PEX Network | Process Excellence Network

Reka Mishra is the managing director of the transformation office for the SVB Financial Group. She lays out the basics of mergers and acquisitions before diving in on operational excellence. For M&A, it is imperative to have a target operating model in place. That model must consist of four key elements: people, process, technology, and data. Change management, communication, and HR must also be involved from the onset in order to best address the concerns of the employees. When M&A happens for the sake of digital transformation, it is especially critical that the enterprise is sensitive to the human element. Reka explains how to strike the right balance in order to make the transition as smooth as possible. Mergers and acquisitions aren’t a one-and-done, and they must lead from the top. As Reka says, “It's absolutely critical to get all the executives aligned and in agreement because then you can have a very clear path forward, and then you know you're meeting everybody's expectation. And also it's helpful in them communicating to their employees what's happening at an organization-wide level. It's a consistent message. It's a consistent buy-in.”

Adrian Terry, VP of GM Financial’s OpEx function, discusses their unique approach to IT and RPA. Initially, IT had some processes they wanted to automate. From there, a pilot was developed. It soon became clear that the broader organization could benefit from similar processes, so GM onboarded their own RPA business automation talent. Now, IT and RPA have been conjoined. While each department still has their direct leadership, the “two headed monster” reports to a governance function. Next, Adrian details the execution and benefits of the pod model they’ve developed. After Adrian explains the structure, deployment, and communication aspects of the design, he talks scale. Finally, after briefly touching on some growing pains of the transformation, Adrian sums up the meticulous, thought-out execution of the pods and the future of the business. Adrian doesn’t do anything unless he does it well.

Joining us today is Kristen Workman, director of lean office transformation at Schneider Electric. While she has been with the company for over 20 years, she only recently entered her current role. In this conversation, she discusses the transition into a new department. Coming in as an outsider, Kristen has the advantage of looking at team projects through an objective lens while still maintaining the integrity of the company she knows so well. Kristen further discusses the advantages of “diversity of thought.” Next, Kristen stresses the importance of engagement across the enterprise, from the C-suite down. Without a general understanding of company processes, alignment is difficult. Kristen carried her “what works, what doesn’t” strategy into her new role, but that’s not to say she is bored with the same ol’. The continuous improvement journey never ends, as new technologies, and opportunities are ever present. Kristen shares more of her problem-solving strategies and opinions on the future of work, technology, and enterprise throughout the rest of this episode.

Gary Pilacinski, director of business process improvement engineering with LA Care Health Plan, discusses the importance of cultural transformational change. From start-ups to legacy organizations, Gary stresses how critical culture is for the success of an enterprise. One common stumbling block to a successful culture change is a lack of buy-in from the C-suite. Conversely, if upper management sees a need for change but doesn’t effectively implement it, employees who have been with the organization for years—or decades, even—may get stuck in their ways. If that is the case, empowering frontline staff is key. Gary discusses ways to do just that. He also elaborates on how he is working to implement Lean and PI within his organization and how healthcare at large can approach the same issues. Hint: training the trainers is key. Change is uncomfortable. But with transparency, engagement, and most important, keeping the interests of the patient front and center, Gary believes Lean culture transformations are not only possible, but necessary for the success of the healthcare sector and those it serves.

Karen Tilstra is the co-founder of the Florida Hospital Innovation Lab. In this conversation, Karen emphasizes the intent of the Innovation Lab, which, not surprisingly, is innovation. However, the process to innovation is often overlooked. Karen describes it as a “multifaceted journey of learning, of discovery, of openness.” In other words, innovation isn’t instantaneous, nor does it happen in a silo. When a brand thinks they know what’s best for their customers—instead of interacting with those customers—it’s often the beginning of the end. Karen details Sears’ downward spiral as an example. Next, Karen questions the value of the typical enterprise growth mentality. Is “grow or die” a myth or a reality? True, meaningful innovation involves the application of certain soft skills that aren’t immediately apparent. Karen drives their importance home in this insightful, outside-of-the-box conversation.

Peter Van Den Heuval, product manager with Shell, is better known internally as Peter PI. In this conversation, he explains the origin story of his nickname, a nod to Shell’s use of OSIsoft’s PI System data infrastructure. Shell has been ahead of the data game since 1996, as they understood the long-term implications of real-time data and looked for a platform to store and analyze that data. PI fit the bill. Now, as technology and processing power has bumped data into the next frontier, Shell applies advanced analytics to the massive amount of data they’ve collected. Peter shares examples of complicated calculations they benefit from due to big data and real-time process analytics. Next, Peter explains how Shell plans to implement IoT in order to collect meaningful data for predictive analytics that leads to actionable change. Peter also explores the soft skills involved in staying passionate about data and its power. He enables Shell’s workflow the ability to take action on data by simplifying the data process through PI. Ultimately, creating a safe, effective product is Peter’s motivation.

