InsideDT: The Inside Digital Transformation Podcast

In this episode, I’m speaking with François Candelon, Global Director of the Boston Consulting Group’s Henderson Institute about how organizations can adopt generative ai, where to use it and what to expect when they do. AI is everywhere today but it is mainly used to carry out a very narrow set of tasks. Gen AI is different. It is interactive, can be programmed using the human voice and can be used -- without modification -- to create competitive advantage. We are in a moment of creative destruction.

In this episode, I’m speaking with Rajat Kohli, a partner in the digital transformation consulting practice of Zinnov, about the impact emerging technologies such as AI and cloud will drive growth and profits at SMBs, not just by automating more processes and cutting costs but by freeing up the strategic brain power of its employees. To reap these rewards, SMBs will need to change how they look at technology – focusing on its benefits not just the costs.

In today’s episode, I’m speaking with Theresa Lanowitz, Head of Cybersecurity Evangelism at AT&T Business, about the ever expanding compute edge.

The edge is evolving rapidly and most organization are actively embracing the business opportunities it brings. But it is complex so securing it is more important than ever. Thankfully security is a board room imperative today so CXOs have the mandate and, hopefully, the resources they need to stay one step a head of the bad guys.

Today I’m speaking with Claudia Contreras, Executive Director of Global Sustainability Services at the computer giant Lenovo about how business leaders can implement sustainable digital transformation. Sustainability is key to ensuring a future in which all of our children have the same shot at achieving their full potential as we did.

If we continue on our current path of unrestrained and unrelenting consumption without consideration for the long term impacts it is having and will have for generations to come, the chances of that happening diminish by the day.

In today’s episode I’m speaking with Lawrence Gasman, the founder and President of Inside Quantum Technology, about the current state of quantum computers, why they are so powerful and how, when combined with other technologies such as AI,  they will begin to solve real world problems that one day could have major impacts on everything from medical research to the materials that make up our everyday lives.

Resource links:
Lawrence's LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawrence-gasman-7480511/
Company website: https://www.insidequantumtechnology.com/

In this episode, I'm speaking with Amaresh Tripathy, Genpact's strategic advisor for Data and Analytics, about the central role that data plays in digital transformation today.

In the early days, digital transformation was all about automating paper processes. Today most organizations are well beyond that phase. They are now looking at how to turn digital technologies into business advantage.

Key to that effort is combining data and analytics to gain the insights they need to revamp their business processes or  even their entire organizational and business models to better meet their customers where they are with the products and services that they want.

In this episode, I’m speaking with John Engates, Field Chief Technology Officer at the content delivery network and cyber security provider Cloudflare, the impact AI will have the ability of the good guys to secure an ever-increasing and porous network perimeter as well as how the bad guys are using AI tools such as voice spoofing and deepfakes combined with refined social engineering attacks to break down even the best defenses.

In this episode, I’m speaking with Tom Paider Vice President of Digital Workplace Technology at the insurance giant Nationwide about how they are using digital technologies to create extraordinary experiences for the company’s 30,000 employees.

  Post covid, 50% of Nationwide’s employees work from anywhere so the company transformed its personal tech department into the multidisciplinary office of workplace experience. The goal is to meet employees where they are with the technologies they want to do their jobs with as little friction as possible.

In this episode, I’m speaking with BMC Software CTO, Ram Chakravarti, about the changes IT organizations must undertake to successfully execute digital transformation today.

Ram stresses the importance of collaboration between IT and the business since successful business outcomes today are shared affairs. He also highlights the need for speed and agility to get new and improved products and services into the hands of customers faster … something all businesses depend on IT for their very survival.

Resource links:

Ram's blogs: https://www.bmc.com/blogs/author/ram_chakravarti/

BMC website: https://www.bmc.com

Ram's LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ram-chakravarti-a59966/

Link to Allen’s website: https://www.techcopy.net

In today’s episode, I’m dissecting the multicloud with the help of John Roese, Global CTO at Dell Technologies. After 15 years of rapid adoption, most companies today have multiple clouds. What they don’t have is true multicloud.

Rose and I talk about how companies are rethinking cloud and IT services holistically to better understand how, collectively, multiple clouds can be turned into a multicloud that meets the organization’s need for centralized security, management, and control while still enabling use cases that take advantage of the collective and individual capabilities multiple clouds have to offer.

