My CIO Blog
- Aflac virtualizes the customer enrollment experience August 19, 2022At the outset of the pandemic, Aflac’s independent agent/franchise business looked to be a dead duck. The traditional in-person process of insurance agents meeting with prospective customers to discuss policies, sign paperwork, and load it into the company’s client/server system came to a complete halt. While Aflac’s other major division, its business-to-business insurance line, was […]
- The Blockchain battlefront: Technology, business, and regulation August 19, 2022Comedian John Oliver quipped that cryptocurrency is “everything you don’t understand about money combined with everything you don’t understand about technology.” He missed another area of notorious confusion: the law. The great regulatory bureaucracy has awakened to the significance of blockchain-enabled technology, led by the SEC. The government is certain that cryptocurrency must be regulated, […]
- Securing the ever-evolving hybrid work environment August 18, 2022Even as many business leaders debate the boundaries of remote work styles and schedules, there is little doubt that hybrid work will persist for most enterprises. Yet, how hybrid work takes shape for any given business will likely evolve as business needs and employee expectations change over time. For IT and network security teams, the […]
- Want Resilient, High-Performing Development Teams? Prioritize Learning. August 18, 2022Technology is hardly the only industry experiencing hiring challenges at the moment, but resignations in tech still rank among the highest across all industries, with a 4.5% increase in resignations in 2021 compared with 2020, according to Harvard Business Review. For the most part, these employees aren’t leaving the industry altogether; they’re moving to companies that […]
- Smartphones Central to Online and In-Store Consumer Shopping Habits August 18, 2022New research from Cybersource and PYMNTS.com finds that more than one-third of shoppers are turning to smartphones when shopping in-store. In addition, 59% of merchants support mobile features to help them make a purchase. The 2022 Global Digital Shopping Index provides insights into how mobile-first shoppers are reshaping what success looks like for merchants in a new […]
- CIO 100 Conference Celebrates the Top IT leaders in the UK and globally August 18, 2022The CIO 100 is celebrated internationally, with the CIO 100 UK 2022 being announced on 22nd September. Following the awards ceremony, the virtual CIO 100 Conference will begin with a spotlight on the UK CIO #1, highlighting what crowned them the number one position, initiatives they have recently been working on, and what they are […]
- Why every IT leader should avoid ‘best practices’ August 18, 2022The nonsense was tucked away in a PowerPoint slide, as so much nonsense is. “We’ll help you institute best practices, followed by a program of continuous improvement,” the offending bullet said. Now, I’m willing to shrug at a bit of harmless puffery from time to time. And maybe this puffery was harmless. But I don’t […]
- CIO Kristie Grinnell on creating a culture of transformation August 18, 2022Kristie Grinnell, SVP and CIO of DXC Technology, is an award-winning global executive known for her success in leading large-scale strategic transformations while remaining a calm, decisive, and supportive presence for her team, even when the heat is on. She has that unique ability — something we see among the top CIOs and digital leaders […]
- The rise of the data lakehouse: A new era of data value August 18, 2022With 65 million vaccine doses to administer at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Luigi Guadagno, vice presidnet of pharmacy renewal and healthcare platform technology at Walgreens, needed to know where to send them. To find out, he queried Walgreens’ data lakehouse, implemented with Databricks technology on Microsoft Azure. “We leveraged the lakehouse to understand […]
- Global software spending to grow despite headwinds: Forrester August 17, 2022Global spending on software will continue to grow despite headwinds in the form of inflation, geopolitical risks and labor shortages, a new report from Forrester shows. Driven to a large degree by deployment of cloud and enterprise applications, software spending worldwide is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.3% from […]