娇色导航

Welcome to 娇色导航leadership Live Canada.

I'm Lee Rennick, editor of CIO.com and I'm very excited to welcome Hassan

El Bouhali head of technology MasterCard Foundation.

Hassan please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit

about your current role.

Thank you, Lee, for having me here. So.

Hassan El Bouhali.

Yes, I'm the head of technology

at MasterCard Foundation and oversee the technology.

Everything about technology at the foundation today. Fantastic.

Well, I really appreciate you joining us here today, Hassan.

We've created the series to support technology leaders in their own tech and career journey.

So the first question I ask everyone this question,

can you please tell us a little bit about your own career path

and perhaps provide some insights or tips on that road path?

Are there any lessons learned you could share? Yes, definitely.

I can do that.

So for me, basically my background is an engineer machine.

By training back from Montreal, I started making R&D in aerospace

and this actually for almost ten years before jumping into it by accident.

I loved it so much.

So I made a career out of it and it would go from from from aerospace

to manufacturing, then to mining ended up a select few to Alcan,

and from there had a few 娇色导航gates at the bottom part of the education

products and and Woodbridge Automotive, mainly in heavy industries, as you can see before doing

it made of COVID don't MasterCard

Foundation, which is very different from everything I've done before.

This is a passion project for me.

I really love doing that and decided to do that

and take two or three years of my professional life

and give them to a different organization or an organization with a clear mission.

So so in terms of advice, I would say

to anybody who's interested in carrying i.t at first independently

of your background, don't limit yourself if you have interests in the industry

and just have a wide variety of roles and capabilities and interests.

So if you're interested, just go for it.

Say never take and no foreign minister.

You'll have 15 goals and ten maybes before you get the first. Yes.

So don't stop at the fifth.

No, and they'll stop at the fifth.

Maybe keep going until you get there. That's fantastic.

And interesting that you started your current engineering so many people

and it did start in engineering

and now you've transferred those skills over into your ice T skills

and obviously as well worked across a lot of different sectors,

which I know based on many skills I speak to, that's a super important part

of their career journey, is having that opportunity to work with different sectors

and see how technology really does impact across those sectors also around business.

So one is really dive into a question with you around

what the CEO expectations of the 娇色导航or the head of technology.

So in 2023, we did some research at IDC

and mostly I was back the 娇色导航to focus on achieving better business outcomes,

improving business agility and leading the X to create new revenue streams.

CEOs are saying they want CIOs to step beyond an operational focus

and really help to drive measurable business outcomes,

whether it's a target of a financial or quantifiable one.

So we had a chance to chat about that a little bit on our last call.

I would love to talk about that as a CIO, an attack leader,

some of the ways you're leading to improve business outcomes. Yes, thanks.

Thanks for that.

I'm really glad to hear that there is a shift on the way

to see how it all is perceived. We need organization.

You know, just maybe ten or 15 years ago, what was expecting ceos to run the i.t.

Shop and make sure that the backend infrastructure runs, that the laptops work

and the phone work and you know where in some organizations

that were mature more than others, they expect you to deploy the ERP systems,

run the business systems that the organization needs for the day

to day operations and in really, really mature

and more progressive organizations, we would involve the 娇色导航in things

like the consumer general customer journey or things like analytics and and decision making.

And that was back then. And it's

clearly that that role is really shift into something very, very different.

Now is now a key expectation that the 娇色导航of course runs the I.T shop. That's the minimum

minimum viable product out of the job

and we still want that that day to day operations to be stable,

but we expect to see to do a lot more, a lot more really a lot more.

So there are a few things there that aligned to what you just said

is that expect the 娇色导航and the SAS, the business, how the business makes money

you how the business achieves its objective, whatever.

What are its objective or its mission, and that the 娇色导航is there

to help the organization achieve that mission, to achieve those objectives,

leveraging technology, but also leveraging top leadership,

influencing org models, also operating models and business models.

So there isn't that expectation.

It's a lot higher than it was ten years ago.

There's also an expectation from the 娇色导航to engage with the executives, engage

with stakeholders within and outside the organization

to have a better understand for the whole organization ecosystem

because there are so many risks now that come with I.T.

Data privacy, risk of reputational risk,

of cyber risk of a lot of the huge risks

that may impact organization both internally or externally.

So suddenly the role of the 娇色导航is a way beyond the pure hard

core operations of I.T..

Yeah, and I'm hearing that

from a lot of senior tech leaders and CIOs is that it's really now about, you know,

technology running across the whole business

security, having to be a part of the whole business.

You know, you're not like in the i.t.

Crowd keeping it, switched it on and off again.

It's a whole process of ensuring

that everyone understands the technology, how it will improve business outcomes

and that really segways quite well into our next question,

because the last time we talked,

we talked a little bit about automation and technology, you know, and how

technology is building and creating value, especially in the area of automation.

So I spoke recently to one CIO

who said that he's working on a project with automation in robotics,

and it helped create $1,000,000 in savings for the company he leads.

Everyone was quite pleased about that because it's really diving into how

we can use technology

to help create some savings, but also help create better processes.

So just wondering what your thoughts are on this

and how you believe

automation will continue to shape the future of various sectors? Yeah, definitely.

