

IT Visionaries
Mission
Gain unparalleled access to the minds of industry-leading CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs. Enjoy episodes filled with expert insights, inspiring stories, and trend analysis, all brought to you by the people shaping the future of technology. Whether you're an IT professional, aspiring tech leader, or general tech enthusiast, IT Visionaries has something for everyone. Don't miss out on the chance to learn from the best – subscribe now!
Produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.
Produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Mar 9, 2021 • 40min
Crowning a King: Content Delivery Remains Key and Contentstack is Winning the Game
There’s a saying that every company is becoming a software company. But what might be just as true is in that every company is becoming a publisher as well. Photos, blogs, designs, video, and sound is created and published at unthinkable rates… and it’s being used, EVERYWHERE. Web, Mobile, Signage, Kiosks, In-Store… it doesn’t matter. Businesses are creating content to match consumer appetite.So how does a company manage all of these assets, and what kind of content management systems are necessary to handle these massive distribution requirements?Nishant Patel is the Founder and CTO of Contentstack, an API-first headless content management system designed to deliver first-class digital experiences by making it easier to deliver and maintain content distribution anywhere. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Nishant explains how the Contentstack system integrates with various products to publish content at a moment’s notice and why companies are finding that to be a critical part of their success.Main TakeawaysAll in One Place: As the arms race for content delivery ramps up, having a secure and safe place to store and manage your content is increasingly important. An added benefit of Contentstack is while it can store your content, it can also deliver that same content across various channels, such as web, mobile, and digital signage Democratizing Content: One of the biggest issues within large corporations is the ability to make content accessible to their various teams across the world. With Contentstack, users have the power to instantly upload and share their content for anyone associated with the organization, whether that be domestic or international. The second the file is uploaded to the system, anyone with access to publishing abilities then possesses the power to deliver that content at scale.Can You Tag Me in That? Every day millions of images and videos are uploaded to websites and systems but are never tagged or IDed. Contentstack, thanks to its A.I. and machine learning techniques, has the ability to instantly identify and tag hundreds of millions of images. So if someone needs a picture of a yellow lab with a Coke, the system can instantly cycle through its system to find those pictures.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform
-- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Mar 4, 2021 • 48min
Solving the World's Biggest Problems at Scale, with WekaIO President, Ken Grohe
The No. 1 feature of technology is storage. Ok, so that’s not true. But, it’s one of the most critical pieces of hardware that enables software to function. How fast, how easy, and how much data can be accessed and leveraged inside of applications plays a critical part in technologies effectiveness and user experience. File systems have largely evolved unnoticed.“Existing file systems written 20 years ago are like Microsoft word. It works, but you can't collaborate with it. You don't get the full effectiveness. In fact, if you had a project that started at night, and had to be done the next morning, everyone would overwrite everyone else's work. And whoever was in charge would have a major headache, and the best work wouldn't be done. In the case of a parallel file system, everyone gets the full use every single day to do as much work as they can. So there's no latency, you're not waiting for anything.”Ken Grohe, President and CRO at WekaIO, a company that is working to solve those data and storage obstacles by eliminating and replacing legacy systems with a cloud-based collaborative file system structure, and we’re not talking about files like a spreadsheet. We’re talking about huge massive files like Electronic Medical Records, Gene Maps, and other critical files that now can be updated around the world like an excel file. Hear how WekaIO played a role in Covid Vaccine development in a way that would not have been possible just a few years ago. Learn more about that plus other applications of modern file systems next, on IT Visionaries. Main TakeawaysOut of Storage: Nobody buys computers just because of their storage capabilities. But while storage is often overlooked, it is also the engine that powers the speed of your system. Currently there are three types of storage: Cloud, GPU and Flash. In order to create the fastest and most reliable system, your storage needs must be optimized for all three.What is a Weka-Byte?: According to research conducted by the Weka team, nine out of 10 big data centers are now operated by Weka. The reasoning for the shift? While most storage systems are designed with terabytes in mind, which are units of information which are equal to one million 1012, which is how traditional storage companies operate, a Wekabyte is considered 10100 , so nearly 10 times of the size. The Rise of the Data Chief: The newest member of the C-Suite is also becoming one of the most important members of leadership teams: The Data Chief. As more companies possess unstructured data, they are going to need someone with the data literacy and requisite knowledge to understand how to properly use that data.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform
-- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Mar 2, 2021 • 41min
Creating Faster, More Efficient Feedback Loops in Real-Time with UserTesting CTO, Kaj Van De Loo
Every year millions of products and services hit the market with sky-high aspirations, and every year millions of those same products and services fail. The reason? Consumer expectations are rising, which means their tolerance for a bad experience, has all but disappeared.“We tend to remember the good experiences that we have, and that creates expectations across all other similar or comparable experiences,” Van De Loo said. “This was something we saw a lot of — the first experience with a new platform determines whether they’re going to work with them in the future or not. The bar keeps rising. It keeps getting higher and higher. Especially with these newer experiences.” Kaj Van De Loo is the CTO of UserTesting, a human insight platform that provides companies with the opportunity to gather real-time feedback, from real customers, regardless of where an item stands within the development process. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Kaj joins me for a conversation centered on how UserTesting is creating real-time feedback loops based on the emotions and interactions real people experience with a product. Plus, Kaj goes under the hood and explains how UserTesting is using these insights to create actionable insights for their clients.Main TakeawaysSo Simple Even I Can Use It: Consumers are now evaluating a product or service on everything from design, to pick-up and drop-off location, but the number one thing that is making or breaking a consumer’s experience is overall ease of use. Products or services that have more steps to reach the same conclusion as a product that had a similar, more streamlined approach, always received negative feedback.Jury by Your Peers: One of the biggest influences in how new platforms are being evaluated now is based upon the experience shoppers have on a similar website. If a user has a tremendous shopping experience on a website such as Amazon, they are now more likely to evaluate a new platform based with the good experience setting a new bar. This means that first impressions, especially for new websites, are now more important than ever before.Can I Get Your Feedback?: By deploying an online community of verified users and testers, UserTesting has been able to create more accurate feedback loops that can be iterated and retested in real-time. By using humans instead of various testing services, clients can gauge how an individual interacts and connects with a site, while detailing what they like and don’t like about each product.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform
-- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Feb 25, 2021 • 38min
A Reimagined Digital CX with HPE PointNext’ VP of Digital Experiences, Mark Arnold
The customer experience has never been more important than it is today. Why is that? d Because consumers and enterprises are no longer just evaluating their needs based solely on a product’s pros and cons. Instead every purchase decision is being thought through on multiple levels, including whether or not a product is the right fit for personal and professional needs, and looking into the deeper value of a product as it relates to the bigger picture of a company. Simply put, if you are not placing an emphasis on delivering the best possible customer experience to make those decisions easier and more seamless, you’re fighting an uphill battle from day one.“From a competitive perspective, everyone's upping their game. Everyone's wanting to provide that latest, greatest experience and capability for our customers. As the technologies have evolved, particularly around things you can do in platforms, the opportunity for a digital experience is much more customer-driven now than ever before.”Mark Arnold is the Vice President of Digital Customer Experience at HPE Pointnext Service, a support and services arm of Hewlett Packard Enterprises. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Mark dives into the changing needs and expectations of customers and why the experience you give them has to rise to new levels. Plus he explains why IT support centers such as call centers are having a harder time meeting consumers’ needs.Main TakeawaysThe One True King: The only way for companies to build a true digital customer experience is for those experiences to be completely tailored to the client or the person they are serving. This may sound simple in today’s day and age, but IT support centers, such as call centers, still struggle being able to tailor their customer service to the person they are speaking with.So Lonely, I’m So Lonely: One of the key reasons that IT support centers struggle with being able to personalize information is because the system is not constructed in a way that allows for the easy transfer of information. Removing the silos that are currently constructing this process is the only way to make it better. A New Driver for Success: From a customer perspective, the level of competition within the marketplace has risen to a point where the product by itself is no longer the reason that a customer makes decisions. Now, those decisions are being made in conjunction with how the buyer perceives the service experience and the offerings you are able to make them.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform
-- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Feb 23, 2021 • 43min
Rebuilding the Cloud to Support A.I. with Mist CTO, Bob Friday
The digital world continues to evolve a rapid pace. Customers’ expectations have risen, and the user experience now must match the rising tide of their needs. So while cloud has made it faster and easier to deliver services, the same can’t be said for troubleshooting and solving issues caused by cloud connectivity. That is, until now...“Cloud A.I. changes both the experience between the business and his customer, between the business and his vendor. From a customer to business point of view, where it really ends up is fewer support tickets. So at that level, A.I. is basically proactively finding problems ahead of time. And when you reduce the number of support tickets, that translates into a better user experience.” Bob Friday is the Co-founder and CTO of Mist, a Juniper company. Mist is deploying artificial intelligence via the cloud to help revolutionize the world of IT. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Bob delves into how the Mist cloud network is helping companies save time and money with network automation, while also delivering a reliable and efficient network that creates a valuable customer experience. Plus, he previews the future of automated assistants in IT.Main TakeawaysA Real Problem Solver: One of the biggest advantages of cloud-based A.I. infrastructure is the ability for A.I. to quickly and efficiently identify network problems — such as poorly-configured routers or offline systems — and correct them before the user ever knows there is a problem. All About the... Insights!: While a system’s ability to identify and self-correct its own issues is important, being able to break down the data it is ingesting everyday is critical. By doing this, you will be able to understand where those same issues are coming from to prevent problems from ever occurring .The Next Big Thing: Automated assistants will be the next big shift for all IT departments. As IT administrators begin to trust A.I. on a deeper level, and trust the data that their systems are providing them, the use of A.I. and its abilities will continue to expand into assistants that can help administrators complete rudimentary tasks.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform
-- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Feb 18, 2021 • 41min
A Permissionless Internet via Decentralized VPN with Orchid Labs CEO, Dr. Steven Waterhouse
There is no way to sugar coat it: consumers are nervous about their privacy. And rightfully so. There is a trail of data bread crumbs you leave behind wherever you go, and people are watching and following along — some with good intentions, but not all. The internet as we know it is controlled by centralized networks, but one company is helping change the playing field by taking away the power of those networks and offering it to the masses.“You shouldn't have to be a security expert to know what applications you use in order to have the level of privacy that you prefer,” Dr. Waterhouse said. “We believe that things like a decentralized VPN are a step in the direction of decentralizing a lot of different kinds of messaging and communication platforms. There are definitely very layered challenges in what that means.”Dr. Steven Waterhouse is the CEO of Orchid Labs, an open-source decentralized VPN system that is allowing users to shield themselves from internet lurkers following their every move. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Steven describes what this open-source system could look like, and he dives into the rising tide of privacy issues, why regulation has gone too far, and the benefits of an open-source system.Main TakeawaysPower to the Users: Over the last few years, a rising tide of privacy concerns has continued to swell amongst internet users. By decentralizing communication, and masking a person’s ability to be tracked, users can freely surf the web without being worried about a third party tracking them or selling their data. What’s Mine Is Yours: As an open-source system, Orchid’s VPN code is made freely to be distributed around the world. This is important because the company believes that decentralized VPNs are a key component of creating a decentralized internet.Crypto-for-VPN? Since Orchid Labs allows its users to layer their VPN usage — which means they could be connected to multiple VPN sites at a time — the company uses a form of cryptocurrency as a central payment method, as opposed to using a credit card system. By using cryptocurrency instead of credit cards, users are able to free-send coins back and forth without a central authority figure and without a paper trail of data.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform
-- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Feb 16, 2021 • 41min
How Doc.ai is Accelerating Better Health Outcomes through Neural Nets and A.I.
