B2BiQ

Celestica’s Vice President of Global Business Services, Manny Paneser joins us from SSOW Canada where he shares that he truly believes in the discipline of Global Business Services. He’s trying to look at the cause and effect of processes. The traditional silos are great for creating subject matter experts within each function, but cause and effect of a many processes run across functions. So for connected processes a horizontal structure is more appropriate. Again, the definition of GBS. But what’s interesting in Manny’s case is that when GBS took over certain processes for the organization, he added humans yet saved cost. Which means that today’s world can still feature non-automated continuous improvement to achieve process excellence.

CFO/CAO BNP Paribas Poland Operations Marcin Nowakowski joins us from the RPA & AI BFSI Summit where he shares that as a CFO he of course hears from executives during the budget process, throughout execution and specifically during process improvement projects like automation. In the grand scheme of things and based on a career in finance, he notes that if an executive ever presents him with a story without numbers it’s simply a dream- it’s not a business case. While 10 year timeline projects do still occur, average projects are timed out in two to three year segments meaning- it’s by then that the organization must be paid back. This is the case as it’s so difficult to foresee the actual future 3 years hence with technological advancements like RPA & AI happening at warp speed.

Recorded at OPEX San Diego, Vice President Customer Assurance for Comcast Dana Wilson joins us and shares that very early on in her life she had a love of math science and engineering. She went to Drexel University and majored in chemical engineering. She graduated and became a process engineer at Philadelphia Gas Works. And it was there that she realized that in any new situation you have to become a student. She seeks to educate herself before doing what’s next. After working as a chemical engineer at Dow, she became a six sigma black belt where she found a way to bridge the technical acumen she had while developing leadership skills. After running process improvement for the city of Philadelphia, Dana worked on the Olympics for Comcast eventually landing in CX.

Recorded at CCW, Jon Robertson joins us and shares that along the way, he woke up one morning and was experiencing numbness from the waste down. After many tests and MRI’s, doctors prognosticated that he might have MS. Now that we live in a connected world, it’s hard to turn off. And it seems that the first thing we sacrifice is our health. We’re not going to the gym as much, we squeeze in a 15 minute lunch…in general it’s difficult to take time for yourself- and that time isn’t valuable when you’re checking all of your digital feeds. Jon’s focus is on taking 3-5 minutes to get what you need to be productive for the rest of the day. Ultimately Jon didn’t have MS but he used the opportunity to take stock in what was important make some personal changes, start taking care of himself and make a difference for others.

VP, Marketing & Strategy, Asia & Oceania for Japan Airlines Akira Mitsumasu joins us from Customer Experience Management Asia in Singapore where he shares that as a kid he knew that he wanted to exhibit the traits he respected in his father- integrity, honesty and sincerity among others. 28 years on at Japan Airlines, at the moment while the organization has increased marketing or what Akira calls promising, he’s equally focused on delivering which is why he’s dedicated to Customer Experience. On ‘what works’ the company places a heavy emphasis on attention to small details. The focus is not just on first and business class but on economy also having a comfortable and enjoyable journey. And overall, in Akira’s words, their secret is delivering truly authentic Japanese style service or omotenashi.

Recorded at Intelligent Automation in Chicago, Kelly Switt joins us as a native Chicagoan who was always a bit of an activist. She’s been told that her nickname is Mako Shark due to the fact that she’s always moving. Kelly was running the six sigma lean group for Citi of course consistently looking at how to improve operations. She had done some automation work at both Bank of America and HSBC and she's spent the past 4 years selling automation as a concept internally. The team began by focusing on data quality and analytics in order to drive more process improvement. That gave the team runway for management to have buy in. And finally last year, with no stones left unturned, Kelly and the team dove in on true intelligent automation.

Head of Customer & Digital Experience, APAC & EMEA for Citi, Niamh Byrne joins us from Customer Experience Management Summit Asia where she discusses covering 17 countries in Asia and Europe. She notes that she’ll often talk to New York HQ in the morning and perhaps at night and everyone else in between. Niamh is driven by a renewed focus on customer experience through being a more customer focused and customer led organization. That’s the primary order of business. She’s restructured the team managing the experience within the digital channels whether it’s mobile, social or on Citi online. And Niamh is interested in innovating as she and the team have just launched a chatbot which is the first banking bot of it’s type in the APAC region.

Senior Director of Production Engineering, Continuous Improvement & OpEx at Leggett & Platt Riad Ardagi joins us from OPEX San Diego where he discusses his interest in being the interaction of man and machine. He spent some time on the GM Saturn plant floor transforming business operations through robotics. The first time. And so Riad brings learnings from that intelligent automation to this intelligent automation. Ironically, he discusses the fact that he’s got a fair number of manufacturing jobs in Kentucky as we speak. He works with employees on bringing in robotics, training the machines and then moving into more value add work- if you can imagine that. And as past is prologue , Riad discusses OpEx lessons from his time at Toyota including the importance of jidoka.

Race car driver, six sigma black belt and near scrum master Max Just joins us from SSOW Latin America where he shares that he quit Ford to work as a contractor for Lotus in the engineering department working with suppliers for Proton in Malaysia. He moved on to becoming the quality department for trucks in China. He began to realize that he was a fit in consultancy. He got an MBA and started as a management consultant for Warner Bros. home video in DVDs. He and the company realized the industry was dying. But it was there that he learned the importance of data integrity. He then moved to a smaller consultancy working with Coca-Cola. He was evaluating what HR processes were doing right after transformation. And from there, he took the next step directly into Coca-Cola proper.

Recorded at CCW, Deb Alvord joins us and shares that her career began on the floor as an agent with American Airlines working her way up to Training then Quality to a Supervisor role…and then to a Supervisory role over agents. Deb notes that many conversations are very similar to the one’s she had on the front lines back in the day as the customer just wanted and still does just want help. She did and still does truly love the job. Once in management, her focused moved to how to take care of the employee. Her goal was and still is to give them the tools to be successful. Her approach was and is to ensure that the employee has the knowledge base, training or support that they need. The employee became her customer as in her mind the agents are her customers.