Intel’s Steven Remsen made the cross-country trip from Portland, OR to Orlando for OPEX Week 2020. We caught up with him to discuss process mining. Steven starts out with a quick history of a few special algorithms before noting the strengths of traditional mapping methods. As a practitioner, he understands the three basic steps of process mining from the academic space: discovery, conformance, and enhancement. Steve’s science background sets him apart from some other data scientists who see the black boxes of AI as collateral. Steven looks under the hood. After all, he notes, finding an AI solution to a business problem isn’t enough—it must be the correct solution. Next, Stephen shares a multi-million-dollar solution to a bottleneck in Intel’s fabrication process that was achieved through a quick and easy process mining activity. Next, Steven drives home the backbone of any successful AI implementation: people. In order to process mine in a holistic way, as Steven says, “It’s always people, process, technology.” He demonstrates this point with one more fantastic story about how data won’t work together if people can’t.

Joe Jordan joins us from OPEX Week in Orlando. As the director of operational excellence for Edward Jones, Joe sought inspiration from the hit TV show Shark Tank to give a platform to the innovative minds of Edward Jones. If anyone across the firm’s workflow has an idea about how to transform their part of the business, they are given the opportunity to present it to the C-suite. If the idea ultimately increases Edward Jones’s ROI, the C-suite signs of on funding the technology that bring the idea to fruition. It’s an exciting opportunity for voices across the company to be heard and is a win/win for morale and profit. Over the last year, they’ve held about 15 of these Shark Tank sessions and have signed off on 100% of them. Joe explains exactly how the process works and provides a few simple yet powerful examples, from automatic signature verification to RPA processes. Finally, Joe explains what they look for in an employee with the acronym BLT: that is, business acumen, leadership, and technology. Ultimately, the firm’s focus on a growth mindset across all verticals of the organization is what keeps Edward Jones as an industry leader.

Angie Fearn comes to us from OPEX Orlando to discuss diversity of thought and its importance for enterprise. While diversity has become a loaded buzzword, Angie refocuses its compass around the way different people come with their own set of skills and capabilities. As a leader—and a human—it is natural to want to hire people who look and think like you. It takes an insightful leader to actively diversify their talent in order to fill in the gaps that exist within the leadership team and the enterprise at large. Angie explores the differences between subject matter experts and soft skill experts. Balancing the two in a way that makes sense ensures that employees are ready for the future of work, while still bringing their current expertise into the role. Angie offers several in-depth examples of transformation done right, what the future of the workforce looks like, and the role AI plays in it all.

Dmitri Popov, global service management lead for Mann + Hummel Group, joins us today to discuss scaling RPA. Dmitri himself admits that such a process is painful, in part because of the few successful enterprise examples for which to model after. Dmitri points to IBM as a company who has done it well. Next, Dmitri discusses how to leverage shared services in the most efficient way, exemplifying R&D and certain purchasing aspects. One of the most difficult components of implementing RPA across the workflow is acceptance and adherence. Dmitri doesn’t mince words when it comes to what it takes in a person—not just an enterprise—to accept change, no matter how positive that change may ultimately be.

In this episode, Kai-Eberhard Lueg, Global Business Solutions expert with Siemens, discusses the future of automation. Specifically, commerce is experiencing a new type of customer expectation that involves an increase in personalization and speed. While these two concepts seem counterintuitive, digitalization and shared services make it possible. Digitization is only as effective as the foundation it was built on, however, so Mr. Lueg details the best way to move forward on firm ground. Finally, Mr. Lueg emphasizes the importance of human talent. By building a culture of curiosity and innovation, both employees and enterprise benefit from the expectation and execution of upskilling and reskilling with an emphasis on technical skills.

Dr. Ayanna Howard is a chair of the School of Interactive computing at Georgia Tech, an academic, and a startup founder. While her talents are as vast as her pursuits, she sums up their relation as interactive computing. In her words, “Interactive computing is really this theme that the human is center to everything that we do when we think about computing and artificial intelligence.” Dr. Howard pursues interactive computing for the greater good, including robotics in healthcare and education. She also discusses ethics in computing, including privacy and security.

