UK & Ireland CIO Executive Summit

Exclusive to Governing Body members and select guests, this dinner is a can’t-miss opportunity to connect with your peers prior to tomorrow’s Executive Summit. Please join your colleagues for an evening of good food, wine, and lively networking.

Being in complete control of technology and design is critical for an organisation to accelerate digital business. The advantages are great, not least of all being able to offer a more streamlined total experience for colleagues and customers. But how do you go about digitising a typically ‘non digital’ sector. Join Rajiv Peter, Director of Digital Technology, Notting Hill Genesis, as he shares his journey leading the digital and technology transformation at the housing association. Specifically, Rajiv will cover:

• Enabling IT and technology to provide business value through cost efficiencies
• Getting the right people in the right roles to enable transformation
• How IT Leaders should leverage emerging technologies to create a thriving digital transformation

What do enterprises who’ve adopted cloud successfully have in common? In this session, Phil Le-Brun, Enterprise Strategist at AWS, will share what he’s learned advising executives of AWS’s largest customers, in addition to his first-hand experience planning, leading, and executing successful IT initiatives in his former role as VP of Global Technology Development at McDonald’s. We’ll take a look at strategies based on real-world experience for how to motivate and re-skill existing employees, do more with less, and organise teams to be as successful as possible, as quickly as possible.

In this session, we’ll cover how to:

• Turn nay-sayers and doubters into allies
• Build momentum in your transformation through small wins that deliver big results
• Creating an environment that encourages calculated risk-taking and growth

At its foundation, low-code is a powerful way to rapidly deliver applications. But CIOs have an enormous opportunity to use low-code in more strategic ways. It’s important for organisations to have a sense of what these strategic opportunities are so they can use low-code to deliver on their most ambitious goals. This boardroom will discuss how CIOs can:

• Solve targeted problems by delivering and deploying new applications in as little as a few weeks
• Enable business units to iterate and deploy applications more often, allowing for more impactful end products delivered in a secure way
• Improve operational efficiency and drive innovation by eliminating the barriers that legacy systems present

The focus of the CIO role is now on broader strategic projects and aligning an organisations IT infrastructure with its business goals. Liberated of some “lights on” concerns, today’s CIOs can directly influence product and service development by interacting with internal business partners and customers to better understand their needs. Some IT Leaders have the full backing of the board, and some are still leveraging newly found influence to find their seat at the table. But what are the key skill sets CIOs need to foster to ensure success and adapt at a time where business needs are quickly changing. Join this boardroom to discuss:

• The need for CIOs to shift their mindset to focus on driving true business change and the vital role culture plays in this shift
• The importance for CIOs to forge stronger relationships across the business
•  Practical steps CIOs can take to make digital journeys take hold, with a focus on harnessing data effectively, and gaining buy-in from other business leaders

To create flexibility and stability for future leadership needs, CIOs should be identifying and nurturing potential successors for IT Leadership. But how are aspiring CIOs themselves thinking about the evolution of the IT organisation? What skills do they think will help futureproof digital business, and what can you learn from them?

The next generation of CIOs are looking ahead to innovate the solutions to future obstacles. As such, it is crucial to consider what these novel approaches are and how to successfully cultivate them, closing the gap between the CIOs of today and those of tomorrow. Join this session to learn:

• What do aspiring CIOs consider to be the next step in the IT industry’s evolution?
• How can today’s CIOs can effectively support the next generation, avoiding entrenchment?
• What are the key culture shifts the next generation of CIOs will spearhead?

Connect with like-minded peers in a one-on-one setting through Evanta’s Peer-to-Peer Meetings. You will be matched with peers in your community based on your shared interests and priorities.

Digital transformation is a powerful business enabler that is compelling business leaders to fundamentally change their technology ecosystems. However, such a transformation significantly impacts security, network traffic flows, applications, user experience, and cost, which is why it is top-of-mind in C-suites and the boardroom. Digital business transformation is no longer a question of if, but WHEN. This Keynote will outline how CIOs can better engage the wider organisations, and what their focus should be when communicating the value of secure digital business. Specifically, you will hear:

• Effectively bringing digital and transformation together in times on uncertainty
• Security strategies for a cloud-first enterprise and communicating its value to the business
• How to use their digital transformation to drive sustained competitive advantage

In the UK, the rate of employees who expect to change jobs in the next 6 months has doubled. To keep your top talent, you need to eliminate distractions from their digital experience, no matter where in the world they’re working. That’s why industry leaders are now using conversational AI to provide employees with immediate support and urgent updates — at a scale not possible for people alone.

Join this session to learn how conversational AI:

• Let LinkedIn onboard 1,000+ new hires by automatically resolving their requests
• Saved Palo Alto Networks 180,000 hours of productivity for its flexible workforce
• Enabled Hearst to bring together 360 subsidiaries with a single hub for support

IT Leaders have a role to play in understanding and addressing the mental health and wellbeing of employees across the organisation. For CIOs, this means look at technology to assist how employees are actually coping and feeling in their workplace. Join Ceri Stokoe as she shares how QBE Insurance are addressing the challenges associated with mental health in the workforce, together with wider employee engagement initiatives. Ceri will then introduce QBE employee Alice Hendy, who after experiencing a tragic event, has developed and deployed a crisis intervention tool across QBE to assist those struggling with their mental health or carrying out harmful online searches relating to self-harm or suicide.

