How IT leaders can drive growth in 2024

okay well I think we've um I think we're live um hello everybody and uh and welcome uh I think what we might do is just hold off uh making a an official start for a minute just while people join the session and then we'll uh we'll get going if that's okay see people starting to uh to join in so that's looking good we might just hold off another 30 seconds or so and then uh kick off all right um all right well listen uh I think let's uh let's make a start in uh in the interest of time um firstly welcome uh welcome to today's session where we're going to be talking about how it leaders can drive growth in 2024 uh you may have noticed or you might have been expecting uh Vicki our CTO clearly I'm not Vicki um my name is Dan um I look after uh product and customer marketing here at exclaimer unfortunately Ely Vicki was uh called off to to something last minute and um couldn't make the session so um I'm going to be excuse me I'm going to be stepping in um and while I'm not an IT leader per se um I have worked in Tech um my whole career um and when I sort of add up the years it's sort certainly north of 20 um years which always makes me uh feel rather ancient but um yeah I've worked in sort of tech uh in sort of mostly a marketing um but also uh sales capacity um across software Hardware SAS mobile um including sort of companies like HP and blackberry and and uh minecast um to name a couple but um yeah I'm not going to sort of go into a whole background on myself I'm very pleased to be joined today by uh Steve uh and Ellie um Steve is uh director of engineering at uh well Sky and Steve I believe you're uh you're based in Kansas City so like big uh big weekend for you go Chiefs maybe excellent and um what and Ellie um Ellie Potter is CIO um as a service at inside Partners um Ellie Steve I might just let you guys do a little uh a quick intro of of yourselves if uh if that's good Ellie do you want to start yeah sounds great and I'm in the area so there you go San Francisco 49ers there that's complete coincidence right yeah say this is completely planned yes so uh yes I'm CIO is the service at inside Partners at Insight we are both a venture capital and a p company we have 550 companies plus and my role is to advise cxos so that includes CI CDO CTO any cxo on technology data strategy Etc and just a little bit of context about our portfolio companies because I think that's going to be relevant for the overall discussion um we bucket the companies into three categories one is very early growth the other one is mid and the other one is late late growth stage and the role of it changes drastically as companies progress from pre-revenue all all the way to Rapid scale fantastic thanks very much for that Ellie can I let me hand over to you Steve all right great thanks uh for having me here today uh excited to get uh going here so my name is Steve Odell like Dan said I'm from The Kin City area um smack dab here in the middle of the United States and yes go Chiefs the the big parade starts in about uh 55 minutes uh which I am glad I will not be there everyone's anticipating Taylor Swift to be there and it's going to it's going to be utter chaos so I'm I'm glad I'm here for now so I am with well Sky well sky is a major player here in the healthcare tech industry uh it's been a a company that's been growing real rapidly here in the Midwest covering All Care settings um that people need care for so uh I Prett recent here um this is just my fourth week starting but most of my background has been on the software development side uh I've owned uh it as well uh traditional it and I've been in the industry for about 17 years fantastic excellent so well as I said I I'm very pleased to be joined by by both of you um today for for our discussion and I think just um just to set the scene for for today's session um this is going to be a discussion based sessions so you'll be pleased to know that you're you're not going to be um shown 101 um PowerPoint slides um there will be no PowerPoint slides uh in fact and um just so that you're also aware um you um have an opportunity to ask questions there is a questions uh there should be a Q&A button on um on your Zoom screen um so if you would like to um pose a question uh please feel free to to use that I'll uh be trying to keep track of those um as we go and um and look to to sort of try and post some of those questions live um as we work through session so uh with that um let's make a start um so I think just to kind of set the scene a little bit um you know I think there's no doubt that you know we see technology advancements happening constantly uh all around us right you know certainly doesn't show any sign of slowing down in fact probably quite the opposite as um really you know technology seems to be advancing at a more rapid rate today than it than it ever has right so and you know much of much of this new technology that we see um you know serves different purposes but a lot of it is really there to essentially help us do our jobs uh you know to be more efficient to work smarter uh not harder you know as the uh as the saying goes you know and I think this provides or should provide it Leaders with an opportunity to really you know sort of shift their focus from being very sort of operationally focused um you know and sort of really stuck in spending a lot of time in their daytoday to really helping their organizations identify opportunities for growth and actually helping um the organization to take