executives and business leaders from across industries share insights into how their companies are approaching high-priority topics including artificial intelligence, sustainability, and talent retention, among other topics.
CIOs and other technology leaders, to reserve your spot today 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 – 12:40 p.m.
Applying a Product Mindset to Advance Digital and Technology Capabilities
Rajan Mohan, Chief Digital Officer, Ascension
Eben Hewitt, Chief Information Officer, Hyatt Hotels Corporation
Moderated by Alex Kraus, Partner & East Coast Office Lead, Metis Strategy
12:40 – 1:10 p.m.
Placing Smart Bets and Scaling Innovation
Jared Cohen, Co-Head, Office of Applied Innovation & President of Global Affairs; Goldman Sachs
George Lee, Co-Head, Office of Applied Innovation, Goldman Sachs
Moderated by Peter High, President, Metis Strategy
1:10 – 1:40 p.m.
Design Thinking in Ecosystem Business Models
Michael Newcity, Chief Innovation Officer, ArcBest; President, ArcBest Technologies
Rob Krugman, Chief Digital Officer, Broadridge Financial Solutions
Moderated by Chris Davis, Partner & West Coast Office Lead, Metis Strategy
1:40 – 2:10 p.m.
Driving Practical Progress on Your AI Journey
Ramesh Babu, Chief Information Officer, Digi-Key Electronics
Allen Smith, Chief Information Officer, Baker Tilly
Moderated by Michael Bertha, Partner & Central Office Lead, Metis Strategy
2:10 – 2:40 p.m.
Sustaining a High-Performance Culture in Times of Change
Kathy Kay, Chief Information Officer, Principal Financial Group
Josh McLean, Chief Information Officer, World Fuel Services
Moderated by Steven Norton; Co-Head Executive Networks, Research, and Media; Metis Strategy
2:40 – 3:00 p.m.
Closing Remarks and Adjourn
Click here for highlights from our February Digital Symposium, or watch the panels on our YouTube channel. We look forward to seeing you!
Now a household name in personal finance, Intuit was founded in 1983 by Scott Cook. The company’s four decades of success — the company reported 2022 annual revenue of $12.7 billion and a portfolio of valued products including TurboTax, QuickBooks, Credit Karma, Mint, and Mailchimp — has been possible in part by the company’s dedication to innovation. Innovation is necessary for modern businesses to maintain a competitive advantage, meet evolving customer needs, and attract top talent. Prioritizing innovation can also improve the IT-business relationship by positioning the IT organization as a partner that is uniquely suited to evaluate ideas and pursue those most likely to succeed.
Two conversations on Peter High’s Technovation podcast with Intuit’s Chief Information Security and Fraud Prevention Officer, Atticus Tysen, and Chief Data Officer, Ashok Srivastava, show how Intuit has reinvented itself through IT-driven experimentation driven by a desire to solve real business problems and foster a strong IT-business partnership in the process. These interviews show how a formalized test-and-learn process, a set of practices formalizing the steps taken to ideate, conduct pilots, analyze results and scale valuable ideas across an enterprise, can be used to systematically scale innovation and deliver a range of benefits. Among them:
–Change the culture of the IT organization to encourage more frequent ideation and support team members in voicing ideas they might not have previously
–Empower the IT organization with data and agility that allows it to show up as a true business partner
-Increase the influence of the IT organization to build trust and credibility with the business
-Eliminate silos and encourage expansive thinking to ensure the creation of durable, enterprise-grade solutions
Intuit’s innovation journey highlights these improvements in action, as we’ll see below. We will also share Metis Strategy’s 10-step test-and-learn process that you can implement in your own organization.
“At Intuit, experimentation is everyone’s job,” said Brad Smith, Intuit’s former Executive Chairman. Building a culture of experimentation and innovation requires creating a safe space to allow risk-taking and encourage more people to bring ideas to the table. Intuit’s IT organization prides itself on its hypothesis-driven testing culture designed to pursue new ideas with clear business outcomes rather than rely on legacy solutions, bolstering the IT organization’s strategic value.
Solidifying a test-and-learn process positions IT organizations to play a more active role with business teams, understand customer needs, unlock innovation opportunities, and change the culture of IT from reactive order-takers who “just” keep the lights on to partners who help shape the future of the enterprise. At Intuit, the test-and-learn process is guided by the company’s two innovation competencies, Customer Driven Innovation and Design for Delight, which drive all solution development and ensure strategic focus throughout the ideation process. These defined principles, outlined and enforced by the Intuit labs, help narrow down and develop winning ideas by ensuring new solutions unlock value and solve real problems.
IT leaders must be change champions to ensure the successful adoption of a test-and-learn process and the subsequent shift in culture required to improve the IT-business partnership. Broad participation in the test-and-learn process happens when the process is accessible and engagement is encouraged across all roles and tenures.
Intuit’s technology leaders incentivize innovation by giving employees unstructured time for ideation and solutioning, which fosters their participation in the test-and-learn process and refines the company’s ideation muscle outside of day-to-day responsibilities. Other incentives used to ensure test-and-learn participation include the Scott Cook Innovation Awards, which recognize employee innovators; mentorship programs to guide new participants through the test-and-learn process; rotational development programs to upskill employees; and workshops to refine critical thinking skills.