NASA’s Pam Wolfe joins us to discuss their RPA journey, which started over two years ago in their Shared Services Center. Establishing RPA governance across NASA has taken time, strategy, and strong support across the agency. In many ways, NASA’s move to RPA is very similar to the typical enterprise, but let’s not forget—NASA sends people to space. In fact, a recent decision was made to send astronauts to the moon and Mars by 2024. In order to reach their goals, NASA went through a cultural and digital transformation shift that received a high level of support from the top—which Pam defines as a necessity. Naturally, governance and security is of the utmost importance during this transformation. Pam shares some astonishing numbers in regard to their progress while laying out a path for the lay-enterprise, if you will, to accomplish similar workflow evolutions.

Robert Welborn joins us again for the second part of autonomous vehicle myths. During this discussion, Robert compares the vast and critical differences between the capabilities of today’s math and the necessity of developing tomorrow’s math before fully autonomous vehicles are a safe, mainstream option. He parses out the weakness in today’s autonomous vehicles. For example, converting visual information into digital information and then trying to extract features from that before making a decision off of those inputs. As one could imagine, and as Robert so vividly depicts, there are issues—namely safety—in expecting a computing system to respond quickly and correctly to the infinite numbers of inputs it may receive. Robert closes the discussion with a few viable ways of progressing the technology.

Deepak Subbarao joins us again, this time, to discuss unstructured data.  The recent explosion in technology inputs has raised the bar for customer expectations. They want more, and they want it now. Requests are coming via phone calls, social media, emails, etc. The product of this feedback is unstructured data. Deepak goes in depth on three actionable steps to take in order to leverage the power of unstructured data: know your data, know the sources of your data, and prepare your data. Next, Deepak discusses the importance of defining outcomes for your data, as opposed to cramming data into an algorithm and receiving an output that has no use case. As Deepak reiterates throughout the conversation, context is key.

Hendrik Boehmer is the People Experience & Operations Lead for Unilever. While such a title is a few syllables longer than its counterpart, Hendrik explains that Unilever’s HR transformation involved a complete reimagination of the role. First, hand-picked roles that were once outsourced were brought back in house in order to achieve HR’s new goal: more simple, more impact, and more human. What this entails is increasing automation and the role of human talent simultaneously. While it sounds contradictive, Hendrik details the logistics and execution in full. As with any digital transformation, reskilling and security must be addressed. Unilever has a system in place for both, which Hendrik describes next. Finally, Hendrik mulls over this universal truth and what it’s meant for his career and enterprise at large: the only constant is change.

Martin Felder is the head process automation center at Linde Global Services. He discusses his role with Linde as well as their journey into RPA. Instead of taking the typical low-hanging-fruit approach, Martin tackled Linde’s impending future when deciding where to implement RPA first. He explains the whys and hows of this, including how he got the C-suite to sign off—and fund—such a huge initiative. As Linde is a global enterprise, Michael next discusses the pain points, mistakes, and happy accidents that occurred during the pilot and roll-out of RPA solutions. Perhaps most important, Martin wraps up with his thoughts on human talent, relationships, and how to move into the future of automation by appreciating the people side of things.

AI strategist for the Volvo Group, Jair Riberio, discusses Volvo’s decision to develop the AI and machine learning Center of Excellence. His interest in AI stems from his time at IBM, which he sentimentally outlines before moving on. Next, Jair talks about the difference between a company who is solely IT-based and a company like Volvo who is implementing those technologies into a product that isn’t inherently tech. As reliability and safety is and has always been Volvo’s number one concern, Jair explains how technology and regulations play into the modern innovations at Volvo. Finally, Jair closes with his thoughts on fully autonomous vehicles and what it means for our future.

Joining us again is Tony Saldanha, president of Transformant, to discuss the role of the CIO and IT in organization transformation. Tony first talks about the legacy role of the CIO and whether or not it’s still relevant. Traditionally, CIOs have excelled at their number one task: scaling. However, with Industry 4.0 on the horizon, scaling is replaced by transformation. Next, Tony outlines the ideal mentality and vision of a CIO for today’s enterprise landscape. Tony’s solution for IT’s new place in enterprise involves injecting some creativity and business savviness into the department. He then explains the hows and whys.

