Workday Podcast: What CIO Really Stands For

Nicole Carrillo: The ability for your systems to talk to each other is at the heart of all enterprise ambition, particularly in financial services. Stability, security, growth, innovation, agility, and innovation. Efficiency, compliance, you name it, all depend on interoperability. The flow between legacy and new, between silo and central, between databases, between departments, between people.

So in this episode, we're proposing a new I in CIO. We believe success in the role is no longer just about information, but about interoperability. So any Chief Interoperability Officers out there, please listen in and tell us what you think of your new job title. And if it rings true to you, we'll be asking why interoperability is at the heart of CIO success and why it's critical for business value, how to achieve interoperability and why it's both a strategic and a technical resource, why you never really feel ready for transformation and why you should just go for it anyway.

Hi, I'm Nicole Carrillo. And for today's exciting conversation, I'm joined by Stacy Carron, Chief Information Officer at Stout. Stout is a leading provider of valuation advisory, dispute consulting, and management consulting services across the U. S. and Europe. With more than 24 years of information systems and technology experience, Stacey led Stout's infrastructure migration to a cloud first platform, which makes her the perfect contributor on this subject of today's discussion.

Welcome, Stacey.

Stacy Carron: Thanks.

Carrillo: So, if we're going to talk about a thing, let's first define it. The principle of interoperability seems pretty clear, but what are the levels and types of interoperability enterprises should be aiming for? Should it be applications that exist or that they just interact and exchange data?

How should we think about the user experience? Stacey, I'd love to get your thoughts on that as we start to kind of define the topic for our listeners. 

Carron: Sure. I mean, definitely systems need to be enabled. So they interact with one another, systems also need to exchange data, but really I think ultimately the goal is to make it so users are really unaware or really unconcerned with which system they're in because they're in sync. And you're really meeting users where they're at in their daily workflow.

Carrillo: I know that there was a recent Accenture report that came out talking about high interoperability companies and how they unlocked about 82 percent more revenue over five years.

They grew that revenue six times faster. Even freed up two hours per week per employee. The impact to customers was great for these high interoperability companies with 15 percent improvement. Maybe can you talk a little bit about the value gains that you've seen or that you perceive these companies to have when they have a high degree of interoperability?

Carron: Disconnected data and systems really make it difficult to get things done. Revenue is not being generated when people are attempting to manually stitch data together or systems together. Speed is another big one. Who doesn't really want answers and insights faster? Core function like finance and HR are no longer wasting time trying to connect their data sets.

They can just get to analyzing and taking action on it.

Carrillo: I definitely agree from my past life as a CFO. I know that, you know, when we're trying to make a decision, sometimes things are moving so quickly, especially in financial services that. If you're waiting a day to get data or you're waiting to get the information about the question you're asking, you've almost sometimes missed the opportunity to start to capture a new revenue stream as things have started to happen.

So when you get that interoperability, it's almost a little bit like magic for all of the functions, trying to make those decisions. So, that definitely rings true with me and I'm] sure it does with some of our listeners. So interoperability really sounds like a no brainer in terms of transformational goals.

So really, almost my rhetorical question is, what's stopping you? What's stopping people? What are the speed bumps that they see or the barriers to achieving it? Particularly for, you know, incumbent financial service organizations. 

Carron: I wouldn't really categorize it as being stopped, at least not for us. I think of it more of it's a journey.

It has its fair share of speed bumps. But I don't think any of these aren't anything we or others could overcome. Complexity is definitely a big one. For us, we have multiple different, highly complex service offerings. They all have different needs. Harmonizing all of those takes time and lots of collaboration.

I think scale is another factor. Again, first out, we're on a growth journey right now. So as we're adding additional business lines, either through hiring or acquisitions, the requirements and size continues to evolve and change. And lastly, I think the last bump is really is awareness. It takes time and it takes a bit of patience for stakeholders outside of technology to really understand the power.

Carrillo: I don't think I have spoken to a customer yet that hasn't talked about that complexity and the. Almost, you know, spaghetti spider web of their systems as they're thinking about their transformation. I don't know that anybody can ever, like you said, especially companies in growth mode, see exactly what their system, you know, infrastructure should look like.

In five years, but is there one piece that you think is really important to pin down in order to start? You know, like as long as you know, this is where you're going for this part you can start on that journey. Be comfortable with that. I would love to get your opinion on that. 

Carron: I think it's looking at what's coming in the door and finding a way to connect it to what you ever already have from a user perspective.

