On the 42nd episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) talks with Amit Shah, EVP & CIO of Excelitas Technologies. Excelitas is a global technology company specializing in generating and sensing light in photonics. In this conversation, Amit shares insights into how Excelitas utilizes AI to enhance its photonic technologies, the impact of generative AI on productivity and cybersecurity, and the future of enterprise AI.
Quick hits from Amit:
On AI opportunities in cybersecurity: “I want my cybersecurity vendors to use AI because the bad guys are going to and already are using AI to be more effective in their outcomes. I want them [Cybersecurity Vendors] to make sure they are using AI to reduce the complexity in the fragmented nature of how cybersecurity is done today.”
On the importance of data strategy when leveraging AI: “There's a golden principle in the IT world - Garbage in, garbage out. No matter how good the technology is, if you're feeding garbage to that technology, it's going to spit out garbage. Hallucination is the word people use. What it means to an individual in an enterprise, boils down to the input is not good enough, hence, you're going to have output, which is not good enough."
On the potential of generative AI in the enterprise: “You will be using AI without you knowing you are actually using AI within a corporation. It will be embedded into your data structure where it might be cleaning the data. It will help you execute your business processes faster. Being able to distribute your documents and other data to your employees, your customers, your vendors, and your partners, in a much more secure and efficient manner.
Recent Book Recommendation: Good to Great by Jim Collins
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 41st episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Kirk Ball, former EVP & CIO of Giant Eagle. Giant Eagle is one of the largest regional supermarket chains in the United States, with over 37,000 employees and more than $11 billion in annual revenue. In this conversation, Kirk shares how AI is transforming the retail industry, the impressive scale of Giant Eagle’s operations, and AI’s potential to shape the future of the enterprise.
Quick hits from Kirk:
On how ML is being used by Giant Eagle today: “Machine learning is used in setting the assortment, setting the optimized price, driving traffic from your customers and learning which products are price sensitive, which products aren't. When a season comes or goes or a particular weather day occurs, that changes. [With ML], you know what people want to buy and you have to be prepared for that change and your supply chain has to adjust.”
On how enterprise use cases are evolving for AI: “They've got generative AI assisting with complex support calls and complex customer interactions to give additional guidance and suggestions, to help them make sure that that customer leaves satisfied. The ability to look through legal documents when you do a software or hardware contract, you probably look for 90 percent of the same thing in every contract. Generative AI can do that for us, we can reduce the cost and the cycle time down dramatically.”
On maintaining an innovative culture: “Chance favors the prepared mind. It always does. And it always will. You should constantly be preparing your mind, your team, and your organization.”
Recent Book Recommendation: Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 40th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Vishal Gupta, Global CTO & CIO of Lexmark. With over 9,000 employees in 170 countries, Lexmark is a global technology company specializing in printing solutions and cloud-enabled IoT imaging technology. In this conversation, Vishal shares insights into how Lexmark uses AI for predictive maintenance and an optimized customer experience, the revolutionary potential of enterprise AI adoption, and how IT leaders navigate the opportunities and challenges of emerging technologies.
Quick hits from Vishal:
On current use cases for AI vision: “We're working with one of the biggest oil change companies on the planet. With our Edge AI technology, we can detect if a car that has come in for an oil change has been greeted by the oil change team within the first three minutes. With this technology, we're already seeing that they're able to save one or two customer drive-offs a day, which pays for the entire month of the technology itself.”
On how Lexmark is capitalizing on emerging technology trends: “We've transitioned a lot based upon the technologies that we have developed into being an IoT and AI company. We launched an offering called Optra two and a half years back. We're doing a lot of work with AI, our printers have IoT sensors, and they last fifty percent longer than the rest of the industry because we're able to stream the data and we're able to use the AI to extend their life.”
On areas of AI that people may be underestimating: “People underestimate the accuracy aspect of AI. They think more about ‘how do I get a project done,’ and not about ‘how do I actually measure accuracy on an ongoing basis to know whether or not I can really trust it.’ Having a set of metrics will let you be objective about it where you're neither leaving a comparative advantage on the table, nor are you completely putting yourself at risk."
Recent Book Recommendation: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 39th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) talks with Reena Tiwari, Chief Information Officer of LexisNexis. With over 10,000 employees in over 160 countries, LexisNexis is the global leader in tooling and resources for legal research, boasting the world’s largest database for legal and public records information. In this conversation, Reena shares her thoughts on AI integration at LexisNexis, AI applications transforming the legal space, and navigating future trends of AI skills development.