By enabling test-and-learn experimentation, IT leaders can begin to change their organizations’ culture and empower the IT organization to become a true business partner. Intuit notes that the test-and-learn culture has enabled a durable competitive advantage that allows the company to differentiate itself from competitors while focusing on what matters most to its customers.
In a recent survey, 63% of CIOs reported that they struggle to communicate IT’s business value to business partners. Formalizing a test-and-learn process can improve that communication by giving IT leaders the data needed to tell their innovation story and tie new ideas to tangible business outcomes.
Test-and-learn experimentation produces data surrounding the feasibility and value of scaling an idea. Ideas that are ultimately chosen to scale are backed by data on their projected success and business impact. IT organizations can also provide their business counterparts with data on risk mitigation and projected costs based on the initial testing.
Tysen names data as the primary enabler for successful test-and-learn experimentation as it creates opportunities to take calculated risks. Tysen and Srivastava work together to break down data silos and democratize data so teams can more effectively derive and deliver insights.
Pairing test-and-learn with agile delivery methods can promote a culture that rewards failing fast, iterating, and delivering value in the shortest sustainable time. Intuit focuses on lessons learned from experiments rather than if one was a success or a failure.
Intuit’s innovation competency, Design for Delight, further showcases agile ways of working by prioritizing constant customer feedback, quick prototypes, and iterative solutions to ensure initiatives pursue maximum customer value.
Since experimentation often happens on top of day-to-day responsibilities, transparent and realistic expectations must be set to prevent under-delivery or delays and preserve working relationships. Tysen manages business expectations by ensuring that the IT organization outperforms traditional IT metrics as a prerequisite for experimentation. Operational excellence builds trust between IT and business partners and creates space for test-and-learn experimentation that builds that trust further via successful ROI-generating innovation initiatives.
The typical IT delivery muscle must be refined, and often rebranded, to position the IT organization as an innovator rather than an expensive bottleneck. Tysen says his organization builds credibility with the rest of the business by leveraging business metrics and KPIs, not just IT metrics, when evaluating ideas generated through the test-and-learn process. Applying business metrics to IT-generated ideas ensures that the IT organization and the business are being held to the same standard and can help ensure fair appraisal and understanding of each initiative’s value.
In a recent survey, fewer than 5% of CIOs reported that they spend time talking about business outcomes or measuring the business outcomes created by the technology they deploy. This is a significant oversight preventing buy-in and limiting the IT-business partnership. Tysen emphasizes the importance of listening to partners to ensure his organization accurately understands their problems so he knows what is needed to create relevant soultions. The consistent use of business metrics across Intuit also ensures the appropriate acknowledgment of IT’s test-and-learn successes.
Test-and-learn experimentation breaks down traditional business silos and seeks to prevent ad-hoc ideation, eliminate repetitive solutioning, and facilitate cross-functional collaboration. It also promotes enterprise thinking, a practice of monitoring cross-functional requirements, scalability considerations, and long-term needs such as reducing future rework and technical debt.
Srivastava notes that Intuit’s process for test-and-learn experimentation relies on conducting deliberate tests that solve specific and identified problems rather than needless, temporary solutions. Test-and-learn experimentation not only brings MVPs to life with speed but also facilitates deliberate and intentional conversations about long-term considerations and dependencies during the product creation process, ensuring that the final product meets as many consumer needs as possible.
When working with clients seeking to streamline and scale innovation, we use a 10-step test-and-learn process to govern the intake of ideas, manage stakeholder expectations, accurately reflect capacity, and capture data to inform a solution’s journey. This process helped a recent client identify and eliminate silos that hindered collaboration while elevating the IT organization to the status of a business partner rather than an order taker.
Implementing a test-and-learn experimentation process enables an organization to narrow an infinite number of ideas and pursue only those that will deliver the most value. The IT organization is uniquely positioned to facilitate this process and help the business identify winning ideas due to its digital testing capabilities and data collection methodologies.
Working closely with business partners can help teams across the organization avoid placing big bets on ideas that may drain their resources without delivering the needed value. Prioritizing resource allocation based on test data and iterating throughout the solution development process creates a virtuous cycle where the business will increase its speed to market for winning ideas while guaranteeing maximum customer satisfaction.
The benefits that come from implementing a test-and-learn process will not be realized overnight. A structured approach to change management and user adoption is needed to ensure an effective transition. It makes sense to start small. With support from internal change champions, consider piloting a beta test-and-learn process, secure quick wins, and use that momentum to facilitate a broader rollout.
Once adopted, an enterprise might face execution hurdles that prevent maximum value realization. For example, a company may not have the discipline needed to define the hypotheses that drive testing, resulting in the creation of tests that do not produce the needed information.
Alternatively, existing data collection and analysis capabilities may not be sufficient to derive conclusive test results. An enterprise may also suffer from “analysis paralysis,” which can create stagnation when a test fails and lacks ownership over revisions. To learn more about avoiding these experimentation pitfalls, see this article that outlines how business experimentation frameworks can help mature a test-and-learn culture across an enterprise.
Thank you to everyone who attended and participated in the 12th Metis Strategy Digital Symposium. As access to AI and other technologies becomes increasingly ubiquitous, CIOs and their peers are working closer than ever with peers across the organization to develop technology-led products and services. Leaders continue to explore emerging technologies like ChatGPT while connecting digital initiatives to clear and measurable business value. Amid a backdrop of cybersecurity challenges and economic uncertainty, leaders remain focused on developing both new and existing talent and leveraging analytics to better serve customers.