advantage of those opportunities as well but interestingly some of the some recent research uh that we did kind of P a bit of a different story um you know and I think that we we'd sort of like to to work through some of that research and some of those findings today and sort of have that as the basis for for this discussion because you know I don't think there'd be too many people who would probably argue with the fact that well yes it should be more strategic it shouldn't all be about sort of firefighting and you know keeping the lights on and you know essentially I guess what a lot of people would see is sort of doing the basics um so really sort of I guess sort of where we're coming at today's conversation from um so let me let me kick this off I think you know one of the uh data points that we found through this research that we did which was uh us-based research we spoke to about 250 uh sort of more senior it folks um towards the end of last year so um you know really sort of recent uh insights here but nearly 2/3 at around 60% of it leaders said that they're spending most of their time on it support um and only 9% actually see their primary role as supporting business growth which based on the fact that you know we're trying to embrace technology to help us be more efficient and be able to focus on those more strategic things came as quite a surprise that you know only you know less than 10% of uh of people really are seeing of it leaders are seeing that as their their core role um Ellie w to you to to start with you know does this drive with what you're seeing you know in the market and the people that you're talking to yeah absolutely and I would say there's probably three factors that determine where the role of it is one is the stage of the company the smaller companies they just don't have enough it people to be strategic so if you're less than one million in Revenue you may have a CTO that is also running it so the tradition ctios in the mid companies where you see a lot more investment in technology is where you see the role kind of move towards um business enabler and the strategy really happens with investment and that's above $100 million in Revenue where the entire company and sometimes it's board driven requires uh digital transformation so if the Mandate comes from the board or if it's a public company and there is a mandate for digital transformation um the entire executive team Embraces the role of that leader in the tining companies the challenge is very different I mean they may be struggling to just have half a person at a help desk or half a Salesforce developer yeah so so really sort of size of company and and Stage or or perhaps sort of matur you know it maturity within the organization plays a key part there yes yeah and and what I've seen basically solidifies that most of my experience has been in the smaller medium-sized companies less than 100 million uh and that's exactly it they we see this constant fight against this perception that it is just a cost center and not going to bring any real value and it it isn't until I I I would agree that 100 million Mark that you really see companies embracing it and recognizing that this is a function of the company that is going to lift everyone El everyone else up and help them be more successful within their own roles so that that's spot on yeah one other quick thing about the role of it it is a service organization and what I coach a lot of the cxos is to think of it as the glue so if you're making a puzzle and you have one of the puzzle pieces missing this is where it plugs in so people in these roles tend to be very very Broad in their knowledge they need to know a little bit about infrastructure they have to know enough about sales to understand let's say what a quoting or a pricing process is they have to know enough about Finance to understand General ledgers and when to implement billing solutions and so so the it leaders because they're Multiverse they tend to plug into different places so you could have an IT organization that is more business-led it's more decentralized it's more what now we call democratized it and so a lot of Technology leaders have embraced that centralization doesn't have to be always the solution and the role of it can be in terms of a hat that a business leader is wearing for example the CFO I advise a lot of CFOs and a lot of C on the role of Technology yeah that's really interesting I mean I I think um as you say that it really does differ depending on on the company and perhaps the the background and and experience of of th those who are in it roles within those those companies as well do you have any and this is a question to both of you you know given your experience do you have any recommendations if you like around how it could better align with other departments um you know sort of I guess sort of balancing potentially different goals and um priorities um that it has versus other departments that could improve that that alignment and and strategic more strategic positioning if you like yeah to to hit on a a point that Ellie made you know there's a lot of different areas the the breadth of it is huge and I think one of the best areas to start is just find what's common across those departments and start there um because there's going to be commonalities and you can uncover those and really get solid on providing value to those departments and Alignment in in those areas and then once you have a solid foundation and frankly just good work working