Resource Links:

In this episode, I’m speaking with Beth Johnson, chief experience officer (CXO) of Citizens Bank, a $223B regional bank headquartered in Rhode Island, about how they are leveraging digital transformation as their go-to-market strategy. Digital technologies provide the backbone of how they interact with customers across 14 states.

On they back end, like most banks, they are leaning heavily on digital technologies to become more efficient and responsive to an always-on customer base. In one instance, they took a home equity line process that took 40 days down to just seven.

And, of course, they are looking at how they can use GenAI to better understand and service their customers.

In this episode, I’m speaking with PwC's Cloud & Digital Lead Cenk Ozdemir, about cloud ROI—how it has changed from the early days of cost mitigation to a central pillar in how organizations enable new business models while streamlining business processes and speeding time-to-value for new products and services.

But, to get the most ROI from your cloud strategy, you have to go back to basics. You need to understand why you went there in the first place. A surprising number of companies do not. Smart companies are reevaluating their reasons for going to cloud, what they wanted to get from it then and what they need to get from it now.

Post-Covid-19, the era of cloud 2.0 has begun. Figuring out how to make the most of it is now the No.1 challenge for businesses—not whether they should be there or not. Cloud is an essential technology for every business regardless of size, geography or industry and will only become more important in the age of AI.

In this episode, I’m speaking with Guarav Sharma and Laila Kakar about how they used AI and app rationalization (10 ERPs into just one) to transform the procurement function of Africa’s MTN Group, a $12B telco, from a cost center to a profit center.

To solve the many challenges they faced, MTN developed:

• An AI-powered chatbot that stays informed by observing a variety of company data streams

• Robotics process analytics focused on 15 high-impact business processes

• A recommendation engine focused on value generating opportunities, and

• A decision-support system based on game theory to supports negotiations with other vendors in complex multi-unit tenders in part by simulating 50+ million negotiation scenarios.

Guarav is MTN’s senior manager for procurement excellence and Laila is MTN’s senior data analytics manager.

"We can improve our IT stuff as much as we possibly want but if it doesn’t  somehow translate into some business gain then we’re really just wasting time and money.” – Carlos Casanova

In today’s episode, I'm speaking with Forrester analyst Carlos Casanova about AIOps: What it is, who's using it and how it's being deployed to help businesses run more efficiently and effectively by prioritizing IT services delivery.

Carlos along with Forrester analysts Glenn O'Donnell, Audrey Lynch and  Diane Lynch is the co-author of report “The 3 Stages of Preparation for AIOps” that lays out the foundational elements IT and business Leaders need to understand in order to introduce AIOps into their organizations.

“These are the emergent next wave of game changing technologies we need to pay attention to.” - Mike Fulton

In this episode, I'm speaking with Mike Fulton, SVP and CIO at Vernovis, about the next wave of digital technologies that CIOs need to be thinking about today. These are the so-called DARQ technologies: distributed ledgers, AI, extended reality, and quantum computing.

Because all of these will build on the SMAC technologies--social, mobile analytics, and cloud--that have gotten us to where we are today, their impact will likely be much greater than even SMAC has had to date.

The key to making the most of these technologies will come down to seeing the forest and the trees to understand where and how these technologies can be applied to solve business problems.

In this episode, I’m speaking with Gamma Force Founder and CEO, Warner Moore about how to effectively manage cyber risk when resources are limited. All organizations are resource constrained when it comes to cyber. No can afford to keep throwing money at such a massive problem.

Warner and I discuss how everyone can make better use of their cyber security resources: How do you get the biggest bang for the bucks you do have? What assets and data are truly at risk and which ones are not? How do you know? How do you decide? How do you prioritize your spend? What is an acceptable level of risk … and on down the list.

Tune in for answers to these questions and many more insights from an industry veteran who helps companies make these decisions every day.

Resource Links:

In this episode, I’m speaking with Ulf Persson, the CEO of the intelligent document processing company ABBYY, about what it takes to lead digital transformation from the top down.

Digital transformation today involves the bottom-up adoption of scalable new technologies, but it also requires top-down leadership to ensure that the technologies being introduced will integrate properly with existing systems – all while furthering the organization's goals.

Ultimately, it is the job of the CEO to set the vision that informs those goals and gives decision-makers the frameworks they need to make better technology decisions faster.

Resource links:

In today’s episode I'm speaking with Tal Morgenstern, chief strategy officer and co-founder of Vulcan Cyber, about DevSecOps -- what it is, and how it's being used today to improve application security.

