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CIOs discuss their post-pandemic playbooks

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Sunday, 22 August 2021 03:02

Toronto – August 23, 2021 – The pandemic accelerated digital transformation as organizations focused on digital channels to connect with customers, employees, and suppliers. As Canada exits the pandemic, companies must be ready to take advantage of a period of economic growth. For CIOs, that means reviewing the state of their digital capabilities and adjusting their strategies and tactics to ensure that their organizations are agile and resilient to future disruptions.

CIOs are in an ideal position to assess the end-to-end digital capabilities of their operations. To deliver business value, IT leaders must identify and prioritize the initiatives that allow their organizations to prosper while fending off nimble competitors.

With these principles in mind, The IT Media Group brought together 14 cross-industry IT executives for a virtual roundtable entitled 'The CIO Post-Pandemic Playbook.' The session provided an opportunity to discuss the challenges and approaches CIOs implement as they exit the pandemic and prepare for the new normal.

Moderating the roundtable was Jeff Ishii, Chief Technologist at The IT Media Group. Also participating were executives from the session sponsor, Hitachi Vantara Canada, Regional Vice President and General Manager Marcel Escorcio and Chief Technology Officer Ian Sinclair.

The interactive session included a combination of live polling and panel discussion about the challenges and best practices for the following topic areas:

1. Managing data growth

• Addressing the edge
• Securing and protecting data assets

2. Becoming data-driven

• Data access challenges
• Building a thriving data culture

3. The promise of automation and AI

• Automating the business
• Optimizing IT operations

4. Using the cloud to accelerate transformation

• Validating cloud strategies
• Accelerating cloud adoption

Following the session, Ian Sinclair observed, "The most valuable benefit from being at the table was understanding how Canadian organizations are changing their focus as they exit the pandemic. CIOs are thinking about how they must evolve, become more proactive, and present data in a manner that drives actionable insights." He added, "Companies face challenges with data governance, data management, and cloud adoption. Hitachi Vantara can help address those issues by leveraging our edge-to-core-to-cloud solutions. By taking advantage of our capabilities, we can help CIOs reduce the burden on their IT operations by making them more efficient."

Marcel Escorcio noted, "It was important to hear how the leaders were aligning their technologies and data to solve business challenges. Data is the key to success, and IT has become more relevant than ever to help guide the business." When asked how to accelerate this effort, Escorcio offered, "Hitachi is in a unique position to address challenges organizations face. First, our solutions help to ingest, govern, protect and store data. Then, to bring life to that data, we help companies enrich and activate information to deliver sustained value to their customers and employees. To begin the journey, we provide a data quality assessment to ensure that organizations use the most cost-effective approach to manage various data types."

All participants will receive a strategic insights report containing more than 100 tactics and best practices discussed during the roundtable.

For more material about how The IT Media Group fosters collaboration amongst the CIO community, please visit our events page. Interested parties can subscribe to our Youtube channel to watch a host of CIO roundtable highlights and executive interviews covering leadership, technology, and operations topics that address compelling issues.

The IT Media Group is an award-winning producer of events and content for senior IT executives. Based in Toronto, our leadership team includes some of the most experienced and well-respected media, technology, and business professionals serving Canada's IT executive community.