relationships with the other business units then you can start to uh dedicate some resources to really start to align get to know dive deeper into those departments or business units and find in a much more deeper and valuable way how how they can provide lift to those departments yeah absolutely completely agree I'll pick three specific examples so let's say that a company is going through a merger and acquisition right now in this market a lot of companies are looking to grow through acquisition so the role of it there is massive because there needs to be systems consolidation well if systems consolidation is looked at just as a cost exercise to reduce number of licenses that's a that's a problem right that's the wrong way to look at things it should be divesting from cost of Licensing and reinvesting in business capability so this is where the it leaders actually have to know a lot about the business to be able to prioritize and figure out where the investment is going to be if it's a technology company let's say the company is actually producing software that's SASS and it's relevant to it professionals that's one type of conversation if it's a healthare company or a banking payment solution it's a completely different type of conversation so that context is really important yeah yeah no that that makes complete sense I mean I think I guess sort of thinking about that point around um so typically companies of a of a larger size perhaps you know above that 100 million Mark sort of um I call it sort of having perhaps more of the luxury to you know have the resources that um that they do to be able to take some of those more sort of uh strategic projects and really help Drive um growth across different departments and across the company overall are there any thoughts that you you guys have around how companies perhaps who who are not in that position today know who are in smaller organizations could go about just starting to take some steps towards um getting to that point even if they don't you know if they're still constrained by resource for example yeah there there's a lot of steps it it is an uphill battle it it is difficult um the the first thing that I've advised uh from my agency background a lot of our clients to do is is you just have to carve off time set goals um to be able to do it and it's going to start small um and you just have to start sliding it in and and setting a a strategy to kind of grow into that role um you know I think with the economy the weird weird economy in in the US that we've seen um in all of the the layoffs in in Tech there's a lot of people even at the bigger companies are are having to do a lot more with fewer people um so I think it's also an important thing to also evaluate your priorities in in that latter case I think there's a lot of perhaps blow sometimes not but where there's a lot of people probably working on Lower value tasks um and simply through reprioritization um you can get to focus on some of the more uh strategic things or high higher value things and kind of shove the lower value things that we all end up getting caught up in yeah completely agree start small so let's take an example of I'm an IT leader and I have two choices of where to invest my resources one is I have to consolidate Microsoft Office slack Zoom those types of applications they're called employee productivity applications on the other hand I have to solve a customer problem I have to align a quote an order and an invoice process because customers are complaining that my company is really hard to do business with which one would I choose of course I'll choose the customer problem right and starting small is really looking at that process and I think this is where it leaders really really struggle because they have no process training looking at that process and starting with writing it down understanding how many steps are there how many approvers does it take how many systems how many panes of glass and then cutting it down and measuring success by how many steps did we reduce the time the cost the effort centralization did we eliminate mandane tasks like email signatur so people don't have to reduce them and use them all the time I I think that's where it leaders really struggle because they don't have that business context I hope that makes sense no it it certainly does and I think I think that kind of leads on to really nicely onto another topic that um I wanted us to cover today which is around like looking at some of the the challenges that it leaders are facing and perhaps some of those things that are preventing um or making it harder to to do some of what you're uh you talking about there ear and I think um you know I think for to support business growth you know it leaders need to be able to um you know think strategically be innovators be change agents within an organization but um again sort of looking at some of the uh results from the research that we did they're facing challenges because they're spending they've got they got challenges across a lot of different areas so as an example um over 30% um have a key challenge around actually adopting new technology so you know I think that's really talking to um you know making decisions around what technology to adopt but then actually implementing and rolling it out um in a way that um it doesn't take too long doesn't become too cumbersome and actually can have the desired impact um you know others sort of similar kind of you know north of 30% talk about um recruiting and