Cloud Wars Live with Bob Evans

CFO — From Scorekeeper to Tech-Driven Visionary

• The CFO's changing role: Technology, specifically AI, is transforming the role of the chief financial officer (CFO) from a traditional scorekeeper who deals with financial reporting and risk management, to a futurist who leads enterprise-wide transformations. It allows CFOs to shift their focus from routine, time-consuming tasks to more strategic and forward-thinking responsibilities.
• The essential contribution of human skills: Value creation is a collaborative effort between humans and technology. Skills needed included empathy, communication, and consensus-building. In a future where automation handles routine tasks, finance professionals must harness these human skills to co-create and work together.
• Value creation through intangible assets: CFOs must shift their focus from managing financial and tangible assets to managing intangible assets like human capital, intellectual capital, social and relationship capital, and natural capital. These intangible assets often account for a significant portion of a company's value. Finance professionals need to use proxies and metrics to understand and quantify their impact on business outcomes.

The Big Quote: "It's not just about automation for the sake of reducing workload, but actually to look at technology as an enabler of . . . transformational changes in your business model. How do you serve your customers in new ways? How do you transform your business model with new products?"

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Episode 34 | Tech Event Insights

The Big Themes:

• Employee hiring and development trends: AI is enabling predictive candidate performance analysis, and refining job descriptions. Employee engagement and well-being are crucial in the remote and hybrid work landscape, with HR addressing concerns like burnout and mental health to retain talent. Data-driven decisions empowered by AI are enhancing HR functions.
• Financial wellness: Earned wage access is a key development in HR tech, reflecting the growing importance of employee and contract or gig worker financial wellness. This concept allows workers to access their earned wages before the traditional payday, providing them with more control over their finances and potentially reducing financial stress.
• Looking to 2024: Bonnie points out that the coming year will provide a strong dose of reality with regard to the promise of AI. The key question is whether these technologies will truly transform and enhance processes or if they will remain as mere buzzwords. She also sees the slowdown in talent acquisition.

The Big Quote: “Rather than being afraid that AI is going to replace me, the conversation I think everybody should have, no matter what your job is, is ‘How can I use AI so that I can become a superhero in my job and be that much smarter, that much more efficient, and able to make the mission-critical decisions?'”

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AI's Transformative Landscape

The Big Themes

• CIO and CDO roles: When the roles of CIO and CDO are separate, each can have its own priorities. A strong collaboration between the two should be encouraged to help align these priorities and increase focus on what benefits the business, even if the timing of returns varies.
• Data-driven transformation: Transitioning to a data-driven company has been pivotal for Rubrik. By embracing data-driven insights, it's gained a deeper understanding of its business operations, identified challenges such as data quality and financial health, and empowered employees with actionable insights.
• Future of GenAI: Beyond productivity gains, GenAI holds the potential to fundamentally transform businesses by systematically eliminating hurdles and solving previously unsolvable problems. Data quality is an area that GenAI might have a significant impact on down the line.

The Big Quote: "...I talk to all the business leaders [and ask things like] 'What is it about your business that bothers you, or you wish you could improve further?' I think you start with those kinds of statements. Because then you can quickly translate that back into a series of data fragments that. . . turn into metrics, get aggregated, and then finally get enabled to help the business leader with some stories."

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Episode 47 | The Impact of the GenAI Revolution

The Big Themes:

• The fast-paced nature of the GenAI Revolution: Because generative AI is being developed at a rapid pace, companies are able to accelerate their progress and pace of innovation. GenAI brings greater time to value, leading to quick adoption and impact.
• Reimagine business processes: Organizations must consider how they can harness generative AI to maintain a competitive edge. By optimizing this technology, business leaders can reimagine business processes to enable greater productivity and better outcomes.
• New expectations from customers and vendors: The capabilities coming from the GenAI Revolution are raising the expectations and experiences of customers as well as employees and vendors. As generative AI is developed to be more user-friendly, it can enhance recruitment and retention as well as open new possibilities for leveraging the technology.

The Big Quote: "I am not a fan of fear, uncertainty, and doubt causing people anxiety of 'Oh you have to act now, or you're going to go out of business' or any of that kind of nonsense. However, this is one of those moments — this is a stop, drop, and roll moment — where I think people have to say, 'This is different. I need to understand how I can harness the power of what's happening these days.'"

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The Big Themes:

• CIO role change: CIOs are facing a shifting role in the age of AI. While AI technologies are automating many routine tasks and processes, CIOs are increasingly focusing on enabling business transformation, fostering a culture of innovation, and ensuring that AI is used strategically to empower employees.
• Evolution of technology: AI and technological advancements are part of the natural evolution of the business world. There’ve been similar discussions and concerns when new technologies, such as mini-computers, local area networks, and the internet, emerged in the past. AI is the latest technology that is changing how businesses operate.
• Empowering employees: AI and automation are liberating employees from routine, low-value tasks, allowing them to focus on more strategic and high-value work. This transformation in responsibilities can lead to more engaged and empowered employees as they move from mundane tasks to more meaningful work.

The Big Quote: ” . . . not just AI, but technology will eliminate more and more routine, low-thought jobs, and high muscle or high danger jobs, warehouse jobs, loading ships, jobs, construction jobs, we’ve got to accept that it’s going to change . . . how do we redeploy our human resources, our people, some of whom have been with us 20, 30, 40 years, and let that be the driver of the process, instead of being enslaved by the process?”