The best products and solutions are often born out of personal experiences. For Sam De Brouwer, CEO and Co-Founder of doc.ai, her breakthrough moment occurred after her son was hospitalized and induced into a coma as a result of a severe accident. Frustrated, anxious, and wanting to help, Sam found herself doing what any mother would; looking for ways she could make a difference.“What I was seeing at the hospital, and what I was trying to do for my son, I saw other parents trying to do the same thing. Trying to understand the machines, trying to understand those numbers, trying to understand the language, trying to access the information so that you could ask for second opinions, because the situation was too serious to not ask for a second or third opinion.”With a background at the intersection of technology, research, and healthcare, Sam and her husband launched doc.ai in 2016 in an effort to accelerate digital transformation in the healthcare space. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Sam details some of the issues within the healthcare space when it comes to utilizing data to produce actionable learning models, how neural nets are impacting data collection and the future of edge A.I. in healthcare.Main TakeawaysA Better Way: The biggest issue with how data is recorded and distributed within the healthcare industry is that all data is siloed and fragmented, meaning that instead of data being easily available to help with learning models and predictive science, the opposite is true, making digital tasks difficult for third party companies.Neural Nets for the Win: By utilizing neural nets, data collection has become as easy as taking a picture. Neural nets are a machine learning technique that gathers data and insights based on previous training data. Doc.ai uses these techniques to record information such as height, weight, and age and then uploads that information to the cloud in an effort to make that data accessible in real-time.iDoctor: The future of the healthcare industry hinges on technologies such as A.I. and federated learning. Doctors and healthcare professionals should be embracing automation techniques in order to not get bogged down by rudimentary tasks that take time away from them and their patients.
-- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Feb 11, 2021 • 38min
Closing the Gap Between Search and Real-Time Answers with Pulsa Q&A CEO, Mayank Mehta
The speed of search has altered our expectations when it comes to conducting research. We can search peer reviews for just about anything, but not enterprise software, not distributed working models, and definitely can’t easily research and search peer reviews on custom implementations, how to best work with a CEO, impacts of work from home initiatives, and other CIO and CTO interests.Meet Pulse Q&A is looking to change that. Pulse QA is the research platform designed and dedicated to helping CIOs and technology leaders make smarter decisions through the power of crowdsourced data, and it starts with building a massive powerful community of the top CIOs and CTOs in the industry.“The best way to describe Pulse is what Google is to search, Pulse is to research. People have gotten really used to being able to do a search and come up with fast, accurate, and free result. Informed decisions and research on the other hand is extremely hard where you have to set up an account, become a master in how to do surveys, figure out how to contact the right people, especially on the B2B side this is even more challenging.” Mayank Meht, Founder and CEO of Pulse Q&A, wants to close the gap between search and the latency of crowdsourced data. The goal: Get back real results, in real-time to help leadership executives make better and more informed decisions. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Mayank discusses the platform and all of its benefits, and he gives some insight into some of the top conversations CIOs are having today.Main TakeawaysDo You Have Two Forms of ID? By sourcing and authenticating real CIOs, members of the C-Suite are able to confidently ask their peers questions, while gaining insights and information about struggles and solutions that other members have experienced. And this is all data that is not available or difficult to source on other platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn. Data and Real-time Responses: By limiting the people allowed in these communities to CIOs, Pulse Q&A has the ability to collect valuable insights while turning around real-time responses in order to give the question asker, actionable insights at the speed of search.The Three Big Issues: There are three main challenges that CIOs are facing today. The first is how businesses will effectively return to normal after the pandemic subsides. The second is digital transformations and how businesses can get actionable ROI from their technology stacks. And lastly, how to source through the endless amount of vendors in the space today.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform
-- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Feb 9, 2021 • 46min
Strategies for Pivoting to Find Your Hyper-Growth Solution with Nylas CEO, Gleb Polyakov