Quick hits from Reena:
On the importance of AI democratization: “It shouldn't be this one person sitting in the ivory tower on top because they are in the AI space, and they get a different privilege. No, everybody should be using those kinds of tools and technologies to improve their day to day lives.”
On introducing generative AI to enterprise teams: “The way I try to coach my team is to really educate ourselves first. What is generative AI? How is it different from the other types of AIs that we have used in the past? Once we understand, then really question our processes.”
On how Lexis+ AI is different from other models: “They [other AI models] don't have real data behind them. Because it's gleaned from websites and they can't name the source of the information. That's where we bring value. We use the latest and greatest technology, which we have been evolving for the last decade, and use that data we have. We implement all of that data to create [Lexis+ AI]. The solution that we provide to our customers is real and it helps them in improving their productivity and efficiency, so they can get their answers faster."
Recent Book Recommendation: Our Iceberg Is Melting by John Kotter & Holger Rathgeber
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 38th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Mojgan Lefebvre, EVP and Chief Technology & Operations Officer of Travelers. Travelers is a Fortune 500 insurance company offering a range of insurance products to customers across the globe. With over $41 billion in revenue and over 32,000 employees, Travelers is the second-largest writer of U.S. commercial property casualty insurance and the sixth-largest writer of U.S. personal insurance through independent agents. In this conversation, Mojgan joins the show to share her perspective on integrating emerging technology into enterprise operations, prioritizing the customer experience through data-driven insights, and the importance of culture for successful AI adoption.
Quick hits from Mojgan:
On what makes the insurance industry different from other businesses: “We don't manufacture anything and have no physical goods. Everything we do is based on data and information. And so insurance companies have had data in those systems for years, and how you leverage technology to get insights from that data is really core to how we do business.”
On the advantage of leveraging datasets with enterprise AI: “We think that [AI] can be huge for us, as a company that has so much data, so much of which is curated, whether it's our claim documents that we use to train our claim professionals or our underwriting standard operating procedures. The ability to bring all of that together and to leverage a technology that can go through that so quickly and put it at the fingertips of your employees [is powerful].”
On understanding business processes to create impact with AI: “It's very important how you ask questions and how you prompt your AI. It's going to become even more important for your IT organization to truly understand your business and your business processes and have the ability to think of where these technologies will actually make a difference. You can't really do that without understanding the business process and where you can inject the technology."
Recent Book Recommendation: Radical Candor by Kim Scott
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 37th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Saket Srivastava, CIO of Asana. Asana is a leader in project management platforms, allowing teams to stay organized, communicate effectively, and achieve their project goals efficiently. Asana has more than 130,000 customers in over 200 countries across the globe. In this conversation, Saket reflects on the dynamic role of AI in business, strategic considerations informing technology adoption, and how enterprises can best embrace the digital frontier.
Quick hits from Saket:
On the hype vs. reality of AI: “Gen AI might be overhyped in the shorter term, but in the longer term, it might actually be underhyped. The possibilities with Gen AI are something we are just beginning to understand. We're still scratching the surface, I think this is still the preview that we're seeing.”
On the current role of CIOs: “As CIOs, our work is more about being a business leader, being that business strategist, being that business architect who's able to connect the dots across the company. And it's important that we're able to sort of drive conversations and drive strategy for the company.”
On identifying meaningful AI use cases: “One was this notion again around a copilot for our go to market teams, who need to do research around our prospects and customers. There's a ton of that research and Gen AI is perfect to kind of do that on their behalf. So, Gen AI could create a cheat sheet for them."
Recent Book Recommendation: The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 36th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Rob Carter, EVP & CIO of FedEx. FedEx is a multinational courier delivery services company with over $90 billion in annual revenue and is the fifth largest employer in the US, with more than 500,000 workers globally. With billions of packages delivered every year, using the world’s largest cargo fleet, FedEx uses sophisticated technology to provide a unique delivery service to customers across the globe. In this conversation, Rob shares fascinating insights into how FedEx uses AI, the future of automation in the transportation and logistics industry, and lessons on building a culture of innovation from his 23-year tenure.
Quick hits from Rob:
On what the potential of AI means to Fedex: “We're at a fascinating point in the journey of AI where it's not just a buzzword but a tangible tool that's reshaping how we think about movement, connectivity, and the global economy. At FedEx, we're harnessing this potential to redefine the delivery experience.”
On the importance of understanding data: “The information about the package is as important as the package itself. This was a visionary statement by Fred Smith that has guided us for decades, and it's never been more relevant than now, in the age of AI and big data, where information is indeed power.”
