Thank you for choosing this session.The target audience, for my session are executives, wannabe executives, and those who closely work with executives, or those who are watching the tech world, which means all of you lovely ladies are a part of my target audience. Moving to the next slide. The agenda. The success of my presentation is that if you all end up, in taking one of the three strategies and be able to implement in your current organizations, that I consider as a success to my presentation. We're going to be talking about how we future proof technology, how ready can we be to embrace the fast moving changes to technology, what are the big shifts that we have currently that we need to focus on, And I'm going to give you three strategies with real world examples.

The examples are mostly from my previous organizations, my current organizations. And then I'm also going to give you some homework, some call to action. Alright. Let's dive in. Alright. What kind of executive are you? There are three types of executives. Right? Are you a tech titan? Say, for example, am I Amazon? Am I Apple? Am I Google? Is my focus on staying ahead, innovating, and building proprietary tech? Or am I a smart partner? Say, for example, am I a hospital? Right? I am not a tech company, but I'm deeply invested in technical partnerships for, you know, physician efficiency or patient satisfaction. Say, for example, I am super interested in ambient AI. I want, the technology, the AI to listen to my physician patient conversation and document automatically in my EHR. So that's what I'm interested in, but I'm not selling tech. Right? So that's your second type of executive. The third type, the reluctant followers. Right?

I am not a tech company. I don't need technology to sell my pizza. Right? It's the taste. It's the ingredients. It's the crust that matters. Right? Who's going to see if I'm a tech company, I launch this latest and greatest app to purchase my pizza? But you know what? You do not need to define the brand with technology, but you do have the fear of being left behind. Imagine I walk into a restaurant and the restaurant scans me, looks at my dietary restrictions, looks at my past order, and then designs a curated menu for me. So that's like, you know, customizing the menu based on the kitchen of that particular restaurant. So when all these restaurants are doing that, I do not wanna be obsolete. So I'm a reluctant follower. I'm trying to, stay, on time. So those are your three types of executives.

Irrespective of who you are, we are going to future proof your technology. Alright. So you might ask why future proofing matters, why innovation matters. Right? Future proofing allows your organization to adapt to rapid changes in technologies. It helps you meet your market demands and makes you sustainable. Right? By future proofing, you can mitigate your risk. Risk mitigation is very, very important. You can also have this competitive advantage. Right? When you have all of these, players in the market, you wanna know how do you stand out as an organization. As as a company, how do you stand up? And investing in future proofing provides you in positioning your business ahead of industry changes. So that is why future proofing your technology is important. Okay. Alright. Let's talk about the speed of change. I've been in this tech industry for over twenty years, and, it has never gotten slower. It's always faster. Right?

The the pace is always faster. What fields today is the slowest is going to be moving forward. So the question for you is not, is disruption coming, or am I ready? Those are not the questions. The question is, how ready are you for this change? So that is the question. Because change, disruption is inevitable. And by now, you know, being in, being as women in tech, we've always seen it. We've embraced it whether we like it or not. The change is coming. Alright. Let's go to the next slide. Okay. So these are the big shifts, that we need to be, focusing on, and this is what we'll be, talking about in my presentation. We'll talk about AI, artificial intelligence. We use AI in automating decision, personalizing experiences, and reshaping customer interactions. AI is everywhere, whether it's your copilot, whether it's your chatbot. It's everywhere. It's inevitable.

It's it's it's there. It's already there. Right? AI is no more the future. Robotic process automation, RPA, very important in the tech industry these days. It frees up talent from repetitive tasks. It allows your employees to focus on strategic initiatives. Think about your testers. Think about your QAs, your quality analyst. Do you want them to sit and do regression testing, repetitive testing, or do you want, them to focus on creating those strategic test scripts? So that's the decision you make. Do you need RPA, or do you wanna use manual labor that comes with manual errors to do your regression testing? The third, the most important one, according to me because I'm a little biased, is data integration. Right? If you wanna break those silos within your organization, if you have different entry points of data in your organization, right, if you wanna combine all of your data into one, unified platform and you wanna enable better decision making and you want to use the data for strategic planning, data integration is the key.

