One of the defining characteristics of the digital economy is our increased dependence on third-party organisations. Whether we are manufacturers, retailers, hotels, financial institutions or government, we rely on a network of suppliers and business partners to create and deliver goods and services.

While this interdependence allows us to achieve economies of scale, it also introduces risks to our business.

Consider the case of Japan automaker, Toyota. In February 2022, Toyota shut down operations in Japan after a major plastic supplier, Kojima Industries, suffered a data breach. Kojima had remote access to Toyota manufacturing plants, greatly increasing Toyota’s risk. As a result of the temporary shutdown, Toyota suffered financial and operational losses.

These third-party risks extend all the way to our technology suppliers. Consider the case of SolarWinds and Kaseya – both are trusted names in their industries. When both suffered a breach, the attack cascaded down to their customers.

So how do you protect your business when the potential threat is from outside your control. With us today on PodChats for FutureCIO is Siddharth Deshpande, Field CTO, Asia Pacific, Palo Alto Networks, to talk to us about securing the outside from within.

Siddharth, welcome to PodChats for FutureCIO.

1.        What are the hidden risks and threats posed by Third-Party Code? 

2.        How can Infrastructure-as-code play a key role in supply chain protection? 

a.       Misconfiguration vulnerability.

3.        How can code security prevent vulnerabilities and compliance violations in container images?

4.        What is the significance of policy-as-code in the provision of controls built into code?

5.        Most of the modern application code is made up of open-source dependencies. How can the industry build confidence in open-source security?

6.        As organisations pursue cloud-native applications, and work more collaboratively with third-party partners, what is your advice for CIO/CISO and CTO in securing third party applications?

The latest projections from the Asian Development Bank are that the region is expected to grow 4.3% this year, down from 5.2% in April 2022. It has also lowered its 2023 forecast to 4.9% while inflation forecast has been raised to 4.0% attributing this to higher energy and food prices.

Given the continuing uncertainties we face today and the disruptions that come with these, how should CFOs strategize and lead their organisations to become the disruptors?

With us on this PodChats for FutureCFO is William Foo, Group Chief Finance Officer for LUXASIA to share with us his take of leading as disruptors.

Perhaps to our audience an understanding of where we are coming from as regards this PodChat, describe for us the business of LUXASIA. 

1. What do people get wrong about disruption, innovation and transformation?

2. How do you become the disruptor and not the disrupted?

3. For risk-averse leaders, how do you convey a message/proposal that suggests taking a chance on something untested by the company?

4. Name one strategy that works to create a sustained culture of disruption?

5. What is your response to a manager that says no to an idea?

6. How do you overcome barriers to innovation?

Enterprises continue to mature in the art of acquiring data whether this is structured or unstructured. But having data alone has proven to be no predictor of whether a business is successful at drawing insights from the data. 

Gartner says data-driven organizations struggle with increasing data diversity; its producers, consumers and distributed nature; and automation demands to relieve strained resources. As they look at data management solutions, care must be taken to look for solutions that provide agility, resilience and simplicity across the data landscape to increase business impact.

In this PodChats for FutureCIO, we are joined by Angel (Spanish) Viña, founder and CEO, Denodo Technologies for his take on the challenges organisations face in their quest to become more data-driven.

1.       How has data management evolved over the pandemic? What lessons can we draw from here?

2.       How can businesses build a strategy to best access and utilize their data as their operations become more complex? 

3.       In their best to better manage their data, what challenges will businesses face and Can you cite some typical mistakes organisations experience when managing data?

4.       Given the many different technologies and approaches to data management – for example, distributed vs centralized data management, how does an organisation decide what is best for them?

5.       We expect a slow but positive recovery in the years ahead. What is certain is that uncertainties are here to stay. How can decision-makers best prepare themselves to obtain faster access to high-quality data to make better business decisions?

Activities like video conferencing, mobile work, cloud computing – all of these have been around well before the pandemic. Before anyone ever coined businesses have been undergoing transformation to reflect opportunities presented at the time. If what we mean by digital is the use of information technology, that too has been around for decades. 

What is different though is that in recent years, digital transformation brings initiatives and technologies to support an organisation’s effort to align people, process, and technology more closely towards the company’s core business objectives and future vision.

