UK & Ireland CIO Community
Executive Summit

Please join the Summit’s Welcome Reception, an exclusive networking reception for all CIO attendees to launch the event with an evening of drinks, gourmet food stations, and plenty of peer networking at The Orangery, Holland Park, London. A hidden gem located in one of London’s most beautiful settings, situated within the grounds of Holland Park.

In the era of rapid digital transformation, establishing and maintaining digital trust has become a critical challenge for businesses worldwide. As enterprises become more connected, attack surfaces are increasing, and cyberthreats are rampant. How can organisations support the digital processes, interactions and transactions that drive their business, while ensuring that their digital footprint remains secure?

Join this session to discuss digital trust strategies that:

• Improve business continuity by reducing the risk of business disruption from outages
• Improve cyber agility by improving speed and adaptability to changes in cybersecurity standards
• Support digital innovation with improved user experience, user trust, and secured identity

The pace at which digital business continues to accelerate has given CIOs a unique opportunity to enhance their influence and collaboration over business strategies, creating new value. Exploring this opportunity demands a new approach to building relationships and cooperating with business stakeholders. BAT are using technology as an enabler to enhance a growing network of advanced manufacturing hubs, innovation super centres and world-class R&D facilities, and IT is at the heart. Join BAT Executives as they share specific examples of IT and Business Partnership, including:

• How a partnership between IT and Marketing has accelerated transformation for New Category Products, with a focus on data, technology and consumer experience
• Changing the business-IT relationship dynamics and leveraging technology to better serve the business strategy
• Shifting from reactive to proactive engagement with business stakeholders

With demand for digital innovation continuing at a record pace and access to resources becoming more competitive, organisations must streamline their IT stack to focus on time to value, maximise return on investment, and stay competitive in an increasingly recessionary global economy. Modern enterprise platforms are the key to competing in the future digital economy. As CIOs, how can you ensure your IT investments demonstrate real business value and meet the needs of the business? Join this boardroom to discuss:

• Demonstrating real business value with your IT investments
• Establish a unified platform and platform teams that meet your business application and automation needs
• Better plan the future of work and the role of people as technologies mature

For CIOs, there’s nothing new about managing business expectations and assessing the impact and opportunity that emerging technologies can have on the enterprise. Recent developments in data and AI technologies have the potential to reinvent how CIOs drive a culture of innovation. In addition, the current interest around generative AI and its emerging solutions, many IT Leaders are asking the question – what would be the first step and how can we maximise the benefit for our organisations? It is critical to understand the particulars of how emerging new technology will impact data, security and ongoing digital business acceleration.

Join this boardroom session and discuss:

• How CIOs are using data and AI to drive a culture of innovation and increased efficiency
• Operationalising data and AI at scale, and assessing the use of generative AI, to drive real business impact
• Balancing data and AI governance with existing IT and security regulations

**This session is for Next Generation CIO candidates only**

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 session to hear CIOs share what they enjoy most and least about their roles with some conflict in what’s necessary for success.

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

Making data accessible and useful is vital to driving business transformation, and Google has been organising the world’s data for over 25 years. In a cloud-based era, CIOs have a duty to ensure the right data, and actionable insights, are readily available to their organisations to accelerate sustainable business and find smarter uses for their data sets. During this Keynote Justin Keeble, Managing Director of Sustainability, will share how Google Cloud have been providing not only data, but data insights which help CIOs with mitigation and adaptation principles for their strategy. Specifically, Justin will share:

• How cloud technology can help drive sustainable change through the smarter use of data, with insights from Google Earth Engine & Google Cloud
• Turning data into insights, making better business decisions with sustainability at the core
• Bringing intelligence to operations and infrastructure, powering sustainable business transformation

CIOs have a unique and valuable skill set that makes them excellent candidates to take on NED roles. Taking on such additional responsibilities can also provide additional growth opportunities and professional network expansion. But what does the role of a NED actually entail? How do you know which potential NED is right for you? What are the realities of juggling a growing plate of priorities alongside your current workload, and how can you make sure you’re set up for success? Join Claire Dickson, CIO, DS Smith as she shares her journey, learnings and practical advice to CIOs considering an NED position, juggling the workload and finding the right fit for them. Specifically, Claire will share:

• Identifying what the role of a NED actually is, and what the role entails
• Clare’s story, decision-making process and criteria around becoming a NED
• Open discussion around the benefits, challenges and shared experiences of NED roles for IT leaders

Data and Analytics maturity varies drastically among organisations and it can be difficult for CIOs to know where they start, and whether they are making the most out of their data sets. The challenges faced span across multiple different areas — from communicating data updates internally to demonstrating the impact data strategy has on business outcomes. So how can IT Leaders get past the complexities of these challenges and utilise them to improve their strategies? Join VP Global CIO, Mars Pet Nutrition as he shares his thoughts about how Technology and Data strategy can contribute to increased sales and enhanced customer experience.