So these are the three big shifts, in the industry right now that we need need to be focusing on, we need to be implementing, we need to be adopting, and we need to be ready. Alright. Moving on to the next slide. I will have plenty of, time for questions. Alright. So let's talk about, strategy number one. Let's spend some time, in this slide. Right? Let's talk about flattening silos. We've just talked about data integration. Right? I can give you some real world examples. The previous health care system that I worked on, it unified the IT, the operations, the clinical services group, all under one transformation office. Previously, we had, like, the clinical team working separately, the IT team working separately, and then we had operations, the support team working separately. The moment we all became a part of a transformation office and we were all, you know, kinda reporting up to one leader who is about clinical, folks, who is about the IT folks, and who is about the implementation, the adoption, We had the shared transformation office, and that eliminated redundant reporting structures.

And this allowed for real time feedback from physicians, developers, and this actually sped up the EHR implementation, customization, and optimization from months, which took months to over six weeks. So that was, the biggest success I saw in terms of flattening the silos and fewer layers, faster information flow, and faster action. Let's talk about the second point, the cross functional teams. Right? So I'm gonna use an example from the industry. Capital One, they implemented cross functional parts, like the product, the design, the tech, the compliance. They all collocated to launch the new digital banking features. So instead of waiting on sign offs, each part had decision rights and a clear mission. So when the people who build, regulate, and support the product work together, there is less rework and more velocity.

The third point I have here on the slide is upskill leaders to digital fluency. Very, very important, always overlooked. Let's talk about Unilever. Unilever launched the Digital Destruction Academy, and feel free to Google, Unilever or, you know, Capital One or even, like, you know, EHR implementation, using transformative office. You can Google all these terms and get more information. So Unilever, what they did is they helped nontechnical leaders understand AI, data ethics, and automation. This reduced fear. Right? A lot a lot of time, the change is, being, resisted because of fear. So this, academy reduced fear, increased adoption, and created better crosstalk between businesses and tech teams. So as an executive, you do not need to code, but you do need to speak the language. So that is very important. Alright. So that's our strategy number one, building agility into the organization chart. We'll talk more about if you have questions. I see I see the comments coming in. Alright.

Strategy number two is investing in scalable foundations. Right? We all have a cost associated with any change, and we all have a budget to innovate. But where do you innovate or where do you invest matters the most. Let's talk about cloud native flat platforms. Again, let me share a real world example. Netflix uses AWS to dynamically scale its streaming services during peak times, like evenings and weekends, and when net new shows are released. Right? So that's being very strategic with their cloud native platforms. The cloud native approach ensures uninterrupted service and efficient cost management by scaling only when needed. Let's talk about the next point on my presentation, modular architecture. And this is from a personal experience. So we use, Shopify as a platform. So Shopify's plug in based ecommerce platform.

It allows merchants, like American Cancer Society I work for, to pick and choose the features like inventory, payments, analytics without overhauling their entire system. This flexibility helps, the businesses to evolve quickly and adopt new tools as needed. And most importantly, guys, anytime you invest in a technology, it has to be integration ready. Salesforce, for example, It has an AppExchange ecosystem, and we have, like, thousands of third party integrations from marketing to automation to financial tools like NetSuite. They all can be integrated into Salesforce, and this will help an organization create those seamless workflows across systems without custom builds, without, you know, accelerating, you know, or without creating any kind of, hindrances or hiccups or friction. And this adds value to your ecosystem. So that's how it's important. The third strategy let me actually open up the slide. This is by far the most important culture. At American Cancer Society, we give a lot of importance to culture. We have workshops to define the culture. We have groups, that work together to facilitate, a cultural change.

Alright. Encouraging a culture where experimentation is normalized, it promotes creativity and innovation within the organization. The second thing is reward ideas and risk taking. You have to reward innovative ideas. Whether they succeed or fail, the effort has to be rewarded. The calculated risk taking, that fosters a sense of ownership and motivation, and it's very, very important. Lead by example. As a leader, as an executive, you should embody curiosity and courage and encouraging the teams to explore and take risks in pursuit of innovation. So be that example. Talk about not just your successes. Talk about your failures. Talk about your risks. Talk about what you learned. So that would actually be an example for your organization, for your employees to take that calculated risk and move forward with their innovative mindset. Alright.

We are now on to our last slide, the executive call to action. Like I said, the success of my presentation is if you could take one of the three strategies and be able to implement it in your organization. And when I say implement, start where you are. Take baby steps. Right? Pick that one process that you can change or evolve. Identify that one pain point within your organization. You know, kind of brainstorm with your team. Find out what can be done. You know, enjoy the process of change. Get your team excited for change. And most importantly, have a culture that is future proof and sustainable.