9/11/2018
By Peter High. Published on Forbes
I have interviewed Mike Capone multiple times in his career. When he was the CIO and head of Product at Automatic Data Processing (ADP), he noted with satisfaction the advantages of having multiple roles in one company rather than the same role in many companies. Across his 26 years at ADP, he had many IT and business unit jobs including running one of ADP’s businesses.
That positioned him well when he joined what was then the largest New York based technology start up, Medidata Solutions as chief operating officer. At the beginning of this year, he took the biggest leap of all to become CEO of analytics software and visualization analytics leader Qlik. When I caught up with him in his office in New York recently, he was enthusiastic about his new opportunity and the space that his company is in. He also offered thoughts about the advantages he currently draws from his time as CIO now that they are among his clients. Finally, he offered suggestions for others who might wish to follow in his footsteps.
Peter High: Congratulations on ascending to your first role as CEO. Could you give an overview of Qlik’s business?
Mike Capone: Qlik is one of the world’s leading providers of analytics software and visualization analytics. We pride ourselves on our ability to solve both simple and complex analytics problems for our customers. Our strengths are working efficiently with end-users, being user-friendly, and building application analytics that benefit the entire enterprise in solving complex problems. Qlik’s vision is to embed analytics into every operational and strategic decision-making process inside every company. We strongly believe that data is the currency of the future, and therefore, organizations must become data literate to compete in the future.
To read the full interview, please visit Forbes
9/04/2018
Index Ventures General Partner, Mike Volpi, has an unusual distinction in the world of venture capital: he sits on the board of one of the oldest and largest automotive companies in the world, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (the company was actually formed in 2014, but the parts that came together are each quite old), and on the board of companies like Aurora, which provides self-driving car technology. As such, he understands and is helping to shape autonomous driving from the supply and demand sides deeper than most.
Born in Italy, raised in Japan, and educated in the United States, Volpi spent time at Cisco during times of extraordinary growth. As Chief Strategy Officer for the company he led corporate strategy, strategic alliances, and business development. During the seven years in which he held that role (spanning from 1994 through 2000), Volpi oversaw the acquisition of over 70 companies.
He started Index’s San Francisco office in 2009, ahead of the curve on tech’s move up the peninsula of Silicon Valley and into the city. Since then, he has led investments Arista Networks, Cloud.com, Hortonworks, Pure Storage, Sonos, and Zuora, among many other companies. We discuss the future of self driving cars, and several other topics in this far reaching interview.
(To listen to a podcast version of this interview, click this link. To read future articles like this one, follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: You have been a General Partner with Index Ventures since you joined the firm in 2009. One of the most prominent technologies you are involved in is the technology that powers autonomous vehicles. As you are an investor in that space, you have sat on the board of startups, such as Aurora, as well as the board of Fiat Chrysler. Could you elaborate on the different perspectives you gain from these diverse experiences with both digital native and digital immigrant organizations? Furthermore, can you talk about the progress that has been made in this industry now that the innovation that has been hyped up for years is becoming a reality?
Mike Volpi: There are two important messages to take away. The first is that the use of technology is enormously transformative and important to the business world, various segments of the industry, and society in general. There are 38,000 deaths in traffic accidents in the United States per year while places such as India see close to half a million deaths a year. This technology is built to change that and to create a safer environment for people to drive in. Additionally, this technology has a wide variety of ancillary benefits, such as the reduction of parking lots, the creation of urban driving environments, commute patterns, reduction of traffic, among others.
8/28/2018
It has been quite a decade for Frederic Kerrest. In 2009, he co-founded Okta after a long and productive stint at Salesforce. Since then, the company has gone from two to 1,300 employees, and has gone public. With a focus on web single sign-on, identity, and lifecycle management, Kerrest and Okta have become one of the ubiquitous digital native companies, leveraged by many household name companies.
As a firm that serves CIOs and CISOs in many cases, Kerrest had each of those roles at different times at Okta. He has ceded each, and now has people playing each role who not only run those internal functions for the company, but provide deep insights regarding the company’s product offering. In this interview, Kerrest talks about his entrepreneurial journey, the path to success, and what’s on the horizon for the company.
(To read future articles like this one, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: Since you co-founded Okta in 2009, the company has seen an enormous amount of change and growth. Could you elaborate on the genesis of Okta, focusing on what aspects from your prior experiences led you and Todd McKinnon to start the company?
Frederic Kerrest: All companies are becoming technology companies as they build applications and unlock new routes to the market that are engaging with their customers. Okta is focused on helping companies in this transition, both by improving the way they manage their extended enterprise, employees, contractors, and partners, as well as helping them improve their customer experience. Since starting in early 2009, we have gone from two to roughly 1,300 employees, zero to approximately $350 million in revenue, while serving 4,700 customers along the way. We went from two shared offices in one of my friend’s offices to ten locations in five countries. What is exciting is that from our perspective, we are just getting started.