and retaining the right skills um into the organization um around another another 30% talk about um lack of collaboration across different departments um and things like that so it sounds as though there are a lot of challenges that are sort of coming in the way of it sort of heading more in that sort of strategic Direction change agent um and be being an an enabler for true growth I mean I think you talked about it earie before um with constantly being told to to do more with less right whether it's okay budgets being cut or re people not being as easily accessible or whatever but what is doing more with less you know mean to you yeah that's a really good one because I actually am a true believer that we always have to do more with less the question is how and where so I guess I'll give the example of there's activities that it does that are completely not value add to the business keeping the lights on so that's unfortunately where you have to keep squeezing that lemon to divest so you can reinvest in areas that are true business value I'll give another example of let's say a compan is really looking to accelerate their sales motion sometimes you may have to renegotiate Cloud costs and let's say take out a couple of million dollars of cloud costs in order to be able to invest in GTM process in GTM technology so it leaders have to be aware of the full picture of the investment p and work with the CFO the cro the CEO to make those investment decisions and I think where they really struggle is when they can't decide what's more important a finance process versus a sales process versus infrastructure and how that ties to the customer value so that's when that's from the perspective of a CIO internal to the company I'll give you one other perspective before I turn it over to Steve which is the CIO as a buyer so as a buyer I have to purchase 250 different applications and Technologies and do more with less because my budget is being scrutinized every quarter right so how do I do that I do it by reducing complexity and by really looking at overlapping capabilities between multiple vendors and trying to make sense of what's really needed for growing top line or bottom line hope that makes sense do thank you what about from your perspective Steve yeah the those those challenges are real um what something that I've always tried to really uh hone in on is uh getting people to the point where they're work working at the top of their license um because that that really helps uh them be happy in their job as well um and it helps you figure out what needs to get automated away right the ideally you can focus on finding that lwh hanging fruit uh in terms of automation knocking that out and continuously start to do that and build up uh you know all that automation that needs to be there to allow people to work at their top of license whether that's you know at a maybe a midsize company where it is completely burdened by just setting up new hires um laptops um and you know they're growing quickly and they're completely stalled on any other work because that's their Focus right they they need to automate that and frankly they don't probably enjoy that it's it's the same thing it's super repetitive um so they got to automate that away and and that's going to help again with that rep repr prioritization of tasks that I mentioned earlier and aligning that with people working at the top of their top of their license also hits on that other challenge of that Talent ret retention and building up the skills that you need um to to keep growing yeah makes complete sense I mean if you can have if you do have a finite level of resource in the in the team if you've got people working at a at a higher level you're you know a they're probably having a better time right they're enjoying what they're doing they feel like they're contributing more but you're you're you're obviously making the most of what resource you have um one of the things you you mentioned Ellie was um was around there are times where it may be um it may be difficult to decide what's more important um you know do do I invest here or do I invest there do I cut cost here to be able to to invest in another area Etc presumably that's that's not something it leaders should be doing doing in isolation right they should be presumably taking input from others around the business their peers you know leading up different departments do do you see that actually do you see that happening um you know and and and how how could that be improved um I guess is from your perspective yeah that's a great question it's one of the biggest challenges because it comes down to governance and companies hate the word governance so we don't use the word governance we use process we use strategy we use planning we use anything else but it really depends on the maurity of the CEO team right because at the end of the day you need somebody who's the tiebreaker of these decisions and a lot of CEOs don't want to get involved in what it does they don't have time they should be focused on product being the brand agent the salesperson right there's so many other demands on CEOs especially in the smaller companies so what tends to happen is it becomes this island where all the work that nobody else wants to do gets kind of parked and managed and so it really takes a leader who can build amazing relationships with all of their business U counterparts and deliver on their top challenges and their priorities to get that wheel going and in the beginning I've