On the importance of culture for innovation: “Building a culture of innovation isn't just about introducing new technologies; it's about creating an environment where questioning the status quo, exploring new possibilities, and taking calculated risks are part of everyone's job description. That's the culture we cultivate at FedEx."
Recent Book Recommendation: How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 35th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Chris Helsel, SVP of Global Operations and CTO of The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. Goodyear is a leading vehicle equipment manufacturer known for producing tires and rubber products for diverse applications, including cars, airplanes, and industrial equipment worldwide. Chris shares his thoughts on the vital role of technology at Goodyear, important blueprints for successfully leveraging AI, and how Goodyear tire sensors are enabling the future of self-driving vehicles.
Quick hits from Chris:
On the symbiotic nature of AI and cybersecurity teams: “The AI basically tells them right away what to go do. So I almost think of it as Tony Stark. When you put on the Iron Man suit, it gives you a kind of superhuman augmentation.”
On the need for AI to manage data overload: “It's impossible that we're going to think engineers are going to be able to consume that data...You're going to need these types of [AI] technologies in order to discern those insights.”
On enabling data-driven technology: “Our solution has a sensor in the tire... It measures temperature, pressure, acceleration, ID. It has a small chip and a battery. So we take that information off there, combine it with some other vehicle information, and pass it through Telematics, up to the cloud."
Recent Book Recommendation: The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 34th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) talks with Marty Brodbeck, CTO of Priceline. Priceline is an online travel agency that enables users to book hotels, flights, and rental cars across 400 airlines and 300,000 hotels in over 200 countries worldwide. Marty shares thoughts on organizational frameworks to implement AI effectively, underestimated use cases for generative AI, and how Priceline’s new chatbot, Penny, uses the latest generative AI capabilities to transform the customer experience.
Quick hits from Marty:
On the future of AI in business: “I firmly believe that... a lot of the biggest innovations [in the enterprise] are going to be the application of machine learning and generative AI to scale out infrastructures.”
On the iterative development of AI applications: “These large language models don't work right out of the box. There's a corpus of information that they get trained on that isn't necessarily accurate, so you have to complement the capabilities you're going to get from a large language model with your own data.”
On AI for personalization and customer interaction : “Number one, it's the iterative nature in which we built our prompts for Penny and tested those to get it to a point where it was conversion positive... And two, being able to iterate on prompts to get them right so that Penny is responding in the appropriate way that's valuable for our consumers, those are the two big things that we learned."
Recent Book Recommendation: Going Infinite by Michael Lewis
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 33rd episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Karl Mosgofian, CIO of Gainsight. Gainsight is an industry-leading customer success platform used by enterprise organizations to optimize the customer journey from beginning to end. In this conversation, Karl shares his thoughts on balancing the hype versus the reality of current AI capabilities, understanding opportunities presented by generative AI, and approaching AI integration as an enterprise team.
Quick hits from Karl:
On managing expectations between current enterprise AI and generative AI: “Some people are acting like AI was just invented, and it wasn't. Gainsight has had AI in our products for a long time. There are a lot of people out there who've been doing this for a long time, doing really effective stuff. But it's also true that OpenAI made a big breakthrough. LLMs are really different. They're doing some things that previous technologies couldn't do and it's super exciting, and it's going to have a big impact on the world. But the hype cycle is real.”
On optimism for the potential of generative AI: “It makes me think of Arthur C. Clarke's line, that ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ And ChatGPT is maybe the most magical technology I have ever seen. So, in some ways I'm all in on the hype, in the sense that this is really an incredible technology that's capable of fantastic things. We're at ChatGPT 4, right? So what's ChatGPT 17 going to look like? Running on quantum computing. I mean, if this is what it is in the early stages, what's it going to look like in 5-10 years? I'm excited about it and it's adding a lot of value for a lot of people right now.”
On advice for utilizing new technology at the enterprise level: “The first thing I did was identify someone on my team and said, ‘I want you to be the AI person. I want you to be a focal point and run a center of excellence within my team, so that somebody is really on point.’ The danger of things like this, especially when anybody can go to ChatGPT, you've got all these different people in the organization, they're doing cool stuff, but nobody's talking to each other. There is no security or governance around it. It is just like the wild west. And a little bit of that is okay. I don't want to stop that and try to control everything, but in the modern world, the role of it more and more is actually not to be dictators, but facilitators and coordinators across the company.”