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. In the meantime, click here to request an invitation for our next virtual event on May 11, 2023.
Among the discussion topics at February’s Digital Symposium:
Working backward from the customer and proving the value of technology investmentsTechnology leaders balance a portfolio of priorities and initiatives that have the potential to transform their companies. As artificial intelligence and other technologies evolve, executives are finding use cases that deliver value quickly in order to build momentum and secure long-term technology investment.
At clothing company Levi Strauss & Co., Chief Global Strategy & Artificial Intelligence Officer Katia Walsh sees cutting-edge technology as a way to maintain a competitive advantage. The starting point for any AI investment, Walsh said, is improving the customer experience. “If customers do not feel the impact of investment in AI, then it’s not worth doing.” After defining a strategy for AI, she noted that leaders must simultaneously establish the people, process, data, and technology building blocks necessary to execute on that strategy while delivering tangible business value. “It is absolutely essential that anyone embarking on this today delivers value immediately.”
Doing so requires engineers and others in IT to develop a strong business understanding, an increased commitment to customers, and a focus on business outcomes. To drive what he calls the biggest cultural shift at the organization, Goldman Sachs CIO Marco Argenti has implemented practices that require teams to work backwards from the customer when developing new solutions, thinking from both a technology and a product management standpoint to better understand what customers want. “The trick is to measure technology with business KPIs, because at the end of the day it’s all about outcomes,” Argenti said.
Upskilling talent and diversifying employee skill sets
As organizations continue to navigate ongoing social, economic, and geopolitical changes, technology leaders are seeking new opportunities to supercharge their talent strategies and prepare teams for whatever lies ahead. TIAA’s Chief Information and Client Services Officer, Sastry Durvasula, underscored the need to provide cross-functional opportunities for people to apply their strengths across the business while learning new technical and leadership skills. Durvasula launched internal gigs where employees can “major” in their current role, like analytics, and “minor” in a different role, such as cybersecurity. Giving individuals exposure to multiple fields creates a more skilled and flexible talent base and better prepares both individuals and the organization for the future.
As Oshkosh Corporation continued to enhance its data-rich culture, CIO Anupam Khare recognized the critical role talent would play in ensuring a successful pivot. However, like many other technology organizations, Khare had to contend with a shortage of data science talent. He decided to take a homegrown approach, identifying opportunities to develop internal talent within the organization. He recalled a member of Oshkosh’s legal team who was passionate about data, went through training, and is now one of the best data scientists at Oshkosh. Khare also brought data science education to the leadership level and received support from the CEO around creating digitally savvy leaders.
Exploring the potential use cases and threats of ChatGPT and generative AI
Over the past several months, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm, amassing millions of users globally and sparking conversations about how this new phase of generative AI can be used to unlock new business opportunities and create new products and services. It also means the demand for AI applications is growing significantly outside the IT department. George Brady, CIO at loanDepot, said loan officers are “experimenting like crazy with ChatGPT,” using the service to lower barriers for first-time homebuyers and provide more education to customers before they have their first conversation with a mortgage officer, thereby driving better engagement, decisions, and outcomes.
At the same time, this next phase of AI may present a number of risks. “A lot of us are in a position where we can’t get too excited about the positive applications [of ChatGPT] and have to think about guardrails so that bad actors don’t use this technology to cause harm to our companies,” Fannie Mae CIO Ramon Richards said. By putting appropriate guardrails in place, monitoring advancements, and leveraging those advancements safely, Richards is helping to protect the organization while positioning it to take advantage of this emerging technology as it evolves.
Aligning with business partners and strategies
Truly transforming an enterprise requires tight alignment across different organizations to advance business and technology strategies in parallel. Technology leaders play a key role in making connections across teams and using technology tools and new processes to enable business partners.
At Vulcan Materials Company, CIO Krzysztof Soltan is refreshing the company’s data strategy by tying it to the corporate business strategy and connecting it to each business function. By making real-time data accessible and available across the business, Soltan is able to better support Vulcan’s business processes and make more informed strategic decisions. As the needs and desired outcomes of the business change, so too will the data strategy and its success measures.
As Cardinal Health went through a reorganization, CIO Michelle Greene took the opportunity to drive “enterprise thinking” and solidify the organizational change by establishing key roles specifically focused on alignment with the business and its needs. The tight alignment has blurred the traditional lines between technology teams and others in the organization. “When sitting in a room, you might not be able to know who’s business and who’s IT,” she said.
Exploring continued opportunities for professional growth
Technology’s expanding influence across the enterprise is enabling leaders to gain new responsibilities and avenues for professional development that may have not been on their roadmap.
At Cenlar, Rob Lux first held the CIO role before transitioning to the COO role when the former COO departed. He then took on the co-CEO role when the company’s CEO retired earlier than expected. “I’m an accidental COO,” said Lux. “It wasn’t part of my career or succession plan.” He explained that the path from CIO to COO can work because CIOs are one of the few C-suite positions that are able to see across the breadth of the organization. For those that want to move beyond the CIO role, Lux advised getting out of the comfort zone and taking risks, even if just for a period of time. “Don’t be accidental like me,” he said. “Build a career plan so you’re prepared.”