You know, I had the I had a chance to to make a previous career

working in heavy industries, manufacturing, mining, aerospace

and a big part of my scope was automation of operations

and the shop floor of production logistics, warehouse management, etc.

And yes, the potential in that field

in that area for heavy industries is, is, is huge, It's immense.

And the thing is, back then,

just again, ten years ago, automation was very expensive. Automation, product speed

hardware or software piece of it were very, very expensive.

But since then we've seen software, as we say software, it's in the world,

we've seen software getting into the automation space

and more and more of the impacts of that versus the variety of products

that's out there and solutions to choose from.

And second of all, a steep reduction of pricing of these products.

So they're becoming more and more affordable,

which makes the business case for automation easier to build and to sell.

There is, of course, the issue of execution because using automation,

leading manufacturing companies, for example, is this complexity

is because you're dealing with core business, you're playing to the core

business operations that you have to manage very carefully

the operations expectations and how your payment systems.

But opportunities are huge.

Then there is the automation of the backend office, the the, the, you know,

the traditional business processes that I used to work in.

So automation of finance of which are procurement,

and that will be accelerated more and more with advance of AI.

And what's happening with all this noise around the

automating workflows and the work of knowledge workers.

That's the reality that is happening, that is coming our way.

There's no way around it.

So yes, automation is there with a clear mandate

of cost reduction of efficiency, acceleration of execution.

But I think it's important to think about it in terms of a new revenue stream,

the new products and services that could be used,

that could be generated based on that automation.

And there is a lot of examples we could share there.

But that's I think I will see how you think about it

more than a cost reduction opportunity, but also a contribution to the business

and to the revenues as well.

Now that's really interesting.

So do you think that that shift them

from backend office to the front end delivery to the customer delivery?

They think that from an automation perspective,

it sounds like what you're saying is it's all becoming more integrated right across the board.

Everyone's noticing it right across the board

as opposed to it only being with robotics or manufacturing or supply chain.

It's now you're feeling like it's going to approach the full business now. Totally.

And that's that's back to your first question

about the expectation from the 娇色导航is now that it's for everyone.

So term is the full business end to end the whole value chain of the of

the company and how the company fits within the value chain of the industry

and to be able to come back

and propose solutions that go end to end to that value chain.

You know, we will always need to point to point solutions like an improvement

to the payroll system and payment to the warehouse management system. And that's fine.

We'll continue to win that for the foreseeable future.

But it's very important to step back and look and to enter the value chain

of the organization and see how technology can change things and move things

forward from one area to another.

Well, I appreciate that.

And that really leads into our next question, which is around data.

And I so really wanted to talk a little bit about that. As you mentioned,

you know, the generative and everything that's coming in market right now,

people trying to understand how they can create better efficiencies within their workspace.

So, you know, the integration of data and analytics

and AI is, you know, really we're looking at transforming industries.

You know, what are some of the key benefits

you believe will help technologies and maybe what are some of the challenges? And, you know,

how do you see AI transforming with data to advance business outcomes? Yes.

So it's it's the subject of the hour, right.

So we cannot avoid it.

But yes, it is the next frontier in i.t space.

And if you put that within a context.

So instead what we're talking about, then we move in how we get value from that and get back.

30 years ago

i.t function was responsible for delivering this mainframe systems

where hardware and applications and data were all together delivered

by the same OEM coming all together nicely.

Not, not not separated. And then over time.

So ten years ago oversimplify and 1010 years later client

server technology came in

and now suddenly we're

decoupled the application layer from the infrastructure layer.

And here we are 20 years later, we're starting to decouple to data layer

from the applications layer,

which is already decoupled from the infrastructure one.

And I think that creates a whole set of new opportunities

where you can actually build solutions, products out of that data

that will allow the business to make better decisions faster.

That's that's the that's really the end game there.

It's not about, you know, running a workflow

or business process anymore that's expected to be done years ago.

Now it's about optimizing that to the max using data and use and algorithms.

So yes, that's the next frontier and they think it's a nice project

that will allow us allow it functions or are ready for the game

to really up their game into using the data

to create additional services to improve the customer journey,

to improve the employee journey, and to go beyond just pure hard

core efficiency and and operational reduction of costs.

And going beyond that in their thinking what they can do.

Really appreciate and I really love that answer.

And I think, you know, in my mind I was going, okay, so it really is

just creating a landscape of opportunity for any business to be able

to create more productivity, more efficiencies, more learnings, right.

About their internal structures and systems

that they can benefit the end user and the stakeholders.

So I appreciate that.

And well, so we have one last question here,

which is I call it my Rapidfire question, but it's a it's a rather fair question.

And and that is what is the future of it?

If I have to summarize that very quickly, I would say the future for I.T

is about turning the back end services infrastructure,

applications system of trackers into utility that you use,

just like you use tap water or electricity and then work in parallel or grow into

AI and data platform into a differentiator for the company

because that's what differentiation game will be happening moving forward. Wow.

Incredibly insightful. Thank you so much, Sam.

And I really appreciate you joining us here today.

Thank you for having me. It was fun.

And if you're interested in viewing

this video or others to support the senior tech leader in their business journey,

welcome this interview and a link at the conference last year. Thanks again.