To read the full article, please visit Forbes
Farmers Insurance has named Paul Wilson as its new chief information officer effective August 30, 2018. He comes to his new role with nearly 30 years of insurance knowledge and leadership experience.
In his role at Farmers, Wilson will serve as a member of the insurer group’s senior leadership team and oversee the development and application of all strategic IT initiatives.
“We are proud to welcome Paul to Farmers at an important time in the organization’s history as efforts continue in the area of technology innovation to better serve our customers,” said Jeff Dailey, CEO of Farmers Insurance. “With his extensive background in the insurance industry and IT leading transformational, digital and data-driven initiatives, we are confident Paul will be a strong asset to the Farmers team.”
8/27/2018
Rubrik, a Palo Alto, CA based company that delivers a single platform to manage and protect data in the cloud, at the edge, and on-premises, has named longtime VMware executive, Avon Puri, as its first chief information officer. As CIO, he has three mandates. First, to assemble the infrastructure to support the company’s growth to $1 billion in revenue and beyond. (In a release earlier this year, the company noted that it had achieved $300 million in global bookings run-rate.) He noted, “By infrastructure, I am referring not only to the technology necessary to support our growth, but the architecture, as well as the people and processes necessary to do so.”
His second mandate is based on the company’s leadership position in data management and protection. Puri noted, “We need to foster data intelligence in all that we do and remain top of the class.”
Understandably, we often read of former business stalwarts that become disrupted by digital native organizations, losing stature and market share along the way. Harvard Business School professor Sunil Gupta has written a book entitled Driving Digital Strategy, A Guide to Reimagining Your Business, providing a framework for businesses to follow to avoid this fate while thriving in the digital economy. Best Buy has gone from showroom for Amazon to a legitimate competitor with it within the realm of consumer electronics. Traditional media company, The New York Times has created a thriving digital product behind a carefully designed paywall. John Deere has formed a data-analysis arm to complement its farm-equipment business, substantially growing its business in the process.
(To listen to this interview in podcast form, please click this link. To read future articles like this one, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: I would like to start with your new book, Driving Digital Strategy, A Guide to Reimagining Your Business. This is a topic that is on the minds of many technology executives who lead immigrant organizations as opposed to digital native organizations. The challenge these digital immigrants face is profound given the legacy systems they have in place and the enormous scale on which they need to be transformed. Where do you believe these executives should look to begin this transformation?
Sunil Gupta: For the legacy companies, it is a more significant challenge than for a startup since a startup begins with a clean slate. With these legacy companies, I compare this transformation to changing an engine on a plane that is on fire while it is flying. Established companies must strengthen their core business while simultaneously building for the future, which is a daunting task. In my last ten years of research, which culminated in my book, I have found that there is not a single place that you need to touch for digital transformation. Instead, there are four broad parts that organizations need to look at more closely.
I do not believe that there is one single part of the organization that needs to change, but instead all four of these parts eventually must come together to make that transformation.
Regarding where to start, I would always recommend starting with the end consumer. This allows companies to understand how the consumer trends are changing, how the company’s value proposition is shifting, and if the company can solve the consumer pain points in a different way than what was previously done.
8/20/2018
Steve Phillips has joined Alorica, a leading platform to manage customer interactions as Chief Information Officer. In that role, he is responsible for prioritizing Alorica’s business needs from an IT perspective and enhancing operational excellence. He was brought into this role based on his experience as a global technology leader for more than 25 years, with a special focus on customer-focused IT strategy, digital transformation, cloud computing, and cybersecurity.
Alorica Chairman and CEO Andy Lee noted, “We can’t do what we do without technology. It’s through our technological capabilities that we’re able to empower our people to deliver insanely great customer experiences on behalf of the world’s best brands. Bringing on an experienced leader like Steve as our CIO demonstrates our continued commitment to developing innovative solutions under the right leadership to support our clients and their customers every day, in every interaction.”
Albert Hitchcock joined 174 year old Pearson as Chief Information Officer in early 2014, the company was already in the throes of a major transformation. It had moved its emphasis from publishing to education, and would announce a dedication to the latter the following year.
Hitchcock facilitated this change through a three-phased transformation, which includes radical simplification, platform strategy, and execution strategy. The radical simplification has included the consolidation of systems, moving from data centers to the cloud, and people and culture changes.
Now, under Hitchcock’s leadership, the company is moving toward a single platform, similar to Netflix for education, which will be highly scalable, global in nature, high-quality, and one that can deliver all of their experiences around the world to millions of learners.
Along the way, Hitchcock’s role has aggrandized, as he has moved from CIO to Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer of the company. Now his purview includes IT and digital transformation, but also product development, procurement, supply chain, customer service, and real estate.
To listen to this interview in podcast form, please visit this link.
Peter High: You are the Chief Operating and Technology Officer at Pearson. You took on these responsibilities in 2016 after two years as the company’s Chief Information Officer. Could you talk about your current purview? Additionally, could you explain why you changed roles and the differences between the responsibilities the roles entail?