One thing is clear for many organisations, digital business transformation is not a project or technology or initiative that can be implemented and the organisation moves on to the next. It is a journey that will evolve over time. 

With us today on PodChats for FutureCIO is Rajesh Nandakumar, head of Information technology, Westpac Institutional Bank Asia for his take how to futureproof an organisation’s modernisation strategy.

1.       Given the responses of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, how do you see your organisation responding to measures to contain costs while adapting to evolving market conditions?

2.       How will these impact your efforts around:

a.       Legacy application modernization (including cloud migration)

b.       Rollout of new applications

3.       What are common issues you face in your software development cycle as well as software support?

4.       Where do you see low-code application development making an impact in your organization? (i.e., will you look for increased business agility, faster time-to-market, cost savings, better customer support)

a.       How will low-code drive your digital transformation and modernization efforts?

b.       Where do you see the most impactful use cases for low-code development in financial services? (i.e., how do you see low-code development benefiting your organization most)

c.       What kind of applications do you see low-code development most beneficial (e.g. cybersecurity, data modelling/analytics, work process automation, IoT/edge computing, e-commerce applications, mission-critical applications)

d.       What challenges/barriers do you foresee from implementing low-code development in your organization?

Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) teams play a crucial role in companies by performing budgeting, forecasting, and analysis that support major corporate decisions of the CFO, CEO, and the Board of Directors.

According to the Corporate Finance Institute, FP&A professionals oversee a broad array of financial affairs, including income, expenses, taxes, capital expenditures, investments, and financial statements. Financial analysts are charged with examining, analysing, and evaluating the entirety of a corporation’s financial activities, and mapping out the company’s financial future.

Very few, if any, companies can be consistently profitable and grow without careful financial planning and cash flow management. The job of managing a corporation’s cash flow typically falls to its FP&A team and its Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

Joining on this episode of PodChats for FutureCFO is Chris Ortega, CEO of Fresh FP&A, a consultancy focused on finance transformation & scale solutions for businesses.

1. What is the new value proposition for modern finance organization? 

2. What are the key factors contributing to this evolution? 

3. What about the FP&A team, how have things changed?

4. You said the new FP&A is a storyteller, where do you see the biggest gaps for FP&A professionals for the future?

5. There is this trend in some functional areas for outsourcing. Your organisation offers CFO capabilities as a service. Given that FP&A requires intimate understanding of the business and the organisation, is outsourcing FP&A even worth considering? And when does it make sense to do so?

6. Speaking of skillsets, do you think certifications still bring a lot of value to the role?

7. If you were to look into a crystal ball, where is FP&A 3 – 5 years from now?

The face of retail has been changing since the start of digital transformation. Many traditional retailers have witnessed the rice of Amazon to dominate retailing – change how consumers engage and make purchases.

Alibaba took it to celebrity affair with their annual Singles Day event. But it took the pandemic with its mobile and social restrictions to get more retailers to finally start to changes in how they engage customers.

What is certain at this moment is that the evolution of retailing will continue. In today’s PodChats for FutureCFO, we are joined by York Yong Yeo, Chief Financial Officer, Decathlon Singapore, for his take on how retailing has changed and possibly keep changing in the years to come.

1.       QUESTIONS

2.       How has retailing changed over the past five years (from the time you joined Decathlon in 2017) – view from the perspective of the CFO?

3.       Among the many challenges, both internal and external, which have presented the most challenges to your role as CFO?

4.       In which areas have you seen the greatest opportunities for Decathlon (specifically) and the retail sector (generally)?

5.       The role and responsibilities placed on the CFO continue to expand. How do you stay focused and not get distracted by the priorities demanding your attention?

6.       Looking ahead, what are the priorities of the CFO of a retailer over the next 1-3 years?

During the 2022 FutureCFO vSummit series held across Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, one topic that stood out as a point of interest for many of the participating senior finance leaders was around the organisations’ commitment to sustainability goals.

But what about the head of technology? According to Gartner there is an opportunity for the CIO to take a lead role in addressing this demand.

