403: Sierra Ventures Managing Director Mark Fernandes discusses the five attributes he looks for in an entrepreneur. These five attributes include their ability to raise money beyond the early stages, their ability to attract talent, their ability to generate momentum, if they come prepared, and their ability to tell their story. In terms of what Mark looks for in a company, he cites that there needs to be a technology platform shift or a business model innovation that is applicable to something that they are doing. We also discuss Mark’s accidental path to the VC community, the CXO Advisory board Sierra has started, the importance of approaching investing from a bottoms-up and top-down approach, among other topics.
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402: UPS CIO Juan Perez details how the company has taken data from simply being an input for descriptive analytics to prescriptive analytics, which goes beyond predictive analytics. Juan has played an integral role in developing the company’s on-road integrated optimization and navigation system [ORION], which helps optimize the delivery paths that the company’s drivers take to make sure that they efficiently satisfy their service commitments to its customers. Juan also describes an advanced big data analytics project, which is designed to constantly take the massive amount of data points the company collects, learn from them, and use them to better predict what volume is going to come into their operations. We also discuss UPS’ strategic pillars, Juan’s take on artificial intelligence, the cloud, drones, and robotics, how UPS is using digital to enhance the physical experience that the customer receives, and a variety of other topics.
401: Express Scripts CTO emeritus Phil Finucane details Express Scripts’ integration with Cigna. While Cigna has a strong engineering organization, the two companies have different visions for how to execute a successful integration. Because of this, a large part of Phil’s job was to help Cigna understand how Express Scripts operated, to understand how Cigna operated, and to understand how the combined entity would interface with its business partners. From there, Phil looked to build a path that brought together the best of both worlds by bringing complementary strengths together. We also discuss the lessons Phil has pulled from his time in Silicon Valley, Express Scripts’ approach to eliminating technical debt, his take on artificial intelligence, and a variety of other topics.
397: Atlassian’s President, Jay Simons, and CIO, Archana Rao, discuss the unique culture of Atlassian. Both note that the company is extremely open, honest, and direct. The work of the executives is transparent to the rest of the company. Archana believes that allowing people to see other’s work, performance, and perspectives provides a recognition that there are challenges everywhere and it builds an immensely strong culture because people tend to work well together in this way. Jay has seen the company go from 100 to 3,000 employees in his 11 years with the company, and he declares that this culture has scaled remarkably, which in his mind is a testament to foundational parts of the culture that the company created.
396: E. & J. Gallo Winery CIO Sanjay Shringarpure elaborates on the changes the company has made to achieve its transformational vision. One of the major changes has involved transitioning IT toward supporting four verticals supporting each of the business functions of the company. We also discuss the cultural changes necessary to realize this vision, Sanjay’s take on blockchain and the cloud, the Wine OS platform the company has created, and a variety of other topics.
395: Liberty Mutual CIO James McGlennon discusses the company’s agile and cloud transformation, which has included a multi-pronged approach designed to eliminate or refactor legacy technology, send existing employees to coding immersion programs, have 90 percent of teams working in an agile fashion, and move from one percent to 25 percent of technology in the cloud with a goal to reach 100 percent. We also discuss James’ take on artificial intelligence, robotics, and augmented and virtual reality, how Liberty Mutual works with its different customer groups, what the company does at the business unit level versus the enterprise level, among other topics.
394: Schneider Electric CDO Herve Coureil discusses how Schneider has blended talent in the new digital unit. Herve believes the organization needs to balance the internal and external view, Herve does not believe in a digital organization that only includes external digital talent looking in from the outside or an exclusively internal team that is made up of subject matter experts, without an infusion of external talent. To create a mix, Schneider has focused on reskilling, retraining, and learning internally so everybody has the basic skills that go with digital while simultaneously recruiting new talent that can bring subject matter expertise and new digital skills to the team. We also discuss Herve’s take on the cloud, AI, and blockchain, how Herve manages such a large, distributed team, how his experience as a CFO helps him in his current role, among other topics.
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393: Adobe CIO Cynthia Stoddard discusses how the company has modernized its technology stack. She notes that architecture needed to lead the company’s decisions and be in everything that it did going forward. Through this modernization, Adobe has switched to being cloud-enabled and it has enabled architecture and business capability changes without causing disruption along the way. We also discuss Cynthia’s take on immersive technologies, how Adobe is using AI to complement its workforce, how the company has transitioned from selling box software to becoming more customer-facing, among other topics.
392: Ingram Micro CIO & CDO Tom Peck says that Ingram Micro is in race to win the customer experience. The speed in which IT is delivered has changed dramatically. In response, Ingram Micro has made massive changes around its IT team. These changes include shifting from a traditional waterfall approach to agile and scrum methodologies, changing its technology stack to be more reliant on microservices, getting people to collaborate in small teams, and showing businesses that a near-perfect product delivered in a short period of time is better than a perfect one in a long period of time. We also discuss Tom’s view on AI, IoT, and zero-trust architecture, why CIOs need to focus on strategy, ways in which the CIO role has remained the same over Tom’s several decades in the role, among other topics.
391: Washington Post Chief Product and Information Officer Shailesh Prakash describes the genesis story of Arc Publishing. Arc was initially built by the company to meet its own needs, but after realizing it had built one of the best media tech stacks in the industry, the company began selling it to other publishers. The Post now believes Arc Publishing has the ability to become a $100 million business. Shaliesh also shares his view on building technology in-house versus buying and integrating, his experience on the board of Blue Origin, how Jeff Bezos has helped the company further its technology abilities, and how the company partners with large tech organizations, such as Google, Apple, and Facebook, among other topics.
