Virtual Roundtable: CIO Essentials for Accelerating Growth

COVID-19 forced organizations to adapt to business and operational disruptions. Companies that made more extensive investments in digital technologies, both before and during the pandemic, were better able to navigate the crisis and recover faster than their less nimble competitors.

As Canada prepares for the next normal, organizations must reassess their priorities and ready their businesses for an economy returning to growth. This mandate will compel IT leaders to take stock of their strategies and determine what adjustments will help accelerate digital transformation.

CIOs played a crucial role in building resilience in their organizations and are responsible for planning and executing a forward-looking digital strategy. To be successful, they must improve the effectiveness of operations and prioritize the technology initiatives that will generate the fastest returns on investment.

With these principles in mind, The IT Media Group brought together 15 cross-industry IT executives for a virtual roundtable entitled 'CIO Essentials for Accelerating Growth.' The session provided an opportunity to discuss the challenges and approaches that CIOs implement to accelerate growth for their organizations.

Moderating the roundtable was Jeff Ishii, Chief Technologist at The IT Media Group. Also participating were executives from the session sponsors, Benchmark Corporation President Luc Villeneuve and Chief Technology Officer Shlomo Bielak, and Hitachi Vantara Canada CTO 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. Barriers to digital resiliency

Roadblocks to leveraging digital transformation investments
Technical debt incurred during the pandemic

2. The automation imperative

Business automation priorities
Focus areas for IT automation

3. Data management strategies

Capturing and storing new types of data
Securing and protecting critical data assets

4. Using the cloud to accelerate change

Validating cloud strategies
Keys to accelerating cloud adoption

Ian Sinclair observed, "It was incredibly valuable to be part of the roundtable discussion - hearing what peers in the industry are working through and what they are thinking about related tool proliferation and integration complexity." He added, "It's an opportunity for us to demonstrate how our solutions give back precious time to employees while enabling the transformations that organizations desire."

Luc Villeneuve noted, "Everyone is struggling with the talent pool. It's difficult for them to develop a team with the best practices that can rapidly increase the cloud maturity of their organizations." When asked how to address this, Luc offered, "We are a DevOps company that specializes in open-source technologies. We leverage various frameworks to assist our customers in going to the cloud at the speed that they want." Shlomo Bielak added, "We have re-invented the SDLC with nine automations and the apps to measure them. We measure the burden on workers through our DevOps Equilibrium approach, which improves development sustainability without damaging the talent pool that organizations are trying to foster."

All participants will receive a strategic insights report highlighting 70 tactics and best practices discussed during the roundtable.

Session highlights videos

Using the Cloud to Accelerate Change

Data management Strategies

Barriers to digital resiliency

The automation imperiative

Post session interviews

Ian Sinclair, CTO Canada, Hitachi Vantara

Shlomo Bielak, CTO, Benchmark

Luc Villeneuve, President, Benchmark

subscribe to our Youtube channel where new content is added weekly.

The IT Media Group’s CIO roundtables are one of the most successful event programs for IT executives in Canada, bringing together scores of senior-level peers for thoughtful private discussions around the top issues facing enterprise IT. For a better understanding of these events, please visit our Video section.

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 the IT executive community in Canada.