Specifically, Amitabh will share:

• Using digital strategy to enhance digital experiences, data analytics and proactive service
• Communicating confidence to the business that data infrastructure is aligned with data strategy
• The learnings and recommendations for CIOs looking to make the most out of their data sets and drive business collaboration and value

The world has changed; so has your workforce. CIOs are competing against organisations across the world for talent and must drive the business forward while evolving internal structures and processes to achieve efficiency. In this hyper-competitive, human-centred environment, CIOs are asking, “Where do we go from here?”

Join this boardroom with your peers and discuss:

• Assessing technologies to be adopted, and phased out, to remain competitive
• Ensuring your human-centric, flexible work strategy is future proof
• Reskilling, upskilling and re-imagining your approach to talent in the face of changing technologies and the hybrid working world

Transformation may be the most overused term in IT. In this age, survival depends on an organisation’s ability to quickly deliver outcomes and bridge the divide between IT and the business by moving away from a “project mentality.” Now is the time for CIOs to consolidate data from end-to-end tools and create a common language of measuring flow and driving on-strategy delivery.

In this session, join your CIO peers to discuss:

• Overcoming challenges enterprises are facing, with dated methods of measuring delivery and misalignment with business results
• Making better prioritisation decisions to effectively allocate resources and capital
• Explore how your functional capabilities compare, to optimise value and cost

**This session is for Next Generation CIO candidates only**

As digital capabilities become more integral to an organization’s mission/bottom line, the relationship between IT and other functional/business areas is shifting. Increasingly, nearly all CxOs are “owning” aspects of digital. To be successful, the next generation of CIOs must possess not only the technical know-how for the IT role, but also understand the new division of digital leadership responsibilities. It doesn’t mean the CIO has to be an expert in everything, but it does require strengthening CxO-CIO technology partnerships. The next generation of CIOs must start adopting new belief structures associated with leadership, influence and relationship building to prepare for the shift from leadership to ‘CIO Leadership?’

Join this discussion to hear key takeaways on:

• How are digital leadership responsibilities being redistributed between CIOs, P&L leaders and heads of corporate functions
• The key leadership skills needed to shepherd the next wave of digital change in their organisation
• How must Next Generation CIOs shift their identity to succeed in the CIO role

As more organisations shift to digital, the pressure is on to find the right talent to drive digital business forward. As Vodafone strives to become a more software-oriented, cloud-native company, Ahmed El Sayed, UK CIO and Europe Digital Engineering Director,  Vodafone, will share how the organisation is evolving to become a ‘techco’ with a ‘build over buy’ approach to its enabling technology, and how attracting a large amount of new talent has become a critical component in their broader transformation. Specifically, Ahmed will share:

1. Re-imagining Vodafone’s approach to talent in the face of changing technologies and digital priorities
2. Partnering with other areas of the business to drive forward recruitment and craft the future IT culture within Vodafone
3. The areas CIOs can focus on, from finance to culture, in order to attract key talent and drive change

CIOs need their communications to be understandable, insightful and convincing. When structured using common storytelling techniques, information becomes more interesting, more persuasive, more memorable, and, therefore, more impactful. This boardroom will enable you to share your insights and techniques for communicating the value of IT to stakeholders and share ideas on how to better refine the message you need to get across to the business. Specifically, you will discuss how to:

• Embrace the role of storyteller for better communications and better strategic thinking
• Maximise the impact of your communications with board members and top-level executives
• Communicate the business value of IT to executive leadership by crafting the technology’s value message and the supporting metrics

There are many reasons for CIOs to be cautious about what’s ahead - but the Sustainability agenda isn't one of them. Global disruptions such as economic pressures, climate disruption and rising energy costs provide CIOs with new opportunities to lead the enterprise to sustainable growth through pragmatic intervention and responsible investment. Using the experience of managing businesses through the pandemic is a great starting point for developing the mindset for tackling the sustainability challenge we all face. How can you make the right decisions in uncertain circumstances to contribute to running the race that we can't afford to lose? Join this boardroom to discuss:

• Why CIOs should lead the sustainability discussion in the organisation, and the actions you can take now to lead the agenda
• Why a sustainable organisation is a resilient organisation and why sustainability is good business
• How the adaptations you had to make to make your organisation resilient in response to Covid create the right management mindset to become sustainable

As part of their leadership responsibilities, CIOs should leverage their influence and technology resources to take an active role in advancing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. CIOs have a responsibility to use their position as a digital business leader to support underrepresented groups and meet executive commitments with action. A commitment to diversity and inclusion has got to infuse everything you do as a leader and will drive better outcomes as a result. Sue Liderth, CIO EMEA, The Coca-Cola Company will share her journey around building a diverse team, and the positive impact it’s had on the organisation. Sue will then be joined by aspiring CIOs as they share their input into what will make for future success for the IT organisation. Join this Discussion to understand how to better:

• Challenge existing thinking and mindsets on DEI programs and identify those areas where IT can directly influence
• Understand what the next generation of IT leaders are saying about future IT teams and strategy, and how to build amazing cultures
• Balance the push for organisational speed versus focus on your DEI goals and initiatives within the IT team