Meanwhile, Intercontinental Exchange Inc.’s Mark Wassersug went through a number of title changes himself, most recently from COO to “accidental CIO.” Through these roles, Wassersug was able to oversee a number of successful acquisitions and ensure early communication, bringing corporate tools together, and solidifying culture throughout the organization. The CIO and COO roles have been particularly useful when overseeing mergers and acquisitions, allowing Wassersug to not only bring the required tools and technologies together, but also to ensure smooth transitions by being transparent about changes and strengthen the culture by having expertised colleagues work side by side with new colleagues across the organization.
Wassersug also discussed the importance of developing a relationship with the company’s board, and finding opportunities to educate on foundational technology and operations. By doing this quarterly, “there was a much deeper understanding during board meetings [that] made conversations much more meaningful and productive.”
The recent system failures at Southwest Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration caused major disruptions for travelers, pilots, and cabin crew across the country. It also underscored the importance of prioritizing technology modernization initiatives, data integration, and the management of technical debt as the aviation industry races to make updates that many consider long overdue. This article will give a brief overview of both incidents and share lessons technology leaders can take to their own organizations.
In late December, a winter storm and frigid temperatures impacted airlines across the country. While many airlines bounced back relatively quickly, Southwest did not. Cancellations mounted and the company was unable to address them in a timely, automated way.
Southwest’s flight and crew scheduling is managed by a mainframe-based software that was built decades ago and is nearing the end of its life, according to the airline. When the system is overwhelmed, employees have to resort to manual processes. As the backlogs grew in December, “there just was not enough time in the day to work through the manual solutions,” Southwest COO Andrew Watterson said. By December 25, the Southwest team decided “the only way to pull the airline’s operations back from the brink would be to cancel even more flights: around two-thirds of its schedule for several days.” Nearly 17,000 flights were canceled, disrupting the lives of about two million customers.
The company is working with GE Digital to add new functions to its mainframe-based software, Crew Optimization (formerly known as SkySolver), to improve the flight and crew scheduling process. GE Digital owns the Crew Optimization technology. Bob Jordan, Southwest Airlines’ CEO, said the technology and processes worked as designed but “they just were all hit by overwhelming volume.” A GE spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that its software isn’t an end-to-end solution, but rather a backend algorithm that airlines can supplement with other software to manage disruptions. Southwest and GE Digital are working together to develop a new release for the software to address past problems to reduce the need to do so manually.
Unions at Southwest have been urging the company to modernize the antiquated scheduling technology. “We’ve been harping on them since 2015-ish every year,” Southwest pilots union vice president Mike Santoro told CNN. In 2022, the Southwest flight attendants union wrote a letter to management prioritizing “modernization of the antiquated reserve system” and “improved communication tools to alleviate long scheduling hold times” over pay increases. Watterson said that Southwest was working through multi-year system upgrades, and had focused on maintenance and group operations ahead of crew-scheduling updates.
As a result of the disruptions, regulators and lawmakers have called for investigations and penalties against the airline. Additionally, the company’s board has created an operations review committee and the company has committed more than $1 billion of its annual operating budget to maintaining and upgrading IT systems as part of a five-year strategic plan. The events have cost Southwest Airlines an estimated $725 to $825 million, and the ripple effects continue to be felt.
Just weeks after the Southwest meltdown, the FAA’s system experienced an outage that led to thousands more travelers experiencing flight delays and cancellations. Like Southwest, the FAA’s outage originated from systems scheduled for upgrades. The affected system, Notice to Air Missions (NOTAMs), is a critical tool for alerting pilots about conditions that could impact flight safety and for real-time information on flight hazards and restrictions. Pilots are required to consult NOTAMs before every flight.
Due to safety concerns and to address the outage, the FAA grounded departures nationwide for the first time since 9/11. “Today’s FAA catastrophic system failure is a clear sign that America’s transportation network desperately needs significant upgrades,” said Geoff Freeman, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association. “Americans deserve an end-to-end travel experience that is seamless and secure. And our nation’s economy depends on a best-in-class air travel system.”
The FAA has identified a damaged database file on systems scheduled for upgrades as the cause behind its system outage, and found no evidence of a cyberattack. Investigations are ongoing to prevent any similar disruptions to travelers in the future.
New tools are being developed, some originating from startups, to modernize and automate processes and systems in the airline industry that are manual, siloed, and outdated. Executives at a number of major airlines have reaffirmed their commitments to investing in technology modernization and operational infrastructure during their January quarterly earnings calls.
The examples above serve as cautionary tales on the potential dangers of not addressing needed system upgrades in a timely manner. Technology leaders can keep the following points in mind as they build organizational resilience amid a fast-changing technology landscape:
Don’t put modernization efforts on the back burner. CIOs and their organizations are constantly balancing a shifting portfolio of initiatives. Challenges at Southwest and the FAA illustrate the heightened risk and serious consequences of waiting to make critical upgrades or letting technical debt pile up. If your team doesn’t have a strategy for chipping away at that technical debt, it’s time to address it.
Connect the dots between internal systems, employees, and customers. Long-reliable legacy systems may be an afterthought for many organizations (until they stop working, that is). Incorporate maintenance and upgrades into short-term and long-term business and technology strategies with an emphasis on how these systems ultimately affect employee and customer outcomes.
Have a backup plan and prepare for the worst. Develop and regularly test response plans with teams to reduce risk and ensure the organization is prepared to navigate potential mishaps.