So you're not wanting more silos that you then have to stitch together in the future. I think it's always going into whatever's coming in new and finding a connection within the organization to systems and data sets. It has to exist. Otherwise, you know, you wouldn't really be joining them together with you.

At least that's from my perspective.

Carrillo: Yeah, I like that. So not creating more things that you have to unwind along your journey, but at least kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Starting with your, with your data set as it is, or your infrastructure as it is, and going from there. I think that's a great tip for for everybody who's listening in.

So, now we have to talk about the mountain you just climbed at Stout. I know your migration was onto a cloud first platform, and I think this is really a great real life example of a movement towards interoperability. Can you kick us off with that story? I know it's not a short story, more of a novel perhaps, but maybe you could frame it out for us in terms of the top three pain points that motivated this migration and maybe the top three gains that you see that you've achieved within the organization.

Carron: Keeping it to only three on both sides is a little challenging, but if I, if I summarize it that way on the pain side, we were operating six siloed systems for finance and HR. These legacy systems required a lot of resources to maintain and report from. And there's a lot of manual process involved in to keep these systems, you know, quote unquote, in sync.

And then on the flip side, the gain, and again, I've, I've got a lot more here is we do truly have a single source of truth for our data. We freed up resources between finance, HR, and it, and also built a great relationship of collaboration along the way. And helped us start shifting our culture to more of a self-service.

So, you know, people could find the information they needed when they needed it and trust the source of it because it was coming from that, that single source, I'm sorry, I'm adding a fourth though, the last one, and probably the biggest is it did really position us to scale as an organization, which is exactly what's happening.

Carrillo: Yeah, I think that's interesting that operational efficiency allowing for more growth. So, I'm curious on the cost side, when we say operational efficiency, was it really the ability to cut costs or was it the ability to really focus people, those same people towards other more, let's say high value activities once they weren't spending as much time maybe searching for their data?

Carron: Yeah, it was really about redeploying those resources to do more meaningful things and frankly things they probably enjoy a lot better these days versus what was occurring in the past. It wasn't about hard, you know, cost savings at that time because we knew at that point that we were looking to scale and grow and we needed those, those experts to be focused on more valuable activities.

We are actually climbing our next mountain right now that is related to interoperability. And that is around our customer relationship data. We're implementing a master data hub. And this is another area where. Relating all this data throughout our organization is going to have a very direct, real impact on a lot of our strategic initiatives that we're currently working on.

Carrillo: I like that. So, not just really that centralization of data from the back-office perspective, but also from the front office perspective, customer facing revenue generating, revenue sourcing as well. Is that, is that a good way to say it? 

Carron: It's perfect. Yep.

Carrillo: I always am interested in the communication and the functioning between teams of different departments.

I feel like sometimes when everything is siloed and broken apart, teams are so dependent on each other to keep moving forward with their work because they need something from over here and they need something from over there. I'd love to hear, you know, how it's impacted that cross functional communication and working between groups at Stout as you've seen the benefits of this transformation journey.

Carron: Yeah, it's, it's really everybody understanding where, you know, the data is, where it comes from, has access to it, so they can use it in their own function to make decisions, take action. There's still a tremendous amount of collaboration, you know, to continue, you know, when I think about Workday, for example, there's heavy investment within the HR, finance and IT team to keep our infrastructure and our data interoperability, I guess, or interopt.

I don't know what that verb version of that is. So things remain connected and we can continue to scale and we don't interrupt another function inadvertently by, you know, any particular change in the data structure that we're using.

Carrillo: Yeah, that makes sense. I'm guessing the verb would be interoperating or something like that. They are interoperating. 

Carron: I like that. Much more efficiently together. 

Carrillo: Yep. I like that too. So let me ask you how you feel about that, about Interoperability, the interoperating of these departments and your role as CIO. Do you think this job just got bigger? Or do you see today's CIO creating value for the rest of the organization by taking on some of these interoperability plays? Especially as you drove that transformation at Stout. 

Carron: I feel like this has always been a part of the job, but the volume of it and complexity is just bigger. And that is largely due to, I think, businesses, the business reliance on technology and we have more systems, we have more data that will continue to grow.

Carron: And just simply, I feel like there's just more, more to connect. A CIO can definitely create value around interoperability by continuously finding those connections of existing systems and always having that plan for anything new that's coming on board.

Carrillo: Yeah. So it's not just the job has gotten bigger.

