In this keynote, Dr. Bhatt Vadlamani identifies the hurdles for digital transformation and shares a business-driven consulting approach for CIOs that won industry awards for its success in delivering digital business growth consistently. He demystifies digital business for the C-suite and proposes an effective engagement model for a CIO to enable business CXOs in visioning, owning, and driving the realization of digital business as a strategic initiative. In this approach, called DigExplore®, the CIO acts as an instigator, coach, and mentor to business CXOs to secure the needed innovation funding to implement the digital business platform using cloud, data, AI, Digital Twin, and other digital tools to grow digital business effectively.

In today's world, you need to know what your customers want even before they do. The way in which organizations and customers interact has fundamentally changed; meeting the customer where they are to create a seamless experience is front and center.
Research indicates that, 73% of customers agree that great customer experience drives their purchasing decisions (PwC), AND 80% of customers say that they are ready to pay more if it means getting better customer experience (Epsilon). With that in mind, could improvements in CX through the use of AI, data, and other digital tools be the key to improving your brand’s user engagement and overall business outcomes?
Join this panel to hear from a variety of leaders on how they have improved their customer experience through the use of technology, and what the challenges and future goals are in this space.

Over the next few years, digital transformation is expected to be the top strategic business priority of enterprises in almost all industries. With 60% of CIOs and CTOs surveyed in a 2021 IBM study indicating that their IT modernization program is not yet ready for the future, we see many fast-tracking their digital technology initiatives this year. The COVID- 19 pandemic also made it clear that transformation and innovation must go hand in hand to be effective within organizations. However, as companies begin to adopt increasingly innovative technologies, like data analytics, hybrid cloud, and AI & automation, they are still faced with the challenge of siloed teams and processes, without the sustained support needed to be effective. Successful digital transformation comes not only from adopting technology, but adjusting the people, processes, and culture to support it.

Questions to answer in this roundtable include:
•How is the over-arching theme of digital transformation currently shaping your organization?
•Successful digital transformation comes not only from adopting technology, but adjusting the people, processes, and culture to support it… is this something that you agree with?
•In order to transform at scale, how can technical and non- technical teams work together?
•How has your cloud adoption strategy intertwined with your digital transformation efforts?
•How do you accelerate delivery and deliver new capabilities to the market in a way that compliments or surrounds your technical debt, vs trying to eradicate it all?
•What are the biggest challenges that companies face on the path to implementing digital transformation?
•How do you prioritize your needs with those of other business lines or teams, as there are often digital transformation initiatives happening in multiple areas of the organization?

Multiple surveys performed by McKinsey indicate that large companies host 10 to 15 percent of their applications in the cloud, but continue to host the core of their technology environment in traditional data centers. Unlike past successful programs to adopt Linux, x86 processes, or server virtualization, implementing cloud is more challenging.
CIOs and CTOs need to drive cloud adoption, but, given the scale and scope of change required to exploit this opportunity fully, they also need support from the rest of the management team. Engagement with the leadership team is important for technology funding, business- technology collaboration, and finding the right technical talent.
Companies that adopt hybrid cloud will bring new capabilities to market more quickly, innovate more easily, and scale more efficiently—while also reducing technology risk. Hybrid cloud platforms can provide the required agility and scalability required for a business to adapt to the changing digital business models of 2023 and beyond.

Questions to answer during this roundtable include:
•How do you streamline cloud decisions while saving money?
•As new digital channels and workplace strategies consolidate, how do you recognize which innovations to embrace and which existing systems to retain?
•As an IT leader, What is your advice on how to effectively leverage the cloud to achieve your technology transformation agenda?
•Has your operating model changed to take advantage of the flexibility and speed that cloud offers?
•Have you used cloud as a catalyst to build new capabilities?

As organizations continue to transform, a critical step in the process is ensuring they have a data- driven culture. According to McKinsey, companies that treat their data as a corporate asset grow revenues, on average, five times faster than companies that don’t. If companies want to accelerate their digital transformation journeys, they will need to enable a robust and sustainable data culture first. Furthermore, to capitalize on the true potential of data at our fingertips, organizations must fundamentally change how they view and use data. Transforming the view of D&A from what was typically considered a support function, to a strategic growth asset and core business competency requires data leaders to innovate to match the pace of digital transformation.