Leverage cloud-based systems where appropriate. Partnerships with cloud providers are expected to help airlines improve their technologies. A shift to cloud solutions is no simple or risk-free task, and successful implementations go well beyond simply installing the technology, but strategically scaling these technologies can create greater operational agility, help automate processes, and make data integration more seamless and secure.
Continue to enable real-time data and communication that can take place across teams and organizations. Where possible, eliminate silos that can slow and reduce the quality of data sharing and, at worst, bring operations to a halt. Ensuring accurate and accessible data enterprise-wide is not a small task and often requires a robust data strategy to execute effectively, but its benefits can extend well beyond helping with crisis response.
Continue to gather and listen to feedback. For executives especially, careful listening and communication are key to empowering teams, creating an effective digital experience, and ensuring they have the tools needed to do their jobs.
Our next Digital Symposium is just around the corner. Join us on February 16 as technology executives and other industry leaders discuss how AI is transforming their companies, the role of technology in driving sustainability initiatives, and how to build a culture of innovation in trying times.
CIOs and other technology leaders, register here to reserve your spot today and stay tuned for agenda updates. We look forward to seeing you!
12:30 p.m.
12:40 – 1:05 p.m.
Establishing a Data Strategy in Complex Organizations
Krzysztof Soltan, Chief Information Officer, Vulcan Materials Company
Anupam Khare, Chief Information Officer, Oshkosh Corporation
1:05 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Talent’s Strategic Role in Making Transformations Stick
Sastry Durvasula, Chief Information and Client Services Officer, TIAA
Ramon Richards, Chief Information Officer, Fannie Mae
1:30 – 1:55 p.m.
From CIO to COO: Tech Leaders’ Expanding Operational Purview
Rob Lux, Chief Operating Officer & Fmr. Co-CEO, Cenlar
Mark Wassersug, Chief Infromation Officer & Fmr. COO, Intercontinental Exchange Inc.
1:55 – 2:20 p.m.
Becoming an AI Company
Katia Walsh, Chief Global Strategy & Artificial Intelligence Officer, Levi Strauss & Co.
George Brady, Chief Information Officer, loanDepot
2:20 – 2:45 p.m.
Cultivating an Enterprise Mindset
Michelle Greene, Chief Information Officer, Cardinal Health
Marco Argenti, Chief Information Officer, Goldman Sachs
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!
As we enter 2023, many technology executives are preparing their organizations for a possible economic downturn. In addition to pursuing growth and transformation initiatives (though perhaps with a tighter budget than before), they are exploring ways in which technology can deliver efficiency and resilience.
In a recent episode of “Forbes Talks”, Peter High joins Diane Brady to discuss the growing role of the CIO and technology in the workplace, as well as the evolving technology landscape in 2023 and beyond.
Watch the Forbes interview with Peter High below:
Thank you to all who attended the 11th Metis Strategy Digital Symposium. As we enter 2023, many organizations are seeking faster pathways to growth and opportunities to boost resilience in anticipation of economic headwinds. Nearly 60% of attendees noted rising inflation and interest rates as the macro issue that will have the biggest impact on their organizations in the year ahead.
Modernization efforts remain a priority as companies seek to drive efficiencies and revenue growth. Chief Information Officers and their peers are also strengthening relationships with business partners as digital technologies play an increasingly greater role in product development, operations, and customer experience.
Below are highlights from the event. Stay tuned to the Metis Strategy YouTube channel and Technovation podcast in the coming weeks for recordings of individual panel discussions. In the meantime, click here to request an invitation for our next virtual event on February 16, 2023.
Poll: Which macro issue do you anticipate will have the biggest impact on your organization in the year ahead?
In preparation for the year ahead, technology leaders noted they are:
As economic pressures add potential challenges to organizations across industries, technology leaders are deepening relationships with business partners to deliver tangible value quickly.
At Magna International, Chief Digital and Information Officer Boris Shulkin is focusing his efforts on identifying use cases and partnering with business teams on execution, adding that “credit can be shared when things go well.” Shulkin noted that his role is rising in importance as cybersecurity and operational efficiency become more critical to the bottom line of the company’s manufacturing facilities.
At supermarket chain Giant Eagle, CIO Kirk Ball brings front line workers into the product development process from the start to ensure it aligns with their needs. Spending time in the shoes of end-users helps eliminate friction and provide them with the necessary tools, data, and capabilities to do their jobs. He also continues to engage with peers and business partners across Giant Eagle on the company’s transformation efforts, which will be executed over the next three to five years. “It’s not my strategy, it’s our strategy,” he said.
The increased collaboration with teams outside IT underscores the need for more customer- and business-centric thinking. Jennifer Hartsock, Chief Information and Digital Officer at Cargill, emphasized the need to think as a business leader first and a technology leader second, working alongside peers to understand the business context, develop strong relationships, and focus on solutions that truly serve the broader organization. “Sometimes we’re not prepared to truly understand what we’re trying to enable,” Hartsock said. She encouraged other leaders to lean into tough conversations, make tradeoffs where necessary, and meet others where they are so that their voices are heard and strategy creation becomes a “together conversation.”