Recent Book Recommendation: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 32nd episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Eric Johnson, CIO at PagerDuty, the digital operations management platform. Eric is a longtime technology leader and has been the CIO at many notable companies throughout his career, including Informatica, DocuSign, and SurveyMonkey. In this conversation, Eric shares his thoughts about the impact of data strategy on AI adoption, transforming business operations with automation, and best practices for using generative AI in the enterprise.
Quick hits from Eric:
On questions to ask before approaching enterprise AI: “One, how are you using data to drive business impact. Two, what are very clear use cases that you could be focusing on around generative AI? There's a lot of excitement around generative AI because it's a very powerful, sophisticated set of solutions that are going to change not only the business world that we live in, it's going to change people's lives. But right now if you're not careful, you can get sucked into this situation where you're spending a lot of time and energy running around looking for a problem to solve.”
On the importance of promoting organizational buy-in to leverage AI: “Change is something that you just have to understand is a constant. The pace of technology change is fast. And now with more new technology coming out that companies are starting to get better at managing and leveraging automation and AI and some of these other tools. You have to sit down with the organization. You have got to talk about what kind of change that is going to be in the organization and make sure the executive team is on board with that. If you can't get that done, then you're not going to go very far on that sort of transformation.”
On potential limitations of AI interacting with legacy code: “There is this belief that AI is going to transform. And there are elements of it for sure, but I don't know how great AI is at taking a bunch of old legacy code and untangling that. This gets back into the whole problem where we have got to be careful not to assume that generative AI is the utopia, because there are still a lot of limitations to it.”
Recent Book Recommendation: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 31st episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Pranab Sinha, CIO of Matterport. Matterport is a next-generation virtual modeling tool that uses 3D-scanning technology and machine learning to create immersive digital replicas of physical spaces. In this conversation, Pranab shares how Matterport uses the latest AI capabilities to enhance their products, the importance of a cohesive AI data strategy, and upcoming AI use cases he’s most excited about.
Quick hits from Pranab:
On AI powering Matterport’s newest products: “Our digital twin technology and platform is powered by the Cortex AIm an advanced machine learning engine, which essentially takes the physical spaces and combines the digital image into a photorealistic, digitally accurate digital twin.”
On areas where Pranab sees AI’s immediate impact: “One is around customer service, customer support, IT service. It's a lot of repetitive tasks that we have and we see real use cases, real potential on using AI to augment our intelligence that we have with our people on the front line. The second use case is around security. There is good news and bad news. You have all this great technology being developed, but at the same time, that technology will be available to the guys who are trying to disrupt your business.”
On data structures needed to make AI viable for Matterport: “One of the big things we pride ourselves on is the data that we get and how we train our models. Trust is a big thing. Data security is the biggest thing. And so when you put your physical space on our digital twin platform, we want to make sure that you have absolute confidence.”
Recent Book Recommendation: Good to Great by Jim Collins
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 30th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Alan Boehme, Former CTO at H&M, Procter & Gamble, and former CIO at The Coca-Cola Company. For over 20 years, Alan has led technology teams at some of the world’s most recognizable brands. He has a wealth of insights into how next-generation technology can transform customer experiences and improve business processes. In this conversation, Alan shares how H&M uses technology for sustainability, his insights into the ways startups can best collaborate with enterprises, and details about how smart mirrors piloted at H&M are now in use at both H&M and COS to enhance the customer experience.
Editor’s note: This episode was recorded in 2022 when Alan was still CTO of H&M
Quick hits from Alan:
On leveraging data locked in clothing tags to enhance customer experience: “There's a lot of RFID data locked in tags on garments. We decided to lift the data out of our core warehousing systems and we created a data layer in the store that now mimics what's in the warehouse. By using 5G readers embedded in the ceiling and RFID readers in the walls, we can get 99% accuracy of everything that's in the store at the same time. When you pick a garment up and walk around the store, we know which are going into the fitting rooms and which ones are being left behind. Which ones are being tried on which ones are being returned to the rack. We can create an experience for you with a mirror [using that data]. By lifting the data out and making it available using artificial intelligence and machine learning, it becomes more predictive.”
On the global nature of innovation: “The way we have to look at innovation is that it comes from anywhere and everywhere in a corporation and around the world. It's not bound by any geography anymore.”
On how startups and corporations can best collaborate: “Corporations tend to define their problems too tightly and they're looking for specific solutions; [doing so] loses the creativity of the startups. You lose the intellectual capital that the startups bring, on top of their technology and services if you try to focus them too much. [As a startup], you want to present a business problem, and instead of telling [a corporation] how to solve it, ask them what they can bring to the table in order to make it work and make it solvable.”
