Transformational Insights for Better Business Decisions

The volume of data coming from multiple sources creates a complex challenge for today’s organizations. With a focused strategy and proven roadmap, organizations can yield the highest value of their data to make smarter decisions. To get the most value, CIOs need to define their mission-critical priorities, architect for the future state of the enterprise, and communicate and quantify the benefits of AI implementation.

At a recent New York CIO Town Hall, Robert Turner, US Leader of Cloud, Application, Data and AI Practices at Kyndryl, and Dr. Ali Arsanjani, Director of Cloud Partner Engineering at Google Cloud, moderated a discussion on how to access insights from data to make better decisions across the organization. 

Governing Body members from the New York CIO Community Lakshman Nathan, EVP & Chief Information Officer at Paramount, Cindy McKenzie, CIO at Curaleaf, Dave Harris, CIO at Shake Shack, and Leo Rajapakse, Global Head of Platform Infrastructure & Advanced Technology at Bimbo Bakeries USA, helped to facilitate the discussion with their CIO peers.
 

The Complex Data and Analytics Challenge

Robert and Ali kicked off the discussion by noting that they see similar situations across clients when it comes to data – their organizations have a high volume of data coming from multiple sources, often incrementally added over the years, and it’s a struggle to use the data effectively and access insights from it. This creates a complex set of challenges, requiring strategies and roadmaps, flexible architectures, and skilled resources. 

The moderators also shared that they are hearing a lot of interest and buzz in the market about generative AI, which they believe will be transformational. They noted there are great opportunities and challenges to it, particularly around customer preferences and data privacy. The participants then had small group discussions focused on their journeys with data and insights, generative AI, and the cloud.
 

Key Takeaways from the Discussion

• The cloud journey is still in progress. For most CIOs, the cloud journey is still in progress with much work in motion, driven by the specific needs of their organization. Several executives were working on data warehouse or data lake construction projects. Some felt that they had to convince other business leaders how secure the cloud is for data. Others viewed the potential of AI as great, but still down the road for their organizations.

• There are concerns about the enterprise use of generative AI. Generally, CIOs see the potential value of AI, but want to feel more secure on an enterprise level and be assured that their organizations’ data and information is not shared. One participant suggested that they would need to have “a secure enclave with a provider that only uses our data in the secure enclave.” CIOs also agreed that it’s necessary to address the ethics of AI. One area in particular was facial recognition technology and how customers might react to the use of this. One CIO suggested that it may be necessary to have a specific role or an outside review to ensure ethical practices. 

• CIOs discussed how to harness the value of AI. The executives discussed that one common misconception is that “generative AI is equal to ChatGPT” because people have experienced ChatGPT. As one CIO said, they need to look for business use cases, such as customer service tasks or unstructured data searches. Another executive agreed that they see a growing demand to use chatbots in customer service. One CIO shared that they want to harness the enthusiasm for AI and not become “the department of no.” They also discussed the change management challenge for IT leaders around AI. One executive noted that it’s important to be “more human-centric than just tech-centric” on the topic.
   

Overall, CIOs are excited about the possibilities for generative AI, with one executive saying, “Technology people love this.” But they are also business leaders considering the most effective use cases, security and data privacy issues, compliance and regulations, ethical considerations and more. One predicted that “how the models are trained and the guardrails are implemented” will be a big issue. They agreed with the great opportunities ahead for AI – and also the challenges.

For more discussions about generative AI and getting business insights from data, join a CIO community near you, or check out our calendar for opportunities to get together with CIO peers in person and virtually.

Special thanks to Kyndryl and Google Cloud.

by CIOs, for CIOs

Join the conversation with peers in your local CIO community.