CIO NYC Luncheon

Data and intelligent information have been part of the DNA of FedEx for over four decades. As the world continues to evolve and the speed of change and scale continues to accelerate, all levels of artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to create insights that can change the way we operate. Today’s lean agile digital enterprises are accelerating the powerful connectedness between insights and automated execution. AI and ML are foundational for business value creation.

Following the success of Isaac Sacolick's first book, Driving Digital, Isaac will share stories and insights from his new book, Digital Trailblazer: Essential Lessons to Jumpstart Transformation and Accelerate Your Technology Leadership. Your business needs more transformation leaders – what Isaac calls Digital Trailblazers—who can lead teams, evolve sustainable ways of working, develop data capabilities as competitive differentiators, and deliver business outcomes. This keynote highlights who are Digital Trailblazers, how to empower them, and what practices they will need to drive business outcomes from transformation initiatives.  

While new technology and solutions can help CIOs make better decisions for an organization, nothing will take the place of a highly talented workforce. CIOs need to be great recruiters of talent but even more importantly, be able to grow the skills and capabilities of their existing team. Competitive compensation is important in talent retention but so is a work environment where individual growth and development are top of mind. In the post pandemic era, remote employment is the new status quo. Employers are forced to implement and improve the digital workplace by providing productivity tools and accessibility to company resources. In this session, we will share case studies of successful digital workplace implementations, including how to deal with the inherent security risks of expanded accessibility to company resources.

Many large enterprises in today’s fiercely competitive climate look toward optimizing its supply chain to increase business scale and agility. By harnessing a combination of technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and predictive analytics, companies can automate and create new customer experiences that increase satisfaction and boost sales. Gaps remain in supply chain cyber security even as digitalization accelerates. By doing so, companies are left vulnerable to the growing risk of a cyber-attack. There is no shortage of stories illustrating the dangers of lax cyber security, with the biggest attacks able to utterly paralyze an operation and cause millions in losses. Despite this obvious danger, efforts to improve cyber security are progressing slowly. Future risks to the supply chain will involve software, cloud-based infrastructures, and hyper-converged products, rather than simply hardware. Even after many years of experience, capable CISOs find they may not be equipped to overcome the cybersecurity concerns that arise from building control contractors.

Bridging the gap between business and technology is not easy and requires discipline and balance between technology, people, and the business. For so many organizations today, technology is the business. Technology needs to be understood as a critical enabler in every part of the organization from the front line to the back office. It creates new value by crunching data to deliver new insights, it spurs innovation, and it disrupts traditional business models.

For business and technology leaders alike, new actions and behavioral changes can help their organizations make this shift. CIOs must take responsibility for problems, they should convey that when technology fails, many people typically share responsibility.