Ravi Rao defines “emotional business” and why the analytical, numbers-based approach to running an enterprise just isn’t enough. In this episode, he specifically addresses nonverbal communication. “As we roll out operational improvement programs in a lot of organizations, people are paying attention to what's being written in the email. People are paying attention to what's happening on a stage coming from the manager or executive. But the things that most executives and managers and program managers fail to think about is even their body language is sending messages.” Ravi wraps up with some advice from the trenches.

We spoke with Nicole Raimundo, the chief information officer for the town of Cary, North Carolina, about its tech appeal. Brands like Cisco, SAS, and Epic Games call Cary home. Further, Raiumundo discusses her process in building Cary into the “connected community” it is today. From big data to IoT, the reinvention of Cary involved a lot of training and reskilling. The success in Cary’s transformation lies in the cooperation of universities, tech companies, and the city. Listen to Raimundo go in depth about exactly what technologies Cary deployed and how those solutions better the community in the full episode.

Joshua Beaudry, cofounder of LPSTK Skateboards and professional skater, discusses the evolution of the brand-turned-nonprofit. LPSTK was a digital native from the start. “All of our sales, fulfillment, our shipping, our donation, handling, our accounting, that's all automated with robots.” Josh goes on to detail the solutions they deploy, such as UiPath, and the learning curve involved in a hybrid DIY-type solution. He compares the differences between change in a large corporation and a small startup. Further, Josh learned to build his own bot and lays out the advantages of knowing how to code. By automating as much as possible, LPSTK is able to stick to its mission efficiently and affordably.

Meaningful relationships lead to meaningful change. Donna Handley and Mohamed Saleh discuss how they built that relationship to reshape Hartford Healthcare. Their lofty goal was to be patient-centric and, “Eliminate harm and eliminate preventable deaths.” Donna discusses the roadblocks to creating a program that offered the same high standard of care across her varying patient landscapes. With Mohamed behind the curtain and Donna leading the charge, they faced the ups and downs of building a team motivated by the exciting changes Donna was looking to implement. This episode explains how they pulled it off.

Alexander Hubel joins us again to discuss his RPA and automation journey with Ericsson. He fills us in the last two years and their evolution toward a center of excellence. Change management, communications, and automation communities are focusing their efforts on automation and business adoption. Alexander describes the difference between tribes and communities within the organization and what their roles entail. As far as machine learning is concerned, Alexander says, “I think from an Ericsson perspective, we’re quite far ahead, and I think that relates to us being a tech company.” This hasn’t come without its challenges, though, which Alexander also delves into.

Brian Mikkelsen, the CEO of the Danish Chamber of Commerce, talks with us during the Intelligent Automation Nordics in Copenhagen. He discusses the launch of the Digital Growth Strategy for Denmark and how it has kept Denmark’s economy competitive. Training the workforce of tomorrow through a focus on STEM education affords Denmark the opportunity to grow its economy locally. Further, the government has established a digital hub, where small companies can have knowledge about AI, big data, and other new tech for free. Brian concludes the discussion with his thoughts on wealth disparity in Denmark—or lack thereof—and its high quality of living.

We spoke to Henrik Hanasand, with Seniorrådgiver, a shared service center for payroll and accountants. Hanasand discussed his enterprise’s robotic evolution starting with a proof of concept, consulting, and implementation. Still, finding the right RPA solution involved some trial and error. After relying too heavily on consultants, Hanasand decided to search internally for talent. It worked. Their new approach to a holistic IT solution has given them the flexibility to look at AI more broadly and futureproof their organization. Seniorrådgiver has made a concerted effort to continue the path forward technologically, and it’s paying off.

Jack Cheng covered a lot of ground in this interview. He described NIO, the company he co-founded, as “an EV provider, a mobility company, but [ultimately a] user enterprise engaged with the use of directory.” From swappable batteries to vehicle “living rooms,” Cheng takes a visionary approach to everything he does. His views on globalism are just as unique. He discussed with us the dangers of indoctrination and group think. He gave us his optimistic insight on the tension between China and the U.S. He even shared some ideas on how we can bridge the generation gap at a fundamental level.

In this episode, Vartul Mittal discusses his RP agenda across industries and geographies. He also shares with us his favorite third-party software and other tips and tricks to convert big data into something usable. 