Recent Book Recommendation: Everybody Wants to Rule the World by R “Ray” Wang
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer
On the 29th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Bob Muglia, former CEO at Snowflake and former President at Microsoft. For over 30 years, Bob has been at the frontier of modern technology and spent over two decades at Microsoft, becoming one of four Presidents reporting directly to CEO Steve Ballmer. After a stint at Juniper Networks, he was CEO of Snowflake, a foundational cloud data company, and today sits on the boards of several technology startups. In this conversation, Bob discusses navigating AI as an enterprise business, the role of data in AI’s success, and valuable lessons on innovative leadership.
Quick hits from Bob:
On exciting trends emerging in AI: “Probably the most incredible thing that's happened this year, ‘what is the programming language of 2023?’ English. English is the new programming language, which is a crazy thing to think about. Now, you’re basically programming these AI models by talking to it in English, and pretty soon they'll be multimodal and you'll just literally be talking to them. So it's making things much more accessible.
On the importance of data quality relating to AI: “AI only knows as much as the data that it is trained on or fed with. It has to be provided with data in order to provide answers. If you can't come up with that data in a coherent way, you are not going to be able to use these models very effectively.”
On ethics being present in AI driven products: “I encourage every company that I work with to create a set of values and to really live by those values and to demonstrate that in many deep ways throughout the organization. That's something I focused on throughout my career. One of the observations I've had is that in the technology space, the values of a company are reflected in their products. This is only going to become reinforced and more true as AI takes on more and more decision making capability within these products.”
Recent Book Recommendations:
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 28th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, host Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) talks with Naresh Shanker, former CTO of Xerox and CEO of PARC. Xerox is a foundational computing and technology company with over 20,000 employees and multiple spinoff companies operating at the frontier of modern technology. Before running IT and product teams at Xerox, Naresh was formerly the CIO at HP, Palm, and other notable companies. In this conversation, Naresh describes AI’s impact on enterprise software, the importance of data strategy for successful AI applications, and how technology executives can empower teams using AI solutions.
Quick hits from Naresh:
On the areas AI can make global impacts: “AI is going to continuously evolve into the acceleration of GenAI and start marrying this bridge between the whole human condition as well as context. When you start putting this together, you're going to start looking at things like its applicability in the field of energy efficiency. So smart cities, smart water, smart transportation, these spaces are going to start accelerating at a global level.”
On understanding data as it relates to AI: “There is going to be data that's going to be what I call foundational to these models, to these learning-based models that can actually help advance certain capabilities that are much more commoditized. Then there is going to be a whole layer of specialization. That specialization has nuances because there is going to be foreground IP, background IP, meaning intellectual property. And then there are going to be all of the policies, regulatory aspects that govern that data. Then there are security and regulatory requirements. All of that has got to get layered. The way we break down this challenge is to just make sure that the data can be what I call classified, segregated, compartmentalized in a way that it can actually serve as building blocks around what is truly a commodity to advance a set of capabilities versus what is going to be very specialized to be a differentiator in specific industries to advance specific sciences.”
On the importance of AI frameworks: “We are going to see more deep tech. Where there is going to be a combination of sensing technologies coupled with very strong AI. That pivot is going to be very critical. So putting in place the right frameworks that can take advantage of both these agile frameworks and hardware and software ecosystems so that we can iterate quickly, learn from failures and adapt to these changing market conditions globally is going to be super critical.”
Recent Book Recommendation: From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at www.enterprisesoftware.blog.
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 27th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Tom Gerdes, EVP & CIO of The Heico Companies. Employing over 9,000 people globally and with an annual revenue of over $2.5 billion, The Heico Companies is the parent company for over 70 high-performing manufacturing, construction, and industrial businesses. In this conversation, Tom discusses the advantages of generative AI at enterprise scale, the realistic impacts of AI on modern manufacturing processes, and ethical considerations of AI adoption.
Quick hits from Tom:
On The Heico Companies’s current use of automation: “Some of our products have telematics built into them. And so taking that information, being far more aware of the status of the equipment, how it's being operated and ensuring that you're getting the maximum value for your end consumer out of that product. While you think about things like cranes and forklifts being non modernized technology, even when they're human operated, the real ability to get better data and better insights and then use those models to start getting what you've seen in a lot of airline industries, which is uptime and availability of equipment and really putting that across our portfolio of products.”
On the impacts of AI on human labor: “I don't see a transformational shift in taking a lot of the labor out of that process. I think it's about skilling that labor up and utilizing automation as a means to get more value out of what we do in a manufacturing organization. But when you're running a furnace to produce steel billets and when you're rolling those into a rod and we're drawing it into wire, there's certainly a level of automation that can work there.”