You’ll rarely hear anyone say that you’re over-communicating. But what you will hear is that with the influx of communication platforms, especially when it comes to messaging and email services, there are more ways to communicate than ever before, and that causes some trickle-down effects. With so much data and messages coming and going through a system, and emails clogging out your in an outbox, finding a way to sift through each of those messages, decipher it, and identify what is meaningful is becoming increasingly more difficult.“Email has over 3 billion active users today and is rapidly growing, It will be over five and a half billion by 2025. That intuitively makes sense. Everyone with a smartphone has an email address, everyone with internet access at all, has an email address. And it's this repository of not only all your personal activity, but it's absolutely the database of how you run your business and do a lot of interaction from there across your calendar, across your address book, across your email, it handles a lot of information going in and out of it as a natural jumping-off point.” Gleb Polyakov is the CEO and co-founder of Nylas, where he leads strategy, operations and product innovation for the company’s communication API platform. On this episode of IT Visionaries, Gleb details how he led Nylas through a pivot moment three years ago when the product shifted from a consumer-facing software to a backend API. Plus, Gleb details how your first idea is never your best one.Main TakeawaysIf It’s Not Right, Fix It: Even if you have a company that is showing signs of growth and the metrics are positive but the peripheral numbers are not saying what you think they should be saying, don’t be scared to pivot and head in a different direction. The first idea for any company is not always going to be the most successful one. Keep iterating and keep building to find out what works best for your company.An Unstructured Mess: Finding a way to sort through data when it comes to communication platforms remains one of the most challenging and reliable obstacles for developers. The reason? Understanding how to decipher emails and text messages, and understanding various forms of language is difficult to pick apart.A Tipping Point: The communication sector remains at a tipping point. As more and more software services provide chat and messaging services, finding a way to properly decipher and break down the data in those messages is growing in importance with few providers that can properly and reliably source that data.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform
-- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.

Feb 4, 2021 • 46min
Time to Level Up: Why Upskilling is the New 401K with PwC CTO, Joe Atkinson
With much of the workforce in 2020 operating from the friendly confines of their own homes, nothing became more clear than this: tech skills are no longer a luxury, but a necessity. Leveling-up those skills, though, is a team effort, and it’s incumbent on employers to make sure they are providing their employees with the proper opportunities to expand their knowledge, and, in effect, their career potential. Joe Atkinson is the Vice Chair and Chief Products and Technology Officer at PwC, one of the largest professional services firms in the country, and a company that is setting a precedent when it comes to upskilling its workforce.“Everybody should have an opportunity to grow their skills. It doesn't matter where you are in the organization If you have a desire and an inclination, then we believe that employers have a degree of obligation, almost like an employee benefit. It's the new 401k to make those assets of learning technical skills available.”On this episode of IT Visionaries, Joe details why PwC places such an emphasis on upskilling, the importance of growth throughout an employee’s career journey, and how the employee experience is shifting how PwC conducts its business.Main TakeawaysLeveled Up: In order for your business to continue to evolve, so must your employees and their skills. Corporations need to start putting an emphasis on upskilling their employees, and that includes everyone from entry-level warehouse employees to those in upper management. If you don’t invest in your employees throughout their career life cycle, your business practices can stall and your workforce won’t be as agile.Bob the Builder: While it’s important to work with third-party vendors to fill your product needs, it is equally as important to continue to innovate and build your own products. By building your own products, you have an opportunity to fill in the gaps within the marketplace while providing your clients with products that are unique to them and fits their needs.Death of Billable Hours: The billable-hours approach is no longer a viable way of conducting business. By placing an emphasis on activity, the consequence is that you tend to overwork your employees, which eventually leads to diminishing returns and employee burnout.IT Visionaries is brought to you by the Salesforce Platform - the #1 cloud platform for digital transformation of every experience. Build connected experiences, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation - with the customer at the center of everything you do. Learn more at salesforce.com/platform
-- Brightspot is the leading content management platform built for modern teams. Your content lifecycle - from ideation to archival - moves faster, handling any volume, variety, or velocity with ease. Unlike legacy platforms that demand heavy dev work and struggle with scale, Brightspot is user-friendly, endlessly customizable, and enterprise-ready. Think dynamic, modern experiences, shipped in minutes—not months. Trusted by some of the world’s leading tech organizations, Brightspot reduces total cost of ownership, boosts productivity, and gives you the governance, security, and performance your teams need. Visit brightspot.com/ITVisionaries to learn more.---This episode was produced by the team at Mission.org and brought to you by Brightspot.