Gartner says “Digital sustainability uses information and technology (I&T) to enable ESG transparency, automation, accuracy, and traceability. Sustainable technology is a framework to improve ESG. CIOs should lead digital sustainability (IT), amplify sustainable technology (OT) and integrate IT and OT.” [Gartner]

In this PodChats for FutureCIO, we are joined by Rajesh Nandakumar, head of Information technology at Westpac Institutional Bank Asia, for his perspective on how the CIO can spearhead the realisation of ESG aspirations.

1.       How is ESG connected to IT (function)?

a.       What is expected of the CIO when it comes to ESG?

2.       To what extent is the CIO accountable for ESG's success or failure?

3.       What are the challenges that a CIO must overcome to ensure IT is able to make a positive contribution to successful ESG?

4.       How can CIOs get ahead on sustainability and ESG?

For most of our online lives, our accounts are protected by a username and password. These protect the data stored in our accounts, including financial, personal and pretty much anything we value both digitally and physically.

As there are many ways to achieve a goal, so too we’ve discovered over the years that cybercriminals are more than happy to expend the effort to hack into our accounts – everything from brute force attacks to outright stealing our passwords through social engineering techniques.

Can we go passwordless? The quest for a passwordless authentication solution is forecast to reach US$53.64 billion by 2030. To dispel the myth and mystery around password or passwordless authentication, we are joined by Geoff Schomburgk, vice president for APJ at Yubico.

1.       Before we dive into our topic, perhaps you tell our audience what Yubico is all about?

2.       Please describe the passwordless security landscape in 2022? [FIDO 2]

3.       What is driving interest around passwordless security? [80% of breach is credential theft, 100 online accounts]

4.       How do you apply passwordless security efforts onto the zero-trust initiative?

5.       Is passwordless security a long way off from becoming mainstream? [passkey]

6.       What needs to happen for passwordless security to become part of everyday computing needs?

7.       For the CIO/CISO in terms of reframing their security strategy to incorporate passwordless security?

First came automation – the realisation that some aspects of workflow can be done by machines. Next came the integration of artificial intelligence into IT operations (AIOps), robotic process automation (RPA), decision management, and business automation, resulting in cost reductions and doing more with less, maybe even more accurately. 

Coincidentally, automation is helping seen alleviate the skills shortage businesses are experiencing across the functions. With greater expectations around work-life balance, automation is seen as making companies healthier.

All that good news aside, a challenge remains. A study by the Economist Intelligence Unit says despite 91% of surveyed organisations deploying automation, only 53% are fully utilising it.

As automation technology and its use matures, it is time to take all of this to the next level. In this PodChats for FutureCIO, we are joined by Dinesh Nirmal, General Manager, IBM Data, AI, and Automation, to talk about the rise of the Chief Automation Officer.

1.       Automation has been around for decades. Other than innovations in technology like AI and ML, what is different about automation today compared to five years ago?

2.       What is a chief automation officer? What are the primary roles and responsibility of this position?

3.       At what point does a company decide that it needs a CAO?

4.       What qualifications and experience and background will fit the role of a CAO?

5.       Given that this role is relatively new, how does a company acquire such a talent? Is it best to promote from within?

6.       Who does the CAO report to? How does an organisation determine the proper reporting lines for this role?

7.       With technology continuing to evolve, do you expect this CAO role to eventually be integrated into another responsibility?

By 2025, it is expected that IoT devices will generate roughly 73.1 Zettabtyes of data. Around that time, 30% of all data will be real-time, with IoT accounting for nearly 95% of it, 20% of all data will be critical and 10% of all data will be hypercritical.

The real-time nature of IoT data presents an opportunity, challenges and threats to organisations. Analytics will have to happen in real time for companies to benefit from these types of data.

In this PodChats for FutureIoT, we are joined by Niraj Naidu, APJ Head of Field Engineering, DataStax, to talk about the challenges and opportunities that IoT analytics present. 

1.                 What is IoT analytics?

a.       How prevalent is the use of IoT analytics in Asia?

2.                 We know that IoT produces a lot of data. What are the real challenges why enterprises struggle to better utilise/monetise the data produced by IoT?

3.                 Can you name a high value/promising use cases of IoT analytics?

4.                 What would the data infrastructure for IoT look like?

5.                 Do you see IoT streaming data as further complicating (or facilitating) IoT analytics adoption?

6.                 Where does DataStax sit in the adoption of IoT analytics.