Specifically, you will hear:

• QBE's focus on employee mental health and well-being initiatives through IT
• How and why Alice Hendy, a QBE cyber expert, developed a cyber suicide prevention tool to help support members of the workforce
• Advice to IT Leaders looking to enhance the wellbeing and experience of employees through technology and IT

In fast changing business environments, you need to move fast, be more resilient and become a magnet for top talent. For CIOs, it’s more important than ever to understand your digital capabilities and use them to create a winning culture. But what else can CIOs do, apart from higher salaries, to attract top talent into their organisation? Join this boardroom to discuss:

• Rethinking technology and talent in a remote work world
• Providing workspaces that help attract and retain top talent
• Collaborative strategies to drive meaningful ways of working

As digital business continues to accelerate and cloud work continues to grow, many enterprise assets live outside the old “walls'' of the organisation. The role of the browser is changing rapidly. It’s now a critical endpoint; a strategic productivity and security layer in the enterprise tech stack. CIOs must now ensure they have enterprise-grade security, speed and stability to empower the workforce and mitigate the risk of harmful web-based threats. Join this interactive boardroom to discuss:

• How business transformation is forcing CIOs to think differently about architecting their environment
• How changing employee behaviors and the rise in flexible working is driving the need for new technology
• Reconceptualising traditional ideas of how to approach security within the enterprise

In recent years, we have observed the evolving nature and influence of the CIO role – from a service provider to a business enabler driving the next generation of the digital enterprise. Alongside this evolution, questions about how the CIO can best utilise their newfound influence have become all the more pertinent.

But what about those aspects of the role we don’t typically consider? Discussions around commitment, challenges and work-life balance scarcely reach the spotlight. Nevertheless, it is crucial for aspiring CIOs to remain cognisant of the underlying realities behind a role of this magnitude.

Join this discussion to hear key takeaways on:

• The level of commitment expected of a CIO and how this might differ across organisations of varying sizes and sectors
• How to understand and overcome hurdles and blockers while transitioning into the CIO role
• How to sustain a healthy work-life balance

This session is only available to our Next-Generation CIO Programme attendees. To register for this session, please contact Lucy Guille (Lucy.Guille@Gartner.com or +447701308981). 

Ransomware is pervasive, indiscriminate and causing enormous concern for CIOs across all enterprises. From first detection through to threat containment and recovery, a ransomware attack can be an incredibly stressful time for all those involved. A recent Adarma survey of 500 UK organisations stated 96% of respondents felt confident of preventing an attack, compared to 58% who have already suffered an attack. How prepared is your organisation really when it comes to deterring or preventing a ransomware attack? How can IT Leaders ensure they have a plan in place upfront from first detection through to threat containment and recovery? Join this panel to hear:

• Firsthand experiences of being ‘on the ground’ during a major ransomware attack
• The importance of having a well-rehearsed plan in place
• The role leadership can play in galvanising teams during an attack

Digital business can make organisations more innovative, profitable and agile. But with large ecosystems of employees, together with both physical and digital channels, how can you engage your entire workforce in the future of technology, and capture the future needs of the business? Join Rich Corbridge as she shares details of his ‘Store Centric’ IT strategy, how Boots capture the needs of retail stores in 2022 and ensure the direction for IT is set by the reality of what customers and colleagues need. Specifically, Rich will share:

• How Boots developed a ‘store centric’ IT strategy to identify legacy systems, capture ideas for innovation and accelerate digital business
• Why such initiatives are fundamental in identifying the specific needs of customers and colleagues
• How CIOs can drive similar initiatives in their organisations to accelerate digital business

Successful cloud transformations require highly skilled people, but cloud skills are in high demand and the market for these skills is competitive. What strategies for recruiting and retaining top talent are working, and how do CIOs motivate and re-skill existing employees so they can be as successful as possible, as quickly as possible?

Join AWS Enterprise Strategist, Phil Le-Brun to learn how to:

• Turn nay-sayers and doubters into allies
• Quickly up-skill existing employees with what they need to succeed
• Build momentum in your transformation through small wins that deliver big results

The key to any data driven organisation is to have useful Intelligence at the right time. This might be hiding in the data you already have. Auditing your current resources could help you identify useful insights and use them to sharpen your organisation’s competitive edge. Join your peers to discuss:

• How CIOs should invest in modern data tools and determine what data is valuable vs. unnecessary
• Defining an Intelligence journey and leveraging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) to unlock the value of data
• Creating buy in and driving data literacy across an Intelligent Enterprise

The energy industry is going through a double transformation. One is decarbonisation, in line with society's progress towards achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and the other is digital transformation as an important lever to get there. We now know that the energy system will need to change substantially in the coming decades. Together with our customers, we are finding our paths to a net-zero emissions future. Join Robbert Van Rutten as he shares his thoughts into:

• What role can digital technology and AI can play? 
• How do we get there faster, together with our customers and our partners? 
• How does the role of the CIO change to lead through this transformation?