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Whenever Kathy Kay, chief financial officer at Principal Financial, wanted to address the company’s technical debt (the work required to upgrade, replace and eliminate redundant and outdated technology), the company’s chief financial officer always found the funds.
It all comes down to making a strong case for the extra spending.
“If you’re going to say, ‘I just need to get out of technical debt because I want these new things,’ and you can’t articulate the business benefits, no CFO is going to fund that,” she said.
The 145-year-old insurance company recently required significant technology investments to tear down the barriers between its many business units. Historically, clients had to speak with multiple agents to get the help they needed with retirement services, benefits and asset management. For example, a retirement services agent has no way of knowing whether a customer is also an investment customer. Inevitably, many customers end up frustrated.
To solve this problem, Principal dismantled the contact center tools and systems built to serve each department individually. Instead, the company developed new technology that gives all agents the same tools and access to customer information, making it easier to talk to customers.
The marketing department has made similar technology upgrades to give employees a better understanding of how colleagues in other departments have previously spoken to customers. The plan includes using Salesforce Marketing Cloud to better share information about products the Principal has sold to customers or that they might want to add, as well as how to guide conversations with customers based on their previous responses.
“If you listen to your customers, it will determine how you operate and organize within your company,” Kay said. “It should drive your strategy and enable CIOs to think about the impact of technology.”
Kay said Principal still had to shut down more than 200 different applications as part of the technology overhaul. Other systems can remain but will need to be upgraded.
In terms of technology modernization, Principal first considers how to adapt to business and technology needs, and if the current solutions are not in line with the company’s development, new solutions will be explored.
“Your strategy will change, but so will your technology,” Kay said.
Estimates vary, but about 10% to 20% of technology budgets for new products are diverted to address the effort and cost of dealing with technical debt. Brian Woodring, chief technology officer at fintech Rocket, said there are several ways to think about tech debt. Is this a problem of managing all legacy systems? Or perhaps negative outcomes can be avoided, such as when a vendor’s technology no longer receives updates from the manufacturer. Or there may be costs associated with operating legacy systems that no longer serve the business.
“It’s a byproduct of delivering value that you don’t like, and you have to have a plan to manage it effectively,” said Woodring, who also serves as Rocket Mortgage’s chief information officer. “The plan can’t be, ‘We’re going to spend three years doing nothing but fixing technical debt while the business is stagnant.'” For the company, this was the decision that a new CIO was needed. good idea. “
Addressing technical debt can cause some anxiety. One project Woodring oversees is to replace an in-house proprietary CRM with a hybrid solution that mixes some capabilities built by Rocket with some from Salesforce. “I’m not going to lie, there were bumps at times,” Woodring said, acknowledging that the old system was a favorite among team members. But the pain was necessary because the previous system wasn’t evolving fast enough to meet changing business needs.
When Ajay Sabhlok joined Rubrik in 2018, the data security company began using new software tools to provide sales quotes for customer orders. But because the tool is highly customized, employees use the software in many different ways. There are no standards for how to use the software, no governance oversight to ensure those standards are met, and no clear documentation on how to use the tool.
Two years passed, turned into four, and the pile of tech debt turned into a mountain. “We lack resources. We have to ignore technical debt,” said Sabhlok, Rubrik’s chief information officer and chief data officer since 2021.
In retrospect, Sabhlock says the problem was a lack of governance over software tools. Now, he’s formed a review committee to ask tough questions about the technology Rubrik is deploying. Tech debt is also a key theme in Rubrik’s annual planning. “Recently, we started funding technical debt reduction,” Sabrok said. “It cost us a lot of money.”
John Kyle
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Adopt curve
Wakefield Research surveyed 100 executives who report to Fortune 1000 CIOs and found that 100% expressed concerns about security risks associated with generative AI. What attracts the most attention is copyright and legal exposure, followed by leakage of sensitive information and invasion of data privacy.
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Employment Radar
– four seasons declare Appointed Sudhakar Veluru as its new executive vice president and chief information technology officer. Prior to joining the luxury hotelier, Veluru served as chief technology officer for MGM Resorts International.
– Uta named Eric Iverson joins the talent agency from Amazon MGM Studios as technical officer. According to UTA, Iverson will lead the agency’s technology strategy, including how to use artificial intelligence to benefit customers. hollywood reporter.
– Leeward Renewable Energy Corporation appointment Nate Graham serves as chief technology officer. In the newly created role, Graham will be responsible for all aspects of the renewable energy company’s enterprise-wide IT operations, including architecture, development and infrastructure.
– Code42 software have named Dennis Dayman serves as chief information security officer. In this role, he will be responsible for leading global risk and compliance, security operations, incident response, and external and internal threat management and investigations.
– Upper Bound declare Appointed David McBride as chief technology officer, responsible for leading the company’s technology strategy and vehicle development, reporting to CEO Jaiwon Shin.
– Center for Technological Advancementa cybersecurity nonprofit, declare New leadership appointments include Monty Mills as chief information officer and Greg Wessel as chief technology officer. Mills served in the U.S. Air Force for 20 years, while Wessel previously worked for the National Security Agency.
– new paradise Michael Simeone has been named Connecticut’s new chief technology officer, following his most recent role as chief information officer at law firm Bendett & McHugh. PC Simeone took over as chief technology officer after hackers stole $5.9 million of the city’s funds last June, although at least $4.7 million was expected to have been stolen. has recovered, new haven register Report.
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