Steve Kato-Spyrou is the UX manager at John Lewis. He joins us at the Omnichannel Forum to discuss organizational change. Today’s consumer involves so many touchpoints it takes a corporation a collaborative way of thinking to reach them in an effective way. In order to get everyone on board from the top down, Steve creates workshops and provides us with some specific examples. “Now they've got to work together on these ideas that have come up. And that's going to be the next step: how we truly get away from the business functions, silos, buying, merchandising, trade, product, design, creative, slam them all together into a cross-functional team.”

Deepak Subbarao joins us and shares why what he does inspires him, "I have this fascinating job of trying to understand how you add value to the business, but at the same time help them jump into the next wave of technologies. So what does it mean practically, right? So we've already gone through let's say restructuring, or let's say we've gone through a lot of changes."

Edda Blumenstein is a Ph.D. researcher at Leeds University. In this episode, she discusses her efforts to “…identify how honest retailers are supposed to survive in this dynamic environment that is constantly changing at a speed never seen before. I'm looking at how they can actually develop capabilities to do that.” Edda zeroes in on big data’s role in the transformational process. Today’s buyers expect an experience and a relationship from the brands they choose to do business with. Edda explains why businesses need to implement educated decision making in order to stay competitive prepare for an unpredictable future.

Pfizer's Anil Bhavanani on transformation: "Digital is different in a way that you're focusing more on how you can leverage technology. And it is the same in a way that ultimately you have to focus on the process. So even when you are doing integrations, typically you are focusing on the process because you're kind of integrating onto one ERP. So you know, it is driven by technology, so even integrations typically would be driven because you're kind of bringing all work onto one single ERP. The opportunities of optimizing the process and as a result of that you can give back synergy back to the company. So digital is a little bit different because the focus is more in terms of how you can automate and how you can transform the process the way it's being done today."

Maria Salvatore, Director of Finance Operations at BMI Group, discusses her journey with RPA from both the individual and corporate lens. Salvatore touches on her personal experiences with RPA implementation, including the pain points, pilot, and ultimate success of RPA. Salvatore’s bottom line is this: “How do we bring it all together, and how do we make sure that we've got the right process; that we don’t make mistakes around that? And what is the end in mind? The end in mind is making money.”

Ian Hawkins, PEX Network editor, discusses a wide range of topics in this episode such as outside investment in Africa and how it’s boosting their process excellence; whether or not blockchain is being oversold, spoiler alert: it is, and use cases for the technology; data and process mining; forecasting; intelligent automation; Brexit; and data as currency. Ultimately, Hawkins sums things up with one important conclusion: “With all of these things is there's a crossover between what's good for the computer and what's good for the human being.”

In this episode, Chris Gunning discusses his personal history with shared services as well as its evolution over the nearly 20 years he’s been in the industry. “We're now seen as a strategic asset for the business; an enabler to help drive value for the business; to be an incubator for technology, for reporting, for analytics, for business insights, so a lot of the things that we were talking about back in the day—centralization, standardization, definitely table stakes, process improvement that have to be there—and we're still talking about some of those things. It's nice to see that we as a shared services organization [have] moved up the value chain to add value for the business.

Siemens’ Alexander Thielmann discusses the Fourth Industrial Revolution and its effect on the corporate landscape. The transformation Siemens has embarked on, aptly named Vision 2020 Plus, is a cultural one as much as it is a technology one. With a company as large as Siemens, Thielmann describes this sea change as navigating a fleet of ships. “...with this new change of these fleet of ships, the expectation of the board is also that the ships, or the companies, make more profit... Which also means now they are looking a bit more outside the box.”

Caroline Basyn, Global CIO and GBS Officer at Mondelēz International, discusses the importance of setting a solid foundation before planning and executing a digital transformation. With an influx of data comes new problems to be solved. Instilling a cloud and data strategy, setting up a consumer-centric framework, and building innovation teams out of siloed departments are some of the solutions Basyn touches on. Once the foundation is set, deploying corporate culture changes, Agile workplaces, and AI and ML technology gets done quicker, cheaper, and with more longevity than a quick-fix solution. “I used to say quality is not the enemy of speed, but in a certain sense, you need to be able to marry both.”

Fernando Nunes, senior process automation architect at Man Energy solutions, discusses his unique approach to IT and business. By leveraging RPA, AI, and BPA tools, Nunes works to empower the business line and decrease IT bottlenecks through process automation. He further explains the Center of Excellence concept using an apt airport metaphor. “Our philosophy was always about enabling our line of business to do large things themselves, and we of course, would have to provide an architecture, a governance, an infrastructure, and we see it more like we provide the airport. Then the line of business will make the flights; the planes to fly.”