seen some cios come in and and you know their first year is just fix Salesforce you don't have to do anything else just Salesforce is a mess clean the data fix Salesforce you have one year to do that and when they get that credibility that they can actually because fixed Salesforce is a very big problem if you think about service cloud and sales cloud and cpq and depending on what else is going on there right um if you get that credibility that you can actually deliver on the business priorities and it impacts STP line growth and bottom line then you get some of the other work but you have to really prove yourself at every company because the challenges are different one of the things that I think is extremely challenging that I think is probably ignored too much because of how challenging it is is really digging into the ROI with the work that it can have an impact on with the other uh departments for example um I I work I deal a lot with rfis and security questionnaires and it's an in list stream of them um and the one of our products is in our own hosted uh Cloud not in one of the big cloud providers so there's a lot of work to do there and though we're often shuffling those security questionnaires to it to answer a lot of the questions um and one of the things that uh we've had some conversations around recently and trying to dig into is how can it automate that process better perhaps there's tools out there that you know create these Q&A databases but how can we wrap AI into that to be able to find the answers better right the all the rage is llms right being able to pump all that data into a system and then just be able to ask the questions uh and get those answers in terms of a security questionnaire but then we actually have to measure the ROI that that brings on the sales process of being able to close the deal quicker and bring in that revenue from that digital product that that we have and that it's just often looked over because measuring Roi is often extremely challenging and the more parties that are involved and the more abstract it gets It's just tough but we got to push through and be able to do that and and that can really highlight the the growth and the impact that it is having on on the business directly yeah that that makes a lot of sense I mean I think um I think it's it's pretty well um well known that you know certainly in in sort of sales motions quite often the the vendors who are able to respond quickest first um a lot of the time they're the ones who get the the business at the end of the day so it it sounds as though um you know from a from an IT perspective and having an impact and being able to identify priorities was clearly things that are going to speed up a sales cycle or speed up the time that somebody can respond to an inquiry whether it's a formal RFP or or something else can have a material impact and and sort of almost um give it leaders the the ability to actually then say okay great we've achieved that like okay what what's next what else can we um what else can we improve even if it's just making small incremental changes as you guys have uh have talked about I think um and actually it was it was as if you Steve you knew um the next topic that I wanted to uh for us to talk about um you mentioned AI right and you know what what sort of webinar these days can can you have without mention of AI so let's talk about AI um but you know I think we we've all obviously all seen um you know rapid uptake in uh in AI especially over the last couple of years um and interestingly again so just looking back at um at our research there is um we out of those 250 IT leaders 46% said that they would classify themselves at an advanced stage of AI adoption and a further 28% said they were at a mature stage of AI adoption so that if you add those together that's over 70% % who are either mature or advanced in their AI adoption which personally I found quite um like a really high number um but on the flip side of this um you know it seems II is not really helping us to free up time because we've still got the this real constraint around okay it is still sort of doing a lot of the support work a lot of these sort of repetitive tasks there seems to be a disconnect between AI adoption and time spent for example on it support um Steve how do you see your teams or sort of your your peers perhaps um you know uh using AI to to work smarter and you know is it you know do do those numbers resonate with you or like what are your thoughts yeah the I found those numbers really interesting um they they did seem extraordinarily High uh especially just all of the companies that I have exposure to in Kansas City from my agency background um I would have anticipated that number being dramatically lower and I think what could help us kind of tease that apart is really separating generative AI in actual like building your own custom artificial intelligence with machine learning and all of that I think generative AI is what's probably driving that number up because it's so easy to use um it takes some skill and some learning to get really good at it but its applications are so Broad and if a company says yeah we're leveraging chat GPT across all of our departments we're maturing it right it's super easy to say but I think the reality is a little bit different in terms of companies leveraging their own new uh novel AI or machine Learning Systems that's probably pretty darn low I would imagine um but to to get a little closer to your question um you know I'm