Albert Hitchcock: I have been with Pearson for just over four years, having previously joined from Vodafone Group where I was the Group Chief Information Officer for seven years. When I joined Pearson, I was especially interested in the mission of the company and the agenda it had to transform education through the digital medium. I joined the company as the CIO and took on the responsibility to look into how we transform the company into a digital enterprise. One of my first roles was to look across the business and see how the company was operating. This entailed searching for ways we could implement technology to both streamline the way the company ran and how we served our customers. What became clear quickly was the need to radically simplify not only the underlying technology but furthermore, the way the company ran all of its operational processes. Moreover, it became clear how we delivered a competitive digital experience to our consumers and our institutional customers.
Through that process, one of the things that became evident was that large chunks of the company, if not the entire company, needed to go through a radical change. I was asked to take on additional responsibilities through that, in terms of taking on the digital product development. This was because it became clear that the enterprise IT and the way we were developing digital products needed to be closely aligned. Previously in the business, these two were separate and were almost competing for technology functions. It was a belief on my part that we needed to have an underlying design, digital architecture, and a way of working that was compatible across both enterprise IT and product development. That group was one of the first groups to come in addition to my existing CIO role.
Approximately a year later, one of the things we embarked upon through this process was a common ERP system, a common CRM, common operations processes, and common data such as customer data, product data, and vendor data. At the time, we did not have a single operations function across the company. Operations tended to be embedded in our regional organizations and other functions around the business. It became clear that in order to drive the process of alignment, commonality in ways of working, and the drive to a common data model, we needed to bring those functions together. I offered to take on the operations responsibilities such as procurement, supply chain, customer service, and even real estate. This was in an effort to drive a common model around the globe for operations. Furthermore, I have subsequently added in additional shared services. These functions coming together has allowed us to rapidly drive a more cohesive change across the business.
8/14/18
When Alvina Antar joined subscription-based software company, Zuora, four years ago as the first ever CIO, she did so after having been a customer of the company when she was the Director of Mergers & Acquisitions for Dell Information Technology. From the customer’s perspective, she recognized that means of procuring technology was shifting in many cases toward software as a service (SaaS) models where companies paid only for what they used. Zuora has dubbed this model as the subscription economy. As Antar notes, “Modern consumers are shifting from traditional ownership and demanding new consumption models which allow them to subscribe to the outcomes they want when they want them.”
Antar has fostered a community of CIOs from across Zuora’s customer base to foster learning and collaboration in new ways. She is also changing the way in which the IT department does things, as she has developed a Zuora on Zuora program, where IT acts as the company’s first and best customer, offering insights into Zuora’s product offering. She describes her experience and the implications of the subscription economy in this interview.
(To read future interviews like this one, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: Please describe Zuora’s business, and your role as CIO.
Alvina Antar: Zuora provides cloud-based software that enables any company in any industry to successfully launch, manage, transform, and thrive as a subscription business. Our vision is simple: we call it “The World Subscribed.” It’s the idea that one day every company will be a part of the Subscription Economy. My belief in our vision and seeing it first-hand as a customer is the reason I joined Zuora four years ago.
Our mission is to enable all companies to be successful in the Subscription Economy and our solution is purpose-built for dynamic, recurring revenue business models. Zuora Central is the system of record for subscription businesses. It functions as an intelligent subscription management hub that automates and orchestrates the entire subscription order-to-cash process, including billing and revenue recognition.
8/13/2018
When Ann Dozier joined Southern Wine & Spirits as an information technology executivein 2013, the company was already one of the largest private companies in the United States, with revenue in excess of $11 billion. Thanks to growth of the company, and the acquisition of another major wine and spirits distributor, Glazer’s, Forbes estimates that the company is approaching $18 billion in revenue. As such, it is the largest wine and spirit distributor in North America. To say that Dozier has had to manage through complex times is an understatement.
Dozier rose to the role of chief information officer in early 2015, and the deal with Glazer’s was announced about a year later. The acquisition provided an opportunity to rethink IT practices and technologies,l. As part of a broader digitization of the company, Dozier has modernized people practices, processes, and technologies. Chief among her digital priorities has been to ensure that customers and supplier-partners can interact with the company on their terms. Also, despite all of the growth and the changes to processes and technology, the experience for customers has been nearly seamless. Here is her story.
(To listen to a podcast version of this interview, please visit this link. To read future articles like this one, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: For those not familiar, could you tell us about Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits? Additionally, could you provide a brief description of your purview as Chief Information Officer of the organization?
Ann Dozier: Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits is North America’s largest wine and spirit distributor with over 21,500 employees, operating in 44 states as well as the District of Columbia, Canada, and the Caribbean. We currently have approximately 12.5 million square feet of warehouse space and 2,700 trucks in our fleet. Additionally, we have over five thousand brands, as we are the premier distributor for the majority of the beverages of choice in the alcohol industry.
