How AI is transforming retail

Before the coronavirus hit, consumer expectations were already changing and creating challenges in the retail industry. And CIOs, who historically had little to do with developing new customer experiences, were increasingly being tasked with driving innovation. To deliver Amazon-like here-and-now products and services and build brand loyalty, they are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) to…

IT automation shakes up the entry-level career path

Workers entering IT have traditionally paid their dues by spending a year (or three) doing grunt work: manning customer service lines, resolving support tickets, provisioning hardware and performing manual data entry, among other tasks. But as automation takes over many of these menial IT tasks, CIOs and IT workers are having to rethink the traditional…

10 ways coronavirus will impact your outsourcing strategy

Coronavirus (COVID-19) has swiftly exposed the vulnerability of supply chains. For most IT organizations, that fragile ecosystem includes providers of critical IT services. Service problems were already emerging as an issue for outsourcing customers surveyed by Everest Group prior to India’s shutdown. As of April 1, 14 percent of respondents were reporting major business disruptions…

5 ways CIOs can curb costs before recession hits

Now that CIOs have completed step 1 of their ad-hoc coronavirus crises playbook — hammering out remote work and business continuity strategies — many are evaluating step 2: cost containment, ranging from right-sizing instances of cloud software and renegotiating SaaS contracts to eliminating excess applications and shuttering legacy servers and other hardware. Such are the…

At Waters, a digital workplace strategy pays off amid crisis

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact enterprises worldwide, some CIOs feel relieved that they elected to give their workplaces digital makeovers. Waters Corp. CIO Brook Colangelo is one of them. Colangelo migrated the maker of pharmaceutical equipment to cloud productivity and collaboration software before the pandemic hit. The move away from on-premises solutions has…