On the risk of adopting AI tools: “If you're trying to drive risk to zero. You're in my view, driving value down to negative or certainly below zero. I think it's very hard and I think the whole component of generating value is about understanding and accepting risk, and making sure that risk is also effectively communicated to the business.”
Recent Book Recommendation: Essentialism by Greg McKeown
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 26th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Naveen Zutshi, CIO of Databricks. Databricks is a leading AI enterprise software company enabling organizations to build, deploy, and maintain data solutions at scale. In this conversation, Naveen shares fascinating use cases from the next generation of large language models, how AI can transform every aspect of enterprise work, and the best ways to stay knowledgeable about the cutting edge of AI.
Quick hits from Naveen:
On Rolls-Royce harnessing AI: “With Rolls-Royce, their model is selling engines for a very low price because they actually charge the customer per fly run, per hour of flights. They want to keep the engines in great working order and do a lot of preventative maintenance to reduce the amount of downtime for the engines because their entire revenue is tied to this. They use machine learning and AI for all of those purposes.”
On AI’s coming dominance to the world of software: “Marc Andreessen had this note, right? Software eats the world and I think data and AI is going to eat software, and that is proving more and more true.”
On the entire C-Suite being interested in the next generation of AI tools: “Before [this latest AI wave], you were using NLP and AI, but it was used primarily by data scientists and data engineers. It is now democratizing this whole notion of LLMs to the entire company. I can’t tell you how many business leaders, whether they’re in sales and other groups who want to start using the technology.”
Recent Book Recommendation: The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 25th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Paul Chapman, VP of Business Strategy at Cisco. Cisco is a leading global networking equipment, software, and services provider. In this conversation, Paul shares his perspective on AI, how technology will transform the future of work, and hard-fought lessons on innovation that have stuck with him throughout his career.
Quick hits from Paul:
On productivity tools granting back time: “You know what a billionaire can't buy? One second of time. If we can give people back the gift of time through this shift to hyper-productivity, I think we're gonna see a huge fundamental paradigm shift in how we operate.”
On the future of office buildings: “I spend a lot of time talking to customers about the digitalization of real estate, smart buildings, and smart building technology. The amount of sensors and intelligence we can now get from buildings in terms of how they're being used, helps us make smart decisions around how we think about sustainability.”
On the expectations of CIOs: “CIOs are expected to be disruptive and failure is the currency of risk. I think all too often the CIO behaves in a very conservative way, but that's not how they're measured and what's expected of them. They're expected to be disruptive.”
Recent Book Recommendation: So Smart But…by Allen N. Weiner
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 24th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Scott Strickland, EVP & CIO of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Wyndham is the world’s largest hotel group, with nearly 10,000 properties in 95 countries across 24 global brands. In this conversation, Scott shares how Wyndham is deploying AI to transform guest experience, frameworks for building a unified technology stack across their brands, and tips for startups and enterprises to best collaborate.
Quick hits from Scott:
On Wyndham utilizing AI for live coaching of call center agents: "The AI is sitting there in the background and performing real-time coaching and then scoring the agent at the end of the call."
On Wyndham's intelligent booking systems: "Perhaps you're making a reservation on your mobile device sitting in our parking lot. I have 90 seconds to drop that reservation down to the system so that when you check in, your room is available for you, and they greet you with a smile. I have to do that at scale for a million rooms every day. And naturally, you're going to be making that reservation at our peak period, which is between 5-9 pm. So I need to build a system that can accommodate that sort of volume intelligently."
On the importance of being customer-centric: "Define your customer, whoever your customer may be. In this case, we have three customers at Wyndham. We have a franchisee, the small business owner who owns our hotels, we have a guest who uses our hotels, and then we have our internal team members. What does each one of those folks want? You can't pull a Henry Ford because he always said, 'If you ask them what they want, they want a faster horse,' but you need to listen to them."
Recent Book Recommendation: City Of Stairs by Robin Jackson Bennett
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at enterprisesoftware.blog
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer
On the 23rd episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Claus Torp Jensen, Chief Innovation Officer and EVP of R&D at Teladoc Health. Previously, Claus was the CTO at both CVS Health and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. In this conversation, Claus shares how Teladoc harnesses technology to transform patient outcomes, how to build a culture of innovation, and AI's potential to revolutionize health care.
