5 Highlights of Upcoming EMEA CIO Executive Summits

Evanta’s CIO communities in Europe came together in-person through Executive Summits and Inner Circle Dinners in the first half of 2022 – with 350 CIOs, in total, meeting face to face! Our UK & Ireland and Nordic communities boasted successful Summits, whilst the Benelux, DACH and France communities hosted Inner Circle Dinners, where they shared their stories, exchanged ideas, and made new connections.

You can find a more detailed round-up of our first half gatherings in July’s blog, but I wanted to feature another of my favourite testimonials, from Carl Magnus Hallberg, Managing Director, EQT Digital at EQT AB and a Nordic Community member, summing up their time at the Executive Summit in June.

About two-thirds of all companies today are facing the challenge to swiftly digitalise and move their business operation and models into a future-proof stage to stay competitive. At the same time, leadership requirements and knowledge of how to do this have become even more vital as technology cycles and customer demands become more critical. To share knowledge and best practise is hence crucial, and an Evanta community is a great place to do this."

What does the second half have in store for executives in our CIO communities? For three of them there are Executive Summits. In Paris, the France CIO Community will host their first-ever Executive Summit, while in the Benelux and DACH regions, CIOs will attend their first in-person summit since 2019. As recreating that in-person feeling virtually is almost impossible, we very much look forward to being “back to live,” whilst continuing to compliment these gatherings with a regular cadence of virtual opportunities.

To curate much of the can’t-miss content on their upcoming agendas, the Governing Body Members have been hard at work through the summer months. Insights from the Leadership Perspective Survey have been flooding in to influence the direction of what is to come. Our CIO community members' top priorities are here:

1. Cybersecurity Strategies
2. Data & Analytics
3. IT Strategy, Governance & Operating Models
4. Digital Talent 
5. Digital Business Priorities
    

So, how will this data be represented on Executive Summit agendas? Outlined below are a few upcoming sessions that CIO community members in Europe have told us are most valuable. 

• IT leaders across the globe have shared with us their need to address the race for talent, and the DACH CIO community is no exception. At their Executive Summit on 30 November, Astrid Fontaine, Member of the Board of Management, People and Transformation, for Volkswagen CV will be delivering a keynote that focuses on navigating limited talent pools, determining the critical skills organisations need to accelerate digital transformation and how CIOs should be partnering with other areas of the business.
• At the France CIO & CISO Executive Summit on 30 November in Paris, the community wanted to cover the talent topic in a way that fosters collaboration. The workshop titled, “Thinking Outside the Box — Discussing Disruptive Ideas to Talent Shortages” will touch upon two preselected scenarios for IT leaders to work through in small groups. 
• As you can see above, Cybersecurity remains the #1 priority for CIOs. At the Benelux CIO & CISO Executive Summit in Amsterdam on 4 October, Ing Yan Ong (Governing Body Co-Chair) and Jan Joost Bierhoff, CIO & CISO of Heineken, will be sharing their insights into what makes a great partnership between IT and Security, and how this has been key in enabling Heineken to become the Best Connected Brewer. 
• In a similar vein, Allan Cockriel, CIO – Global Functions/IRM and CISO at Shell, will be sharing key metrics CIOs and CISOs should be using to quantify risk to the business in Amsterdam, as well as which methodologies can help transform the relationship security has with the business. 
• Executives in all regions ranked IT Strategy, Governance & Operating Models #2 this year, and the DACH community is no different. At Beiersdorf, CIO Annette Hamann has been setting ambitions for both consumer and company journeys, including digitalisation of the value chain and a transformation of IT to harness the full power of digital. Annette will be sharing her transformation story towards higher performing, agile and competitive IT at the DACH CIO Executive Summit in Frankfurt.

To learn more about the CIO communities in Europe, please go to your community page or register for an upcoming gathering here.