Questions to answer in this roundtable include:
•How is technology enabling companies to overcome silo, data quality, and enablement issues?
•How do you create frictionless collaboration within your data ecosystem - people, tools, and data?
•Ensuring every business decision is data-driven - how do we enable data as a service?
•Where can the use of AI and machine automation help with cutting costs?
•How can you embed a data and analytics culture across the entire organization?
•How can you better manage providers and make data actionable?
•How do you streamline cloud decisions while saving money?

Join Jeri Koester, MBA, Chief Information Officer at Marshfield Clinic Health System, as she discusses how leadership and diversity have been key pillars in the organization’s transformation journey. Since the onset of the pandemic, Marshfield Clinic Health System has been working to boost patient and provider satisfaction and provider efficiency through the use of digital channels such as telehealth services, and has also recently launched their hospital-at-home program, which connects patients in rural Wisconsin with remote monitoring tools, aiming to reduce non-emergency ED visits, improve outcomes, and lower costs. While these programs are now seemingly the norm for healthcare in 2023, it’s important to understand how we can expand these capabilities to reach our patients where they are; and leadership is a big piece of the puzzle. Jeri will discuss the importance of diversity within leadership teams, especially at the intersection between healthcare and IT.

Digital transformation is not a one-time event. It’s a journey that is critically important for every organization as they adopt modern, secure platforms and capabilities to facilitate smarter ideas, faster executions, and greater innovation at every stage. That’s why it’s critical for business and technology leaders to have the right strategy and talent in place so that transformation can happen quickly, securely and at scale. In this engaging discussion, learn about some of the cutting-edge technologies being applied to unleash value now and be prepared for the future.

If we're thinking about Cybersecurity in terms of continuous conflict, the traditional security pillars, Patching, Endpoint hygiene, Identity Management and MFA, are losing battles. Using military tenets, cybersecurity may not even be a ""war"" we can win.
What if we're thinking about this entirely wrong?
•A bunker or siege mentality hog-ties cybersecurity practitioners to a defense-only, minimum-necessary approach, its binary ""All or Nothing"" terms with skyrocketing turnover and burnout.
•Organizations appear to be self-deluded, self-destructive, risk addicts, "cyberwashing" their business model in the hope that boomerang trips/Incident retainers and Cyber Insurance pipedreams are less expensive than rigorous cyber-hygiene.
Let's reframe the conversation around digital disruption. Lets put the Cyber in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and talk about therapeutic approaches to limit organizations from self-harm and relapse, and security practitioners from burnout and fatigue.

Digital transformation starts with strong leadership. It is driven by people within the enterprise who understand the organization as is, and who envision what the organization can eventually be. True digital transformation is more than just new tech; it’s about the people, the culture, capabilities, and the business model. During this panel discussion, we will be exploring this concept from a cross-industry perspective to hear from our senior leaders regarding their experiences and lessons learned from disruptive times, as well as how they are developing the next generation of leaders. What does this look like for them and their industry? What are the biggest challenges when it comes to leadership, and redefining strategy & cultural mindset? How can we drive innovation through the convergence of people, processes, data, and technology?

This presentation will be given by UNICEF's Chief Data Officer and will highlight the role of data in advancing child rights and as an accelerator of progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for children. It will focus on the implementation of a flexible data strategy to provide data-driven solutions to the field and promote responsible data use and governance throughout the organization. The talk will highlight use-cases on data, such as the role of data in responding to the Ukraine crisis, and will outline the challenges in working on data within an international development organization. The presentation will also introduce the "Data Stewardship program” and "Frontier Data Network" program to instill a culture of smart data use and develop specialized data science and AI capacity within UNICEF through partnerships. The learning objectives of the talk will be to understand the building of an effective data function at an international development organization, enabling countries to strengthen national data systems, leveraging traditional and non-traditional data in humanitarian situations, and to surface opportunities to partner with international development organizations.

Join Paul Williams, Chief Information Officer at VABC, as he walks through their journey from ‘All on Premise’ to a fully hybrid enterprise. ABC runs some 130 systems, but this focuses on the 14 of those that are Enterprise class systems as the measure of our progression. This presentation covers moving IT Systems and the business from those obsolete and on premise solutions to a new paradigm. Its been a fun journey, with an 88% increase in revenue, the pandemic and moving the entire enterprise to a new headquarters and distribution center al happening in the same time and space. We aren’t done yet, and hindsight is particularly sharp in regards to the pains and new issues we now face.