Technology Executives Review® - Hosted by Alex Jarett of Technology Executives Club®

Alex Jarett & Technology Executives Club presents: AI in the Enterprise Webinar - For Sept 2025 Finding the ROI in AI For Technology Leaders and Tech Business Executives

We have entered the Age of AI - Board Members and CEO's are demanding AI - even in the most conservative of companies. And it's the Technology Leaders and Tech Business executives who are responsible for making it happen in each company.

In this series we go beyond the hype as our community explores insights and strategies and use cases from experienced Technology Leaders and Tech Business executives on how they are actually delivering on the promise and lessons learned.

In this month's Webinar we'll explore Finding Use Cases and the ROI in AI project.

Our Keynote Panel includes:
* Edgar Escobar - CIO & COO of Grupo Alto - who will share how they are using AI successfully today. * Praveen Kamsetti, CIO, Technology Leader
* Joseph Rose, President of JBS Dev, who will share how they are using Agentic AI to help their customers gain real returns;
* Justin Grieshop, Sr. Director AI & Analytics, CBTS

Moderated by Alex Jarett, Founder/CEO of Technology Executives Club and host of our thought leadership event and Digital Media platform.

Originally broadcast live on our webinar series 9/26/25

Visit www.technologyexecutivesclub.com to register for our newsletter and our next monthly AI in the Enterprise webinar.

How Edgar Escobar & his team at ALTO had two successful AI Projects

We are pleased to Alex Jarett's recent interview with Edgar Escobar, the CIO & COO at Grupo Alto, a company dedicated to helping its retail clients reduce shrink via a combination of services, which include both surveillance and back end legal services to help companies and law enforcement prosecute criminals and reduce theft in their protected stores.

Edgar has a long career in Data and Data analytics prior to rising to the combination role of CIO & COO, and as he explains it, has been using different forms of AI for years.

In our interview, Edgar provided two use cases of using AI which we both felt might be helpful to the community.

Project One:  Reduce spending on the Cloud.

As we all know, cloud expenses can grow significantly and Edgar wanted to ensure that the company was prudent in it’s spend.  By using AI in a team member / analyst role, the team was able to determine that their spend was too high and could be reduced, and identify what areas they should focus on.

At this point, in the second part of the project, they were able to use tools infused with AI to tune up or rebuild how they were utilizing the cloud.  By focusing their efforts with these tools, they were able to effectively reduce the spend.

This project brought about significant savings and is a continued success.

Project Two:  Reduce Legal Case load and focus on the winnable cases. 

As mentioned above, part of the service Grupo provides is a back end legal service, where their attorneys provide information and support to law enforcement for theft cases involving their protected stories.  The idea is to help prosecute criminals and provide a deterrent to these criminals in their protected stores.  The problem Edgar and team identified was their lawyers were handling too many cases, and not all of the cases were winnable.  

So they integrated AI as a “team-member” to help them identify the best cases that their legal team should focus on.  By doing this, they were able to reduce the workload and significantly increase the success-rate.  And that has created a bigger deterrent to criminals going after their protected stores.

As you can see, Edgar and team have had significant success using AI to help them solve two business problems using the “Embedded team member” model.  Edgar’s advice when using this model is to think of the AI as a young, very smart team member who has to be educated on your business operations.  

Great advice and thanks to Edgar for sharing their success with these two projects.

Welcome to Executive Engineering Leadership Briefing with John Szeder.

John is a highly in-demand and seasoned executive engineering leader focused on high volume consumer and industry applications. He is also an expert in helping people build and retain elite engineering teams and has agreed to help people in their journey! This briefing is focused on helping executives who have recently risen to a senior executive role.

As John points out, when you rise from an individual contributor, or even a manager to a senior executive, your role changes significantly.  

In this briefing, John provides concrete advice on how to succeed in this new role. Here's the topics we covered:

* The Importance of recognizing you are in a completely new role and what you did to get here is NOT necessarily what you need to succeed in this role.

* Why your default tendencies that got you promoted, are the things they want you to stop doing in favor of new behaviors. As an example, the traits you exhibit as an individual contributor may actually work against you as a leader. And once you start reporting to the board, you'll have to rapidly develop new skills and a new approach.

* The Importance of obtaining a mentor to help you, and the one question you should ask him/her to help you.

* How to find that mentor.

* The number one question to ask the mentor.

* The one person you shouldn't ask to be your mentor. How John can help you if you need it! He is open to providing advice to help people on their journey!

Watch all of our video briefings at www.technologyexecutivesclub.com

In this Leadership Briefing, Technology Leader & CIO, Praveen Kamsetti, take us though a very structured discussion focused on Driving Value with AI, A CIO's Approach.

It's a very thoughtful and well researched conversation, in which Praveen and Alex Jarett discussed:

* Understanding ROI in the Content of AI - the difference in ROI between traditional projects and AI-Based projects.
* Steps to Measure ROI.
* Tracking Measurable Benefits.
* Starting Small & Scaling from there.
* The Importance of Fostering Collaboration.

Take the time to listen - We think you'll both enjoy and learn valuable insights from Praveen!.

Be sure to watch all of our videos at www.technologyexecutivesclub.com

Richard Doran - 3rd in a sequence - Retaining Talent in Age of AI

Happy to share our recent Spotlight Interview with Neil Gomes, a S-Suite Technology Leader with global experience in Digital Transformations and Technology leadership at scale.

Most recently Neil was the Chief Digital Officer at AmeriHealth Caritas, among others.

You’ll be both inspired and educated from listening to Neil, who has developed multiple frameworks for success in Technology Leadership.