As technology and digital leaders continue to lead cross-functional initiatives, they’re proactively looking at new technologies to create new opportunities and address existing challenges. At Tractor Supply Co., one area Chief Technology, Digital Commerce, and Strategy Officer Rob Mills is focusing his efforts is M&A. At the table with C-suite peers, his purview allows him to articulate not only how to integrate a particular acquisition, but also the impact it will have on the company’s technology platform and architecture years down the road. That strategic focus opens new conversations about how the technology organization can best adapt to ensure any M&A activity has the needed processes and technologies behind it to drive long-term opportunities.
While companies continue to build out internal products and services that support the customized needs of their business, some MSDS speakers have taken the opportunity to commercialize their offerings to customers, using technology as a means to connect to partner ecosystems. At Pilot Company, Chief Technology Officer Michael Rodgers developed a cloud- and API-first strategy that focuses on utility, functionality, and efficiency for drivers and team members. The company has built a platform that allows the company to expose those APIs to other trucking companies. This approach allows Pilot to embed its technology directly into apps like GasBuddy, giving drivers using the app the ability to engage seamlessly with Pilot’s services.
Meta’s rebrand as enterprise engineering meant embracing two broad mindsets: understanding and incorporating internal employees into product building, and making a fundamental shift to a “build” culture that can provide customers with custom tools, technologies, and platforms needed to do their jobs in the most effective and efficient way possible, CIO Atish Banerjea said. “You’re essentially going away from a mindset where your engineers are just taking in a third-party system and configuring it.” Building tools for internal users has also influenced development of commercial products. One product designed to make onboarding information accessible to new Meta employees ultimately became part of the company’s Workplace offering for external customers.
At Toptal, the world’s largest remote working company, CEO and Co-Founder Taso Du Val spoke to the benefits of building platforms, paired with robust data and information architecture, to drive greater agility. Since Toptal built and owns all parts of its customized software platform, it is able to create synergies, scale processes, and make changes more quickly. On the flipside, the customized nature of those internal systems makes it unlikely those technologies could become a commercial product.
At XPO, CIO-turned-CEO Mario Harik is driving a strategy focused on growth and using technology to better serve customers, help goods move through the supply chain, operate more productively, and efficiently expand margins. As XPO grows, there has been more of a focus on financial outcomes and tech stacks contributing to company expansion.
During his time as CIO, Harik learned to prioritize the commercial outcomes of technology solutions, and emphasized the importance of financial acumen. “Knowing the impact on the top line and the bottom line is essential for investments and getting expected outcomes,” Harik said. As MSDS attendees contemplate an expanded role in the C-suite, they are looking to sharpen customer centricity and financial acumen.
Poll: As you contemplate an expanded C-suite role, which skill or focus area are you most looking to sharpen?
Kelly Kent, Chief Transformation Officer at ServiceNow, said her work with a number of organizations on their transformation efforts is surfacing new conversations around metrics. While productivity is still top of mind in any transformation initiative, companies now are asking about the best ways to measure customer and employee experience, as well as measure revenue impact from digital channels. The ability to track and manage those metrics, both financial and not, will be key for CIOs as they look to move at scale and with speed for their companies in 2023.
Today’s emerging technologies are tomorrow’s big disruptors. To make organizations more nimble, technology executives are focused on creating more opportunities for innovation and improving test-and-learn processes. Gail Evans, Chief Digital and Technology Officer for Disney Parks, Experiences, and Products, first listens to customers, cast members and others to better understand the outcomes to chase. She encourages teams to “test before you invest” – to pause and think about what to test, assess the cost of building, and fully consider the value that a new solution would deliver to an end user before investing heavily in a new initiative.
Evans encouraged other executives seeking to expand innovation efforts to pay close attention to and understand mega-trends, have a game plan for responding to major technology and business disruptors, and ensure innovation is open to everyone at the company rather than just one person or one team. “Every employee that is in your company innovates something.”
Poll: How much of your IT budget is currently allocated toward ‘grow/transform’ activities?
At Little Caesars, CIO Anita Klopfenstein helps operationalize innovation through “Area 51,” a group that comes up with a number of potential solutions that haven’t gone into production, such as efforts to reduce waste or automate production lines. Key success metrics are tied to each initiative. If something shows promise, teams will build a prototype and roll it out with a franchisee that is open to new technology. They will develop the technology and measure progress until it reaches the desired success metrics before gradually rolling out successful initiatives systemwide. To drive innovative thinking, Klopfenstein encourages members of the IT team to work in stores a few times a year to understand how the technologies they have built impact everyday workflows. “There have been several cases where just moving a button from one side of the screen to another…really impacted the operations of the store.”
In interviews with more than 100 digital and technology leaders on the Technovation podcast in 2022, executives shared the technologies and trends they believe have the potential to deliver significant value to their organizations in the years ahead. For the fourth year in a row, analytics, machine learning/AI, and cloud were the top three trends on executives’ radars.
A closer inspection of the interviews finds that more analytics use cases are bearing fruit across organizations as teams place greater emphasis on data strategy and governance. Developing solid data foundations enables new capabilities and opens the door for AI and machine learning at scale. We expect to see this focus continue in the year ahead.
Some new trends also began to emerge this year, including the metaverse and IT’s growing role in environmental sustainability and other ESG initiatives. There is also continued interest in the new ways of working and the tools and practices that will bring them to life. See below for more on the trends that are rising in importance in the year ahead.