Andrew Parris,Director Of Performance Improvement at CRH, focuses his efforts on improving corporate functions across the board, including finance, IT, procurement, and HR. How does he do it? Data-backed benchmarking, implementation planning, and change management. Additionally, intelligent automation is taking a front seat. “We're starting to bring some AI into play. Our approach has always been, it's not just about the bot, it's about the right solution for the right problem.”

Manish Jain joins us and shares information on RBCs new Silent Listener Chat Bot: "We are building a silent listener chat bot, which will listen to the conversation when an agent and a client are having those discussions. While those discussions are happening, the chat bot or the silent listener is going to understand the intent of the conversation, what the client is talking about, getting the client, IDs. In the meanwhile while the discussion is happening in goes in the background, brings in all policies and procedures, client, all information ready on the agent's screen. Agent without putting the client on hold is having a continuous discussion"

Manny Korakis joins us and shares the importance of potentially applying different strategies to different companies: "I've learned over the course of this journey that every company is in a different spot in their own journey, and I have to react to that. What's important in one organization at any given point in time, isn't necessarily a top priority in another company at their point in time."

Deborah kops joins us and shares her views on GBS: "It's a dynamic business model. It is not one rigid business model. To be very honest, to some extent we've promulgated that through the consultancy class in this industry, some of those guys are some of my best friends. But a business services platform is whatever you can do at any given time, given your leadership, given a range of external and internal factors. So GBS as a concept I don't buy."

Rob Phillips joins us and shares how venturing into the unknown is crucial to problem solving: "I think there's an overall bias that people have towards the unknown, right? They worry and they discount or they ... There's a risk factor of the unknown. So, the more that somebody can be involved in identifying what the problem is, they're coming to the table saying, "Hey, I know there's something here that needs to get fixed." Then we can work together with them to try, and propose solutions. "

Graham Russell joins us and shares the importance of understanding and implementing Data: "For those of us who have implemented ERPs for 20 years and more, data was usually the number one issue in doing that because as you move from one system to another, one of the first things you had to do was get the data clean, get the data reconciled, make sure there was integrity and so on. It's not new. I think people that don't anticipate it are perhaps not thinking of other projects."

Lee Coulter joins us and shares the end game in implementing new automated processes: "the reality is that you're not going to want to build heavy IT integration between all these systems. You're always going to be looking for something to stitch these things together in ways that are important to the business that drive some sort of material outcome."

Viral Chayya joins us and shares the importance of recognizing your company's strengths as well as it's weaknesses: "The one interesting new thing we are doing is, we do callbacks not only for our detractors, low scores, we also do callbacks for our promoters. To also try and understand what is it that we are doing right, because as an organization we believe in the philosophy of strength finders, and therefore we want to capitalize on them and do more of it so that the hope is that we don't have as many detractors. "

Tony Saldanha joins us and shares the careful steps that need to be taken in order to implement automation and improve processes: "I think you almost have to have a parallel strategy of automate and transform or disrupt. Because when you kind of look at things like data and AI, I think that's your disruptive part. And you have to be able to walk and chew gum, which is operate and automate and disrupt at the same time."

Kamila Grembowicz joins us and shares her experience in implementing Global Business Strategy at Adidas: " I think every company has a different culture, a different structure, and then every GBS looks different. If you have a company where GBS concept is really not liked by the people, they didn't adapt to change, they maybe went too aggressive in the cuts straight away without the quality. You can have different reasons why you go back to functional model."

Nadia de Villa joins us and shares how financial service providers like Manulife have to adapt in an ever changing environment: "The way customers interact with a company has changed, and therefore, we need to be there and think differently and think beyond our financial services walls. So in terms of digital transformation, what that means to us, it's truly how do we interact with our customers through any digital channel that they want to interact with us with."

Steven Jo joins us and shares Silicon Valley Bank's approach to transformation: "We have a new process, new platform, new operating model. We build it out, full agile, and as we're rolling things out, we're creating new teams that are doing certain work that supports our internal and external clients."

Ravi Rao joins us and shares how automation can not hurt, but help business processes as well as it's employees: "We're trying to figure out ways that the things that don't really require humans, things that are just repetitive data transfer tasks can be done by machines which are better at doing that, but the creative innovative service, interactive pieces, robots cannot do any of that. That's why humans still have a huge role to play in business and the more that they can recognize how to work with each other in exemplary ways, that's what will eventually lead the business. "