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Challenges and Strategies in Tech Industry Ecosystems

The Big Themes

• Industry-specific applications: The tech industry is witnessing a significant shift towards industry-specific applications and the importance of ecosystems. Tech vendors are grappling with challenges in aligning their strategies with the evolving landscape, where industry expertise and partnerships play pivotal roles.
• Strategy sequence: Ashlyn outlines a four-point sequence for effective strategy implementation in the tech industry. This sequence is comprised of identifying growth drivers; crafting differentiated messages; cross-functional campaigns; and sales enablement.
• Generative AI impact: The rise of generative AI is impacting the tech industry's approach to strategies and messaging. The presence of generative AI is creating accelerators in the market, lowering barriers to entry for new ideas and campaigns. As a result, tech companies should start implementing their strategies as early as possible.

The Big Quote: "You have messaging that's so high level that it almost doesn't say anything, or it says the same thing as everyone else. There are probably hundreds of businesses pushing out messaging about accelerating digital transformation, for instance. There's got to be this middle ground in between [being] so technical, that it's only attractive to a small handful of people and doesn't break through and so high level that your eyes sort of glaze over, and it doesn't capture attention. That is where we see the industry strategies and the partner strategies really helping."

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Episode 15 | Building Recruitment Trust

The Big Themes

• Contingent agency vs. other recruiting models: The differences between contingent search (fee-based recruitment paid upon successful placement) and other recruiting models, like retained agencies and social recruiting, are explored, emphasizing the value of contingency agencies in today’s job market. Contingency agencies mean less risk for the client.
• Connecting with good candidates: Todd explains he has a good team, with many senior people who get that it’s about really understanding who that candidate is and that the candidate is an individual in addition to his or her resume. The focus shouldn’t be on sending a large number of resumes along to the client, but on the quality of the candidates.
• Opportunities in a down market: In a down market with layoffs and increased talent availability, there are still critical hiring needs. Companies must focus on essential positions, and this presents opportunities for recruiters who can deliver quality candidates efficiently.

The Big Quote: “LinkedIn is a huge asset, but, because the market is so soft, and there’s so many people in the marketplace, the postings on LinkedIn are more frustration than benefit. Because of social recruiting, a lot of candidates think that they should be following LinkedIn when in actuality they shouldn’t, they should actually be engaging with people like Todd and his team.”

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Episode 33 | Transparency for Customer and Partner Relationships

The Big Themes:

• Maintaining strong partner relationships: The partners ecosystem is a key component to delivering value to customers, especially within the enterprise software industry. Workday emphasizes how much partners have contributed to its growth, so it prioritizes maintaining a healthy partners ecosystem.
• Customer reviews: By actively seeking customer reviews, companies can build credibility and maintain strong customer relationships. Partners asking customers for reviews is indicative that the partner stands by their work and demonstrates transparency in their operations. Sharing the customers’ voices also indicates which partners ensure customers have an excellent experience.
• Workday’s AI approach: At Workday Rising, the company emphasized trustworthiness, its data foundation, and being human-centric as three key elements of its approach to AI. While there are many technological advancements happening, Workday still prioritizes trust and transparency to maintain its connection with its customers.

Sponsored by NetSuite

The Big Quote: “A software vendor is only as good as their partners because the customer doesn’t see any delineation in their implementation between Workday themselves and the partner that’s helping them… It’s really important for Workday and really any enterprise software vendor to make sure that their partners are doing a great job and delivering in a consistent way because, ultimately, that’s how the customer is going to rate the vendor

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Episode 30 | Embracing the Future Today

Note: this episode contains explicit language.

The Big Themes

• Digital transformation reshapes industries: McDonald's has seen a significant shift in its sales, with 40% of its revenue coming from apps, delivery, or kiosk orders. This reflects the growing preference for digital ordering and the decline of in-person dining, prompting changes in restaurant layouts and services.
• AI's impact on creativity and innovation: AI is influencing various aspects of creativity, including the generation of creative content like movie scripts and even the creation of consumer products like Coca-Cola flavors. Christopher had a ChatGPT song in the style of Tom Waits and thought it did a great job.
• Technological advancements come in unexpected ways: There's a ripple effect with scientific research and exploration. Breakthroughs in one area can lead to advancements in various other fields. Researchers developed new technology, such as AI and deep-sea exploration equipment, as a result of their search for interstellar objects.

The Big Quote: "If you look back in history, America's striving for the moon and space travel . . .[what] doesn't get talked about are all of the sub-breakthroughs that it led to, many of which form the basis of our industry: miniaturization, communication. All these things lead us to the internet and ultimately impact how we think about computing and a lot of other things."

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What's Next With Data

The Big Themes

• Business and IT convergence: IT and business operations are increasingly converging. CEOs and executives are recognizing the critical role of technology in achieving strategic business objectives. Juergen is seeing more and more "fusion teams" where IT and business come together.
• Generative AI impact: Generative AI is a transformative technology with significant implications across industries. Businesses are exploring how generative AI can enhance operations, decision-making, and create entirely new opportunities. Business that are still on-prem may see the advent of Gen AI as a pressing reason to move onto the cloud.
• Data management and data access: Effective data management is necessary for leveraging generative AI and other advanced technologies. SAP's Datasphere is an answer for remote data access and federation.

The Big Quote: "No customer I'm aware of is successful with the central data lake. The efforts of bringing data together in their heterogeneous application landscape are just too big. And therefore, we firmly believe that data federation will be the prevailing method of accessing data."

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