on the R&D side at uh well Sky and so we're doing a lot of software development um the big go-to thing is co-pilot from Microsoft um that is being broadly adopted here but it has to also be done with Extreme Caution because these tools are not perfect and that's what but I think a lot of people are expecting all of these AI tools especially around generative AI to just magically solve all their problems and it couldn't be further from the truth they you actually have to learn to use these tools uh appropriately if you're going to adopt them um and so just dipping your toes into the water cautiously is probably the best way to dive into that and that's what we're doing right now with with co-pilot um we're piloting co-pilot [Music] here um no pun intended um but it it's going well but it definitely has its risks um but it's it's every day in a conversation I have with people constantly like hey I just use chat GPT for this so I think that's it's generative AI where all of this is is mostly gathering around interesting what what about from your perspective Ellie yeah I completely agree these numbers are high but again depends on the definition as as Steve mentioned I think a i as a digital worker and I can tell you that I used digital workers at Autodesk seven years ago and the use case was take a chatbot who actually has a face and the company spend a ton of money and resources to get the emotions of the face and the lips moving and the language behind it and my teams integrated it to all the backand systems so that was a virtual digital assistant right digital worker so in that broad context of a digital worker that can see hear speak that's been around forever right I think it's the Gen numbers that are still pretty low because we're relatively early in adoption but even those numbers are climbing pretty fast because it's not that hard to connect to the API right so at this point pretty much everybody's figured out how to do that we're going to do our own survey because we think we we still have some opportunities you know even in that wave to help people with customer facing policies mostly I think where the rubber meets the road is looking at the endtoend process because all of these tools solve a single point in a very complex process and the RO of the CIO is to reduce complexity not just for one function or one feature of one function but at the end of the day look at the value chain for the customer and that's where companies struggle because they don't have anything documented around the customer journey and the pain points that every customer needs to solve that's really interesting I I think um yeah I mean one of the things I was I I was going to ask you guys is is sort of where you where you actually see the the role of AI ending up and I think to your point Ellie is like at the moment it's I think it's very siloed if we going to put this geni tool in for example to to help solve this particular problem but it's this end to end piece thing I mean is that is that where you where you see perhaps AI should end up in terms of being able to to look at sort of more of that overall it strategy as it relates to sort of supporting the business yeah absolutely I mean cios can use chat GPT to to get strategy advice right you don't even have to create your own CIO bot anymore but I think what's missing is that knowledge that domain knowledge and democratizing knowledge is what happened just like you can write code in any language any discipline can be learned the barrier becomes the human right because our brains are computers and how much information can you absorb cash and store I've started using technical terms to describe how my brain works so I had to cash some information for this meeting right how many meetings can you cash in advance we are going to be the the blocker so we have to train ourselves we spend a lot of time explaining to people how to use a technology and I don't think we spend enough time teaching people how to reprogram their own brain and our own habits because we have to change our entire workflow to be effective with these new tools yeah Steve you g say yeah um you know I especially in the software development Community it there's a new blog every single week about generative AI taking our jobs um I I do not subscribe to to that thinking I do think AI um is going to bring some amount of threat for lack of a better word to to some jobs to some roles it it won't eliminate them um one example that we often talk about in the health care space is um you know you have a a written up um analysis from a a a doctor and you have to have these people who are coders not writing code code but coding that document and and labeling like healthc care specific stuff um and that there's AI is playing a big role in that in automating that so that the um the coding can actually be automated but you're still going to have to have humans who understand that very deeply understand the domain like Ellie said to even validate that what that AI automation is actually doing you you don't see how we get away from that so it can um affect roles but I think it's going to um it's just going to decrease the number of people we need in those roles um and not eliminate them completely so it it's not one of those things that that scares me of overtaking and and taking all the jobs and running our world yeah yeah like interesting there's there's been a comment on the um in the Q&A here from from dppo who uh is in the uh the legal space um and I think he he kind of just