We get into the complexities that are driving the need for placing security at the center of the software development process.

We also explore some of the best practices and tools developers can use when implementing DevSecOps; as well as how the organization as a whole must change in order for these practices to make a material difference when applications move into production.

Vulcan Cyber is a cyber security tools integration vendor.

In today's episode, I’m speaking with Ilona Simpson, Netskope’s CIO for EMEA about the changing nature of the modern CIO. In most organizations, CIOs today find themselves in the boardroom and on the front lines of emerging technology.  

They are can no longer be just business-first technologists. They have to become master storytellers who’s main focus is ensuring that technology is used to move the organization from where it is to where it wants to be in the most cost effective manner possible.

Netskope is a enterprise cloud security company that provides a range of cloud-based security solutions to many of the F100.

In today’s episode, I’m speaking with Alan Brill, Senior Managing Director in Kroll’s Cyber Risk Practice and an adjunct professor at Texas A&M School of Law. Alan was also part of the coding team that sent Apollo 11 astronauts to the moon.

Also on the call is John Bennett, Global Head of Government Affairs in Kroll’s Cyber Risk Practice, and a former Assistant Director of the FBI.

Today we’re going to be talking about why creating software that is secure by design, a relatively straightforward idea, can be so hard to achieve in the real world.

Some of the topics we touch on in this episode include why business and competitive pressures can make it hard for management to prioritize cyber security.

We explore what needs to change so that everyone in the software development life cycle -- from developers to the board -- understands that secure code is just as important as the features and functionalities they are trying to bring to Market

We also touch on the need for standardizing software bills of materials and how they can be used to ensure the software that is being produced is meeting a minimum set of standards for security and transparency.

LinkedIn pages:

In this week’s episode, I'm speaking with Forrester analyst Rowan Curran about the hottest Topic in tech today which is the AI chatbot ChatGPT. We're going to get into what it is, what it isn't (which is sentient or intelligent) and the outsized impact it is about to have on how we all interact with technology both at work and in our everyday lives.

We talk about how no one really knows how its doing what it does under the hood. Experts have ideas but large language, generative AI models like ChatGPT appear to be drawing conclusions about the world around them without being taught.

We also get into how it is advancing the state of Turning Bots, which is AI generated computer code, how it can be used by knowledge workers, chemists, engineers, developers and many others to do their jobs better.

We take a look at what’s next for the technology, as well. It appears that multi-modal AI models that use visual and other forms of sensory data, not just text, are just on the horizon.

In today’s episode, I’m speaking with Board CTO Nelson Petracek about the different enterprise use cases for distributed ledgers, which are often referred to as blockchains even though a blockchain is just one form of the technology.

We also talk about why, despite years of hype, these technologies, which showed so much early promise haven’t really taken off.

We also discuss some alternative technologies such as immutable databases that can be used to achieve similar results—without the management headaches inherent in a distributed ledger.

Finally, we take a look ahead to identify where this technology may find a home and where its benefits really lie.

Board is a provider of Intelligent Planning Solutions to over 2,000 organizations worldwide including H&M, BASF, Burberry, Toyota, and Coca-Cola. When this call was recorded in October of 2022, Nelson was the CTO of the business intelligence platform provider TIBCO.

Resource links:
Nelson's LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/npetrace/
Company website: https://www.board.com/en

In this episode, I’m speaking with Sanjay Srivastava, chief digital strategist for Genpact, about how to execute the four elements of any successful digital transformation initiative – proof of concept, scaling a pilot to production, cultural change management, and building a data foundation. Digital transformation projects fail for many reasons, so getting each of these elements right is the key to the success of your efforts.

Genpact is a $4B professional services firm with over 100,000 employees doing business in 30 countries.

Topics covered include:

• Digital transformation is all about competitive advantage and delivering a different value proposition
• Most digital transformation projects fail when they are scaled from pilot to production
• Treating data as its own asset class is critical to business success today

Resources links:

In this episode, I'm speaking with Nicola Morini Bianzino, Global Chief Technology Officer at EY about how he is using AI, a data fabric, digital process twins, and lots of trial and error to find business process optimization opportunities that would otherwise go unnoticed. 

EY is a $45B tax and advisory company with 360,000 associates worldwide. 

Topics covered include:

• How digital process twins differ from business process automation
• How data sits at the core of their efforts
• How CXOs can get started with process twins inside their organizations