Companies across industries are increasingly leveraging machine learning models to make sense of the large amount of data they collect. Today, machine learning capabilities are “not just niche to businesses that try to answer decision support-like type questions that rely on predictability,” said Neal Sample, former CIO of Northwestern Mutual. “Entire industries are being upended by better thinking around data.” What does this better thinking look like? Increasingly, it means leveraging data and analytics capabilities to deliver differentiated products and services for customers.
Anil Bhatt, Global CIO of Elevance Health (formerly Anthem Inc.), detailed how AI helps deliver better customer experiences through personalization. The symptom triage function in the company’s Sydney Health App, for example, can identify the symptoms a member is experiencing and analyze why they are reaching out for care, helping them receive personalized care more quickly and driving higher member satisfaction.
Similarly, Rite Aid’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Justin Mennen, notes that advances in AI and machine learning “are driving a completely different level of personalization.” Through the company’s partnership with Google, Rite Aid is using data and analytics to drive insights for the business and for customers, including tools that help customers choose the right medical products based on where they are in their journey.
The continued rise of data and analytics capabilities brings with it a continued need for talented team members to drive those initiatives forward. Ashok Srivastava, Intuit’s Chief Data Officer, began the journey to advance AI nearly five years ago by investing in skills development and recruiting. “We built this team of artificial intelligence scientists and engineers and we focused them on what matters most, and that means what is best for the end customer,” he said. One win came from merging data and AI teams. “We could see that that data platform was powering a lot of experiences and as we focused those data platforms on AI and then on analytics, we could see that tremendous benefits were coming out of it.” Some of these benefits included Intuit’s “follow-me-home” approach to personal finance, in which AI models use data to understand how the customer is using the product, automatically categorize customer transactions, and provide insights to the customer about their financial health.
Check out our compilation of other technology leaders on Technovation with Peter High speaking about how their organizations are using artificial intelligence:
A new trend that has intrigued (and puzzled) some technology executives is the metaverse. The concept has been around for a while (see Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash and the virtual world of the Wachowski sisters’ 1999 film The Matrix), but only recently has it emerged in a business context. Today, we see executives largely focused on the adoption of digital twins and augmented/virtual reality tools – two technologies often associated with the metaverse – for use cases ranging from product development to employee training.
Susan Doniz, Chief Information Officer of Boeing, says the company sees benefits of digital twin technology, noting that the combination of physical and digital worlds allows the company to efficiently iterate on new designs, to “fly the airplane thousands of times before we really fly it, and build it thousands of times before we really build it.” At Raytheon, Chief Digital Officer and SVP for Enterprise Services Vince Campisi and his team are using digital simulations of factories to optimize facility usage.
Technology leaders recognize the need to stay up to date on emerging metaverse-related technologies, from digital twins to AR/VR and Web3. “Not all of it is always relevant in the moment, but if you don’t start to get yourself up to speed and know where the opportunities lie, then I think you find yourself at the tail end,” said Cindy Hoots, Chief Digital Officer and Chief Information Officer of AstraZeneca. Her team invested in an experience-based group at AstraZeneca called ‘XR’. “Whether it’s the virtual reality or augmented reality team, we’ve got our own metaverse environment looking at how digital twins that we already have play into that, and just trying to build up some internal muscle on some of these trends.”
The metaverse, whatever form it may take, also creates new opportunities for collaboration and culture building, particularly in hybrid environments in which many work remotely. Likening the impact of the metaverse to that of ‘dilithium crystals’, the material used in the Star Trek universe to power warp-speed faster-than-light space travel, Cummins CIO Earl Newsome said the technology can act as a “transporter” of sorts, bringing people together from across the world. “I think we’re going to be able to leverage the metaverse to do some of that,” he explained, “especially when the metaverse gets to be really mixed reality.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, cybersecurity remained top of mind for business technology leaders in 2022. As attacks grow more prevalent and sophisticated, CIOs continue to focus on mitigating risk and building a culture of cybersecurity awareness across their organizations.
At Cummins, Earl Newsome is training his team to minimize the number of preventable cyberattacks through the CyberSMART program, which equips “cyber soldiers” with the tools needed to sniff out phishing schemes, be more aware of their surroundings, and improve password management. “The issue is either on two legs or two wires,” Earl joked. “The two legs issue is the one that we need to focus on because 82% of all cybersecurity issues have a human element in them.”
The other 18% of cyberattacks may pose trickier to prevent, but CIOs are looking to new technologies and tools to help identify when attacks are occurring and mitigate the risk of exposure. Mike Feliton, CIO of Crocs, sees an opportunity with machine learning and RPA to quickly detect when an attack is occurring. “Noticing when a brute force attack is hitting your organization and being able to shut that down before any of your employees have to get engaged is essential because we can cut it off before anything starts to explode.”
More sophisticated attacks are likely to trouble some companies as computational capabilities advance. As research and development in quantum computing evolves, it is time for organizations to plan for post-quantum cryptography, said Kevin Stine, Chief of the Applied Cybersecurity Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory. With the rise of quantum computers, even the most secure systems today could be at serious risk of being breached without new forms of protection.
Yet while quantum computers create the risk of more advanced cyberattacks, they also offer the benefit of more advanced cybersecurity measures. Sangy Vatsa, Global Chief Technology & Digital Officer of FIS, is excited about the possibilities quantum can bring to the cybersecurity landscape.
While not a “tech trend” we have typically tracked across podcast episodes, sustainability appeared much more frequently this year as executives contemplated IT’s role in contributing to enterprise ESG initiatives.