Quick hits from Claus:
On AI helping manage chronic conditions like diabetes: “If you're a newly diagnosed diabetic, one of the more dangerous things is that you don't actually know what it feels like when your blood sugar is out of whack, and it could be quite dangerous, so we make sure you have a blood glucose meter with you. What should happen is that there's an algorithm somewhere that flags that there’s a new data point saying this individual on our program has low blood sugar, and we know this person is a newly diagnosed diabetic. Why don't we call them and see if they need help?”
On what innovation truly means: “If you can find ways of applying either existing or borderline technologies in people's real lives, that is a meaningful innovation that matters to society…innovation doesn’t come in one shape, size or form. You can be in the mindset of incrementally improving something we're doing already [with technology].”
On technology’s role in improving bedside manner: “The thing about health care is people are not in a good place when they need help; it's very emotional and personal. So our ability to actually help whoever is in contact with you detect the emotional cues of ‘is this person getting increasingly distressed?’ is actually a meaningful power-up of a system. I believe that adding emotional intelligence to hybrid interactions is a meaningful use case that, again, people aren't talking about a whole lot, and the technology exists.”
Recent Book Recommendation: If Disney Ran Your Hospital by Fred Lee
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 22nd episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Sandeep Davé, CDTO at CBRE. CBRE is a Fortune 500 commercial real estate company, with $27B of revenue and more than 100,000 employees operating in over 100 countries globally. In this conversation, Sandeep shares fascinating insights into CBRE’s innovative uses of technology, including augmented reality solutions for technicians, their venture into consumer facing applications, and AI capabilities that reinvent the commercial real estate experience.
Quick hits from Sandeep:
On CBRE utilizing AR/VR solutions to combat the talent gap: "The built world is going through this transition where especially for complex assets such as life science labs or hospitals, the technician talent and the knowledge pool of the technician talent is reducing. And so we actually applied AR capability to [have] four eyes in the field…you have a more junior technician in the field, but also have a more experienced technician behind the scenes, seeing what the person is seeing, guiding them through what changes they or what the diagnostic is and what they should be doing as a result."
On 'self-healing' buildings of the future: "I think we are starting to scratch the surface on remote diagnostics and remote maintenance. I fully see ten years from now the likelihood of this concept of self-healing buildings, where they are much better managed with less human intervention, and the humans are doing a lot more productive work than they do today."
On generative AI transforming real estate planning: "Imagine designing a building and saying, well, I wanted to have this ESG footprint and running multiple models through generative AI technologies, then creating a visual digital twin of it and saying, well, here's how it would look, and these are the different ways that it could look. And then being inside the building to say, well, would you like it to look like this? And see it in an immersive manner, not just on your browser, but to see it in an immersive manner. The possibilities are so tremendous, and clearly I'm excited about it."
Recent Book Recommendation: Play Nice But Win by Michael Dell
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 21st episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Carter Busse, CIO of Workato. Workato is an enterprise automation tool allowing businesses to integrate their apps and automate workflows without compromising security. Today, he shares how the company is harnessing its technology for various internal business functions, his perspective on the possibilities of AI, and the ideal role for IT within enterprise organizations.
Quick hits from Carter:
On the state of digital transformation today: "We're in a second wave of digital transformation. We did the [first stage of] digital transformation before COVID. We had COVID. Now we're on this hyped-up AI, automation, Web 3.0; so it's like a second wave… We're all in this big race to figure out this second wave of digital transformation."
On Workato deploying their tools internally: "We're doing a lot of fun things here using AI with work. If you're an employee, you want an app, you just tell our chatbot, and we take the automation from there and then we automate the approval with your manager through Slack, and then we provision the application."
On the state of IT within enterprise organizations: "I've learned that especially nowadays with the young generation coming out of school, they want to own the technology, they want to be involved, they want to help IT. It's really up to the IT leaders to give them the architecture, guard rails and governance so they can innovate and we can put it into production as well."
Recent Book Recommendation: Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer
On the 20th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with David Smoley. David has had a storied career, leading technology teams at several large and defining companies, including General Electric, Flex, and AstraZeneca. Most recently, he led an engineering team as a VP at Apple. Today, David shares anecdotes about being an early advocate for innovation, best practices for collaborating with startups, and his experiences with hands-on digital transformation.
Quick hits from David:
On digital transformation: “Digital transformation depends on your starting point. What would be a radical digital transformation for one company might be meaningless to another company. I think of digital transformation as being very contextual around a particular situation or problem that you're trying to solve."
On enterprise IT executives’ relationships with startups: “It’s this great quid pro quo where you're looking for cool technology and smart people who can help you in your role as a tech leader and [startups] are looking for smart tech leaders who are going to help them develop great products and great companies.”