It's just maybe we've solved other challenges and you're able to start to bring this maybe more towards the forefront to bring even more value than what, you know, the role and the IT organizations were bringing before is maybe a way I would look at it as well. So we talked about an Accenture study already and a new business reality related to what I'm going to call compressed transformations over the last several years, one in two enterprises underwent compressed transformations, meaning that they either carried out a single large transformation faster than ever before, or managed multiple transformations in parallel, maybe some by choice, maybe some by absolute necessity.

So in other words, the report gives facts to the generally held feelings that organizations are now experiencing more and faster change. But it also suggests that interoperability helps sustain compressed transformation. Does that resonate with you? Can you share any examples of how interoperability either slows or sped up change at Stout or helped maintain that growth momentum that you guys are experiencing?

Carron: Absolutely. Just as an example, we've doubled our headcount in the last three years. Uh, that wouldn't have been possible for us to do efficiently without Workday connecting our finance and people data. Another example would be, uh, integrating acquisitions into our it stack. We've done that sometimes on day one.

That wouldn't have been possible if we weren't in our Azure cloud and completed that migration. And then if I date myself and go way back to like 2007 we implemented Cisco VoIP at that time in four locations and it took us over nine months. In 2020, we migrated 15 locations to Zoom in under four months, so the speed in which we're able to integrate, implement, transform is just light years, light years ahead of where it used to be. 

Carrillo: That's really interesting. I like that the VoIP example. As I remember, I also remember when many of us were doing that for the first time in our organization.

So when we look at, let's say the stages of interoperability, given those speed bumps that we discussed earlier, and the, you know, the struggle sometimes to align strategy and business goals or getting leadership buy in, what do you think are the conditions for success, the building blocks for interoperability?

Carrillo: Are there things that you think are key to an organization in order to be able to start getting momentum on this journey? 

Carron: Yeah, I'll try not to use too many buzzwords in one answer. I do believe you need to be cloud first. It just lends the flexibility and connectivity required. To take on tasks such as this, you need to have clearly defined sources of truth and data integrity roles.

Think you need to look for replacing manual functions with automation. And kind of going back to something I mentioned earlier regarding meeting people where they're at in their daily workflow or system, it needs to be a human centric endeavor. It also has to have a business need centric component to make sure that there's a defined value that you're going to achieve because of the data you're connecting.

Carrillo: One thing we hear from customers is it's been difficult to try to take advantage of some of these new innovations coming out with AI ML in a non-connected data environment. Do you have any examples of how you guys have been able to start to move forward, maybe more quickly or more easily on that, innovation or AI ML journey bait because you have this interoperability of your systems.

Carron: So as far as AI goes we have, we have a couple different opportunities and directions we're heading on it. One area is actually related to something that I mentioned before with our master data hub, that we're looking to use AI or machine learning to help optimize that data and really, you know, connect our data sources together.

There are also features that continue to come out into our platforms such as Zoom and HubSpot that we'll be leveraging AI for.

Carrillo: Great, great. And  I think much of it is because you're able to endeavor some of these things is because you have that connected data. So another, another benefit there that maybe we don't think about all the time, but being able to, to really move forward with innovation at the speed at which it's presenting itself to companies.

So we talked about why, who, and how. My final question is when. How do you know when you're ready? How do CIOs and financial services know when is the right time to really start this transformation? I know from the perspective of Workday, we want to help clients move forward from wherever they're starting.

And we usually see that it's important just to move, whether you're ready or not. So I'd love to get your reaction to what we're seeing and your perspective on that. 

Carron: Yeah, not to sound cliche, but there's no time like the present. You do have to just start moving. This isn't something that's just a one-time project.

I think it's really just a change in approach or strategy. There's endless projects that are come up are going to come on board that will support it. I look at it kind of as a foundational principle, kind of like security in some ways that you need to be looking at it with whatever you're considering for your next endeavor.

Carrillo: Yeah, I definitely see that. You don't have to have the entire map done in order to start moving forward on that journey towards interoperability cloud and really getting the most out of your systems and your data. 

Well, I've really enjoyed talking with you today, Stacy, and I appreciate all of the insights you've given, not just on your perspective but how that's impacted Stout and what you guys have been able to start achieving from there.

Carron: Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Carrillo: We've been talking about what CIO really stands for with Stacy Carron, Chief Information Officer at Stout. If you enjoyed what you heard today, be sure to follow us wherever you're listening. And remember, you can find our entire catalog at workday.com forward slash podcast.

I'm your host, Nicole Carrillo, and I hope you have a great work day.