Phil Smith’s insightful perspective on helping modern, fast moving organisations deliver on the promises of technology takes us into the ideas of how data is the lifeblood of your future success, how understanding technology is now key to certain types of IT Leadership roles more than it has ever been, and how managing relationships is essential to making IT a key driver in the success of the business.

Phil Smith is a Transformative IT Leader with a technical background that has made him a successful leader of complex programmes and high performing teams in today’s modern organisations.

In this very insightful interview we learn about the impact of getting the early stages of a project right to increase the chances of success, and how the focus on stakeholders, and continual engagement and cooperation will create an environment of opportunity and prosperity. We also learn that we should be solving systemic problems, rather than letting the short term focus overwhelm us, and that the successful enterprises of the future will understand how to create a stable platform for rapid change.

Dan Onions is an experienced Technology Leader with a background in Enterprise Architecture and Delivery Leadership in Large Enterprise programmes, who is now helping build an Analytics Startup in the FinTech sector. Dan has had considerable experience in complex environments, including UK Government, Defence, Finance and Consulting Services, and is used to working in leadership roles on programmes with budgets in excess of £100m. Dan is also the founder of DASH — a unique agile project management app that puts results and stakeholders at the centre of a very visual model of your work planning, enabling you to focus on achieving results through better communication and relationships.

This interview delves into the challenges in making lots of independent elements of your enterprise work together effectively — from people to processes to technology, and even data. It talks about how people are an essential ingredient to success, and how we can think more sensibly about the journey from legacy to the future, using different teams to work at different velocities and stability levels in a productive and cooperative way, all brought together with a shared vision and big picture view of the enterprise as a system.

Randolph Kappes is an Executive Director at EY Advisory Services in Germany who works on IT strategy and IT transformation projects and is currently leading the Enterprise Architecture Community in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He transformed IT landscapes and IT organizations for multinational companies and national champions.

Bastian Gilles is a Manager for digital transformations at EY Advisory Services in Germany. He supports big transformation programs and focusses on the design of suitable IT target operating models. Furthermore he leads the #makerlab, an EY-internal innovation laboratory working hands-on with innovation technology and acting as a creative think tank to incubate new ideas and business models for his clients.

In this interview we hear about the challenge with balancing the need for good architecture and developing frameworks with the need for startups to move fast and get user feedback, and how the User Experience is the essential metric for product success. We also hear about a future where enterprises will build their businesses on complete stack cloud platforms, and will re-imagine the way they cooperate with data ownership and access to enable the power of AI and Robotics to help them compete.

Murtaza Kanchwala is a Startup CTO, with a technical background in large corporates, mid-size businesses and startups, working in enterprise architecture and product development, that has made him successful in bringing new and improved products to market in complicated B2B environments.

Murtaza has a practical approach to getting things done in the fast paced world of tech start-ups, whilst bringing his extensive experience with architecture in large complicated enterprises to help drive out the best practices that help start-ups become scale-ups, and to ultimately compete in the large corporate space.

The pace of technology innovation today is staggering. It is hard to keep up with the breadth, depth, and speed of change of new technology, and the new business model opportunities this brings. In this interview we hear about about innovation driving Digital transformation and how investing in real innovation for your technology and business is more effective long term than simply optimising what you already have, as well as how easy it is to let bureaucracy ruin a great idea and opportunity— to the tune of €10m–€100m per year in new revenues — Ouch! Too often we see Digital Transformation programmes simply replacing existing processes, applications, services, with something essentially the same, just slightly updated tech that is web native. We should ask ourselves honestly if some of these (usually expensive) projects could be replaced with something that truly innovates on the entire business proposition and underpinning capability.

Alex is an innovative technology executive with experience helping large complicated organisations transform their enterprise systems and business models, as well as leveraging new market trends, business model strategies, and startup investment to help drive innovation. Alex’s background working in large management consultancies, such as IBM, KPMG, and Lufthansa, and his experience with technology and business architecture have helped create a strong understanding of the industry challenges and how best to apply new innovations in technology and business models in real world scenarios to revitalise traditional enterprises. Alex and his company are looking for innovators in the logistics and mobility space — get involved here: http://beyond1435.com/

At the heart of all our systems are the teams we create to build and manage them — this is why helping people to be the best they can be, can make the difference between success and failure for the whole enterprise. In this interview we hear how Steve Walker, a C-Level technology executive, has relentlessly focused on the individuals in his teams to create organisations that people want to work in, and help foster an environment that makes it possible for everyone to help build the future of the enterprise.

Steve is an experienced technology executive with an extensive background in the global logistics industry. His focus is on empowering people with confidence in themselves and each other as part of an effective team, which has helped him build successful and enduring global IT organisations.

In this fast paced world of technological innovation, businesses are challenged with the need to constantly adapt and grow in the face of ever increasing competition. With so much depending on this agility and continuous improvement, the need for organisations to focus on their culture and organisational behaviours is paramount to the execution of ideas.