reinforces what you guys have said where um saying they're being extremely cautious in their approach around AI um bearing in mind the the security governance and um Integrity concerns um they're being slow and methodical in their approach um which I think you know depending on where AI is being plugged in I think some areas are probably lower risk so um for example we we we use uh you know geni from a um to help us generate content um you know again it doesn't it's not replacing a Content marketing person um or you know or a writer but it's it's speeding up um it's speeding up that process and actually helping teams be more uh self-sufficient at least to to a to to a certain degree um but I I see that as being very low risk right I think obviously there are other parts of the business where introducing um AI tooling and processes Etc could have far greater risk um that you definitely need to be more cautious um around how that's being adopted and understanding the impact and I think to your point um as well Steve is like actually making sure that sorry I might have been confused but might have been from from uh your point Ellie but um it was a good point nonetheless around actually people needing to be upskilled on how to work in this new environment with these new tools um and because I think that plays back to the to the point around Roi right you you can spend a lot of money bringing new technology whether it's AI or or something else in place but actually not realize the full benefit or or the benefit or even some of the benefit because your processes or the ways of working or the people that are using those tools haven't changed um so there's a there's an upskilling element around AI but I would I would argue more broadly as well you know know as organizations are looking to um transform more processes um upgrade outdated Technologies put put new things in um you know I think how how do you create it teams that support that need to adapt um because I think for a lot of these being it um tools for for argument sake um I would think that the IT team needs to be at the Forefront of being adaptive and changing and helping the rest of the business sort of come behind that um what does that look like um to you Ellie yeah that's a great question so it really depends on how you define the IT team right so all teams let's say a CIO had I don't know 30 employees in the US some in emia some in APAC offshoring Outsourcing all of that there's some ratios there new teams large percentage of digital workers what are digital workers really good at they don't need to sleep they don't need to eat they're never tired they can switch context on the fly right so how you manage a digital worker is very different than how you manage a human worker and so to enable leaders to be successful you also have to train the digital workers are still toddlers we have to be kind to our babies we have have to train them within the limits of what's ethical what's secure how they need to behave and operate but most importantly how they need to interact with each other and how they need to interact with humans and I don't think the pl book for that has been written yet right because right now we're just saying a human worker will augment themselves with a digital worker imagine a world where digital workers have the autonomy to augment themselves with a digital worker somebody needs to write that Playbook that's starting to sound really interesting isn't it are you uh are you at that point yet Steve or you know is it uh sounds like possibly not but yeah no um yeah to to hit on this from a completely different um point of view when I think about building teams that are are responsible or should be responsible for keeping up uh I'm I'm a big culture person I I very much and passionate about intentionally building the culture that you need and first the the company Andor the IT team needs to decide that that's actually what they want and if it is what are the things that are going to be put in place to intentionally build up uh a culture of staying out out in front of everything um and I think there's a lot of it teams that don't do that because they are so busy they have a whole lot to um maintain on their plate um but that's the only way you're going to get there is intentionally building up that culture um and what you build up a culture by understanding what your shared values are and then you got to build a strategy to start living out those values and that's the only way you're going to get there and and you have to decide um and what that looks like for every it team is going to be completely different yeah definitely definitely exciting times um that's for sure I think the next sort of year or two um and you and further forward is is going to be really interesting to see how this all plays out look I I I think just to sort of round out our our conversation um today one one of the final areas was just sort of looking at um it priorities for uh 2024 um again sort of some of the sort of themes that rose up through through the research that we did here's so you know priorities for it it leaders um 45% looking at widespread adoption of AI um about the same amount strengthening their security processes um and tooling um 35% streamlining the time and resources allocated to repetitive it tasks which arguably is probably related back to the to the AI adoption right um and I think there there are a few sort of um different things that bubble up depending on on seniority as well um but certainly