On the ethos of being a technologist: “One of the things you have to love if you're a technologist is living on that edge of what's possible and what are the risks, and getting people to see your side of what the possibilities are.”
Recent Book Recommendation: World Class IT by Peter High
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/.
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 19th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Tom Cullen, CIO of Corsair. Before Corsair, Tom has been CIO at several large and defining companies, including JUUL Labs, Peet's Coffee & Tea, and Driscoll's. Today, Tom shares fascinating ways Driscoll's has harnessed technology, including leveraging blockchain to trace berry provenance, Corsair's utilization of data to enhance custom configurations for customers' gaming setups, and best practices for partnering with startups.
Quick hits from Tom:
On keeping things simple as a CIO: "Technologists love to overcomplicate things, build a big Rube Goldberg design just because you can…I think your job as a technologist, as an architect, as a CIO in my case, is to bridge that gap between process standardization, business enablement for scale and leverage and growth in the future, while also keeping your technology stack as standard as you can."
On what Driscoll's real business is: "What's interesting about Driscoll's is that they develop proprietary berry genetics and patent them. That's why the berries are so good. It's not your university variety that's just replicated, they're special and they're actually patented…one of my favorite things to say while I was there, just for impact, which is mostly true, is Driscoll's is a multibillion-dollar berry company that doesn't grow any berries."
On blockchain helping with berry provenance: "[At Driscoll's], we partnered with other companies to do a blockchain experiment. We started looking at different traceability mechanisms around food and certification of food. Is it actually organic? Is it shade grown? How are the workers treated? Is their child labor deployed? There's a lot of factors that play into that in any type of global manufacturing. We started a blockchain pilot with IBM to look at food traceability. So you could trace your product all the way back to the farm harvest date and what are the certificates and certifications of that farm…it was super fun to be involved in a pilot like that because you're using what some would consider a cryptocurrency technology, to solve a food traceability product issue."
On Corsair harnessing data for better customer experiences: "We have software products, one in particular called iCue that sits on the computer and controls all of your devices. If you had iCue right now, it could control your microphone, your lighting, your computer; and if you're a gamer, everything interacts at once, which is super cool. iCue throws off a lot of important data about how you're using products and what you're actually doing. We're trying to ingest and correlate data that shows not only product usage, but consumer behavior online. We're hoping to get into the social aspect as well and ingest that data to better understand how customers use our products, what type of activities they do, and how they engage in the further community."
Recent Book Recommendation: Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Luke Reiser and Josh Meer.
On the 18th episode of Enterprise Software Innovators, hosts Evan Reiser (Abnormal Security) and Saam Motamedi (Greylock Partners) talk with Akash Khurana, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Wesco International. With over 18,000 employees and $20 billion of revenue, Wesco is a leading provider of electrical, industrial, and communications MRO and OEM products, supplying vital infrastructure in countries across the world. Today, Akash shares his insights on digital transformation, the role of data in optimizing customer experiences, and the importance of AI in driving business outcomes.
Quick hits from Akash:
On AI optimizing product recommendations: "One area that we have seen significant improvements is product recommendation. We have massive data from our end-to-end value chain. [In the past] as we responded to commercial proposals, it was all about how we go to the product set that is available, the product set that a sales rep is familiar with. And that was the past, right? It was very linear in terms of responses. Using AI, we are able to now provide not only one linear option to our sales representatives, but we are able to provide multiple recommendations with different profiles, and different availability metrics, which allow much better capability for our sales organization to deliver to our demands customer commitments.”
On AI’s increasingly important role at Wesco: “We have something we call the ‘AI Factory.’ And every business model, every opportunity that we think of, we take a lens of ‘what can AI do in this area?’ You really need to make it part of your operating model so that it becomes the way you operate, the way you think about technology, the way you think about providing services and solutions.”
On how Akash defines digital transformation: “The way I define it is in terms of leveraging digital to create new value channels for the organization, whether it's through new products, new services, new solutions, new ways of going to market, new ways of engaging with customers, new ways of doing business with our partner ecosystems, new ways of tapping into innovation capability of the organization.
Recent Book Recommendation: Creative Construction by Gary Pisano
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Like what you hear? Leave us a review and subscribe to the show on Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Enterprise Software Innovators is a show where top tech executives share how they innovate at scale. Each episode covers unique insights and stories that will help you succeed as a technology leader. Find more great lessons from tech leaders and enterprise software experts at https://www.enterprisesoftware.blog/
Enterprise Software Innovators is produced by Josh Meer and Luke Reiser.