In the interview we discussed:

*️⃣ How driving these Transformational journeys at scale can positively impact the lives of many people.

*️⃣ Neil’s 5 Point Framework for Successful Digital Transformations.

*️⃣ His 12 Principles on how to build, motivate and inspire high performing teams. He has a book coming out soon on this topic!

*️⃣How Neil used the 5 Point Framework for two major “Telehealth” transformations. As you will learn, this ten minutes is full of valuable insights, and you’ll want to watch. Thanks to Neil for taking the time to share on this Spotlight Interview!

“At the end of the day, it all comes down to people.  People move the needle … you need the right team.”

Great insight from Richard Doran, President of Sierra ITS, who breaks down how they help their clients attract top tech talent in this valuable briefing.  

Attracting top tech talent has always been a challenge, but now in the Age of AI, even more so.  

Richard starts with the story of Steve Jobs, who, when asked what the greatest thing he achieved at Apple, his answer was, “The greatest thing I created at Apple was hiring the right talent that gave us the opportunity to create these great products.”

As Richard says, “You need the right team.”

Here’s some of the insights Richard shared:

✳️ How they helped a client find a key individual in two weeks that the client had already spent six months looking for.

✳️ The importance of using the right channels to find the right talent.

✳️ You have to align your offer and opportunity to the goals and objectives that the top talent has, because they always have choices.

✳️ The best talent is working - so you have to create a story and impact that will get them to want to discuss the opportunity with you!

✳️ How they deliver a personalized hiring experience that helps their clients find and attract top talent.  They deliver an experience tailored to the talent to help them learn more and potentially choose the opportunity!

Great insights and Richard shared graciously so you can improve your own hiring practices!  

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✳️ Get our newsletter to access exclusive interviews, tips on elevating your executive brand, and more: 👉 www.technologyexecutivesclub.com

Happy to share Alex Jarett's recent Spotlight Interview with Christopher Carter, a four-time best selling author and CEO of Approyo, and involved in multiple other really interesting companies! This is a really interesting interview that goes by really quick, so you’ll want to listen

Here’s what we learned about Chris: 📖 First, his books - Mastering SAP Series, 4 best sellers. 17 different books. He has three books related to AI, including an AI Algorithm book, AI Unleashed profiles, Small Language versus Large Language model.

Chris loves giving them away, so be sure to connect with him and he’ll give you the link. ⚾ Approyo is named after a major league baseball player named “Bronson Arroyo” who is also a well known musician. You’ll want to hear the story, so be sure to listen. Here are his companies Chris either owns or is involved in:

✳️ Approyo is a provider of SAP migration and cloud based services for companies who either run SAP or want to get into a used SAP system going forward.

✳️ Mugatu AI - they wrap an AI based predictive analytic tool to prevent security disruptions

✳️ Charging Bunny - provides solar based charging systems! Don’t forget to follow and connect with Chris on LinkedIn and be sure to ask him for the link to the books!

AI is impacting hiring practices, especially in the Tech space. Here’s a great conversation Alex Jarett had with Richard Doran, President of Sierra ITS on this exact topic.

As Richard puts it - there is a lot of noise related to AI in the workplace now, and it’s going to BOTH help growth AND create job elimination. “What companies and hiring managers need to do is challenge their outdated assumptions on hiring and what talent looks like in an AI-driven work environment.”

Richard Goes on to say there are three key skills that savvy hiring executives look for in employees:

1. Problem Solving;

2. Adaptability;

3. Being Collaborative.

Tech skills are a given. These are the types of skills that will elevate new hires.

Companies are preparing for growth - Richard shares a story where an executive states that their company goal for a key area is to optimize the business process with the use of AI. In one area of the business, they have 300 employees performing a process in a very inefficient manner and they know it. They are preparing the company for growth, says the executive, by cleaning up their business processes while adding AI to the process.

Changing the hiring process can be a challenge, and Richard and his team recognize this trend. You have to do a lot of due diligence to determine what makes a successful hire both now and in the future AI-driven world.

In anticipation of the shift, Richard and his team offer a 5-point program that they can use to help the client drive the change needed in their hiring process, and would be happy to discuss this with hiring managers who would like to learn more.

Learn more about Richard here: https://www.technologyexecutivesclub.com/advisory-board-Richard-Doran

Happy to present our latest Spotlight Interview between Alex Jarett and Tory Bjorklund, CEO and Cofounder of Victoria Fide Consulting.

Tory and his team are experts in both fixing broken Technology projects and also providing the leadership to assure that your next major project goes smoothly.

The name “Victoria Fide” is Latin for “Success Assurance.” And Tory and his team are on a mission to help companies avoid having a failing project. But the reality is 70-80% of significant technology projects fail, and Tory and his team are there to help you get your project back on track.

Example project types include, ERP, Digital Transformation, CRM, Manufacturing Execution Systems, Warehouse management systems, etc.  These are the big projects.

In this Spotlight Interview Tory shared two great stories:

* A COO from a mid-sized manufacturing company asked Tory and their team to help reimplement their ERP system because they became significantly less efficient after implementing the ERP on their own. It turned out that all of the real processes were being done off the ERP. Their entire production planning was being done in spreadsheets - AFTER the ERP was implemented, so they helped the company fix this.

* In the second example, Tory shared how that COO went on to a new, different company and called Tory and his team to help them implement their ERP the right way the first time!

Have a troubled project and want to know if Tory and his team can help? Tory and his team have created a series of complementary assessments and diagnostics that you can use in a self-service fashion on their website at https://victoriafide.com/. One example is a “Root Cause Assessment” for a troubled project.

Thanks to Tory for spending time with Alex Jarett and providing an excellent Spotlight Interview!