AI is a is is a key one um as we've just been talking about um Steve like how do you like with all the new technology and you know like coming back to to what how we started this conversation thinking about the pace of change how do you Embrace continuous change um in Tech how do you stay or you how do you keep up with what's happening and you know bring that into the organization yeah that's a great question uh little bit of a cop out here to my last response is you got to build up that that culture of uh the culture that supports that right it's a culture of innovation in keeping uh up with all the technology now to get a little more specific th those stats align very well with what I'm experiencing here at well Sky uh those you know the security the AI and all of that um I I think the big one that we at least focus on due to the size of our company is you know you have to tap the brakes a little bit too um and not just go nuts with adopting all of this technology so you you have to approach it with discipline um and that's what we're doing with the generative Ai and how we can use use that across um engineering here is let's not go Full Throttle on it um but let's dip our toes in report talk about our experience provide feedback um and slowly mature you got to do it at a decent pace but um you got to give it time to mature and then you can move on to the next thing um and have those teed up um and and that's really when it comes to AI what I think all all these companies need to be doing they're they're either on one end of the the Spectrum either end of the spectrum they're uh expressing their extreme deep desire to do it yet doing nothing and then there's the people going Full Throttle um both are probably not where anyone really ought to be um we need to be somewhere in the middle so yeah I think there's a um I think there's the potential for for companies to as you say adopt too quickly perhaps sort of want to want to play with that shiny new toy um but but actually end up either trying to do too much or actually um uh bringing more complexity in perhaps than was originally intended um Ellie from from your point of view like how do how do you advise or or sort of talk to to Port goes around you know staying up with technology adopting new technology and what kind of pace of of adoption kind of make sense yeah I think you hit the nail on the head with with adoption change management I think the two key differences between a digital worker and a human worker is the expectation of change management and facilitation so if I'm investing in my it professionals today there are two skills that that I want them to absolutely Master change management and facilitation those are skills that a digital worker doesn't have and it's not planned to have it's not intended to have that's the differentiator there that's that humano human interaction but it's also understanding the pace of change and asking the question of okay what changes did we make for the customers recently did they adopt the change imagine a change where you just increased their price you moved from product to platform you introduced a new partner Marketplace your customers are overwhelmed they have no idea what you're trying to do and why and so the hierarchy I think of is really customer then business capabilities is it sales quota payment is it growing revenue and then lastly internally what projects do we want to doas yeah no makes toal sense Steve any any final comments from your side um there's just one thing that kept popping up uh related to what dppo said in in the legal space um I'm sure uh dppo is familiar with a a very famous case of last year um where a lawyer leveraged chat GPT to generate a lot of the legal work um and actually presented that in court um and that turned out disastrous um right that is an example of someone who did go Full Throttle um and you have to have the change management uh around these things you just you just have to the depending on your industry or the circumstance the the penalties for not being careful are just way too high right the legal space the healthc care space that I'm in there there's many many fintech all that um you you gotta uh have a plan to adopt and and do it with uh intelligence with buyin from other departments and just be careful out there with the this this AI tech for sure yeah no it's good good parting words be safe be safe out there yeah I um no look I mean I think we we we've covered quite a broad range of uh of topics on our call today um super super interesting um uh I'm sure everybody who joined today has has found the conversation uh useful uh thanks very much to uh to those who have um who've been sort of contributing on the on the chat especially dppo um some great some great comments and insights thank you um and yeah look uh Ellie Steve um thank you so much for uh for your time and for uh for giving us your uh your insights and um and uh you know and your experience uh today um guys I think we're going to we're going to wrap things up there um I say hopefully you found this session uh useful I know we'll be uh sharing the recording of this session if you want to uh sort of listen back to any of the best bits um or if you want to share it with any of your uh your colleagues or uh or or peers please feel free to uh to do that as well but um with that uh Ellie Steve thank you um and we'll wrap things up there thank you bye everybody thank you bye thank you

2024-02-19 23:39

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