Consumers are now, more than ever, concerned with how a company is addressing these issues, particularly in the energy sector. “Customers are paying attention to what companies are doing […] in terms of sustainability,” said Dak Liyanearachchi, Head of Data and Technology at NRG Energy. He noted “the decarbonization of our economy” as a trend that stands out.
“It really doesn’t matter what you think about climate change and sustainability, you are going to deal with it,” said Edward Wagoner, CIO of Digital at JLL. For technology leaders, the focus is on how best to do it. To name one example, Edward noted opportunities organizations have to use IoT and sensor technology to measure water and energy usage and reduce waste.
Companies are pursuing other technology-led sustainability solutions. Earlier this year, Frank Cassulo, Chief Digital Officer at Chevron, discussed Chevron New Energies, a business unit launched late last year that aims to produce low-carbon solutions (e.g. hydrogen) and reduce carbon emissions for both customers and internal operations. “We’re really looking at where we have competitive advantages and how we can help accelerate that energy transition,” he said. “It’s exciting for us to both think about how we continuously improve delivering the products today, but also transitioning to a lower carbon future that we’re going to play a large part in.”
While the energy industry is put under the microscope when it comes to sustainability, it certainly isn’t the only industry that is looking at lowering carbon emissions. Avery Dennison CIO Nick Colisto has been the primary driver of sustainability both within IT and within the business. In his view, IT is uniquely positioned to be a driver of sustainability at a company. “We incorporated [sustainability] as one of our strategic priorities in IT,” Nick said. “It’s essentially about innovation in building products that satisfy recycling, composting, and reuse of single-use consumer packaging and apparel in our products and in our solutions.”
At Avery Dennison, a low-code technology system called AD Circular makes it easier for customers to recycle used paper and filmic label liners across Europe. The company also introduced atma.io, a cloud platform that uses connected-product technology to track products through the value chain.
In addition to the topics noted above, other trends show signs of gaining traction in 2023:
Stay tuned to Technovation in 2023 for more discussions about the transformative technologies driving organizations forward.
To some, the term artificial intelligence evokes images from The Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, or, for the more optimistic, WALL-E. But today AI might isn’t as far out as many might think. Today, machine learning and AI applications are being used to personalize customer experiences, predict behaviors, and improve processes across industries.
On the Technovation podcast, Metis Strategy President Peter High asks tech executives about the trends that excite them and the new projects making their way onto their roadmaps. This year, artificial intelligence was often at the top of the list. In this video, executives from Elevance Health, ServiceNow, Whirlpool, Guardian Life, Levi Strauss, Upstart, and Intel share how they are embedding artificial intelligence into their organizations and ponder AI’s future trajectory. For more insights into how today’s technology leaders are adopting artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, be sure to check out the full podcast episodes and YouTube channel.
Zoetis’ Chief Information & Digital Officer Wafaa Mamilli has been promoted to the post of Executive Vice President, Chief Digital & Technology Officer and Group President for China, Brazil, and Precision Animal Health. Zoetis is the world’s largest manufacturers of animal pharmaceuticals. This post represents a major leap forward in Mamilli’s responsibilities, driving the accelerated growth of two key markets, as well as the company’s precision animal health businesses and advancing our global customer experience programs. Mamilli is a big believer that all tech and digital executives ought to have a profound impact if not primary responsibility for customer experience in the digital age.
“I’ve always thought of my role as a business leader with technology accountability and have been passionate about the role of digital and data in reimagining animal health and powering Zoetis’ business. I am equally excited to fully harness our innovative portfolio, along with my global experience, to deliver the most value to our customers in key growth areas of our business.”
She will continue to oversee Zoetis’ digital and data analytic strategies as well as the Information Technology and cybersecurity teams.
Prior to joining Zoetis in 2020, Mamilli was with Eli Lilly and Company for 20 years. She held a variety of International roles with increasing responsibility, and ultimately served as the Global Chief Information Officer for the company’s business units. She also served as the company’s Chief Information Security Officer, a rare example of a CISO growing into CIO responsibilities, though surely a pathway that may become more frequent in an age when the former is growing in strategic importance.
Mamilli’s profile has grown tremendously in the past two years, including being the recipient of the 2022 MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Award, which honors executives who lead their organizations to deliver exemplary levels of business value through the innovative use of IT. She was also honored as a member of the Forbes CIO Next List, recognized among 50 influential technology leaders who are redefining the CIO role and driving innovation.
In addition to her outsized influence in tech and digital and now beyond within Zoetis, Mamilli is also on the leading edge of CIOs and CDO s who have been asked to serve on the boards of public companies with multiple billions of dollars in revenue. She serves on the board of directors of Fiserv, Inc., a global provider of payments and financial services technology solutions.
Mamilli has also been a champion of women in technology, as a leader of the T200, a group of female technology executives who not only support each other, but also mentor the next generation of female tech and digital execs.
She earned a master’s degree in Computer Science from INSEA in Rabat, Morocco, and a master’s degree in Business Applications of Information and Technology from Université Rennes in Rennes, France.
Peter High is President of Metis Strategy, a business and IT advisory firm. He has written two bestselling books, and his third, Getting to Nimble, was recently released. He also moderates the Technovation podcast series and speaks at conferences around the world. Follow him on Twitter @PeterAHigh.
