CIO Leadership Live with Hassan El Bouhali, Head of Technology, MasterCard Foundation

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Welcome to CIO leadership Live Canada.
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I'm Lee Rennick, editor of CIO.com
and I'm very excited to welcome Hassan
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El Bouhali
head of technology MasterCard Foundation.
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Hassan please introduce yourself
and tell us a little bit
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about your current role.
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Thank you, Lee, for having me here.
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So. Hassan El Bouhali.
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Yes, I'm the head of technology
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at MasterCard Foundation
and oversee the technology.
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Everything about technology
at the foundation today.
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Fantastic.
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Well, I really appreciate you
joining us here today, Hassan.
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We've created the series to support
technology leaders in their own tech
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and career journey.
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So the first question
I ask everyone this question,
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can you please tell us a little bit
about your own career path
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and perhaps provide some insights
or tips on that road path?
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Are there any lessons learned
you could share?
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Yes, definitely.
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I can do that.
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So for me, basically
my background is an engineer machine.
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By training back from Montreal,
I started making R&D in aerospace
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and this actually for almost ten years
before jumping into it by accident.
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I loved it so much.
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So I made a career out of it
and it would go from from from aerospace
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to manufacturing, then to mining
ended up a select few to Alcan,
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and from there had a few CIO gates
at the bottom part of the education
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products and and Woodbridge Automotive,
mainly in heavy industries, as you can see
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before doing
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it made of COVID don't MasterCard
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Foundation, which is very different
from everything I've done before.
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This is a passion project for me.
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I really love doing that
and decided to do that
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and take two or three years
of my professional life
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and give them to a different organization
or an organization with a clear mission.
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So so in terms of advice, I would say
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to anybody who's interested
in carrying i.t at first independently
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of your background, don't limit yourself
if you have interests in the industry
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and just have a wide variety of roles
and capabilities and interests.
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So if you're interested, just go for it.
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Say never take and no foreign minister.
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You'll have 15 goals and ten maybes
before you get the first. Yes.
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So don't stop at the fifth.
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No, and they'll stop at the fifth.
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Maybe keep going until you get there.
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That's fantastic.
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And interesting that you started
your current engineering so many people
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and it did start in engineering
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and now you've transferred those skills
over into your ice T skills
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and obviously as well worked across
a lot of different sectors,
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which I know based on many skills
I speak to, that's a super important part
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of their career journey, is having that
opportunity to work with different sectors
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and see how technology really does
impact across those sectors
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also around business.
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So one is really dive into a question
with you around
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what the CEO expectations of the CIO
or the head of technology.
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So in 2023, we did some research at IDC
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and mostly I was back the CIO to focus on
achieving better business outcomes,
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improving business agility and leading the
X to create new revenue streams.
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CEOs are saying they want CIOs
to step beyond an operational focus
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and really help to drive
measurable business outcomes,
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whether it's a target of a financial
or quantifiable one.
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So we had a chance to chat about that
a little bit on our last call.
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I would love to talk about that as a CIO,
an attack leader,
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some of the ways you're leading
to improve business outcomes.
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Yes, thanks.
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Thanks for that.
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I'm really glad to hear that
there is a shift on the way
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to see how it all is perceived.
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We need organization.
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You know, just maybe ten or 15 years ago,
what was expecting ceos to run the i.t.
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Shop and make sure that the backend
infrastructure runs, that the laptops work
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and the phone work
and you know where in some organizations
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that were mature more than others,
they expect you to deploy the ERP systems,
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run the business systems
that the organization needs for the day
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to day operations
and in really, really mature
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and more progressive organizations,
we would involve the CIO in things
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like the consumer general customer journey
or things like analytics and
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and decision making.
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And that was back then.
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And it's
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clearly that that role is really shift
into something very, very different.
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Now is now a key expectation that the CIO
of course runs the I.T shop.
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That's the minimum
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minimum viable product out of the job
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and we still want that that day
to day operations to be stable,
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but we expect to see to do a lot more,
a lot more really a lot more.
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So there are a few things there
that aligned to what you just said
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is that expect the CIO and the SAS,
the business, how the business makes money
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you how the business achieves
its objective, whatever.
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What are its objective or its mission,
and that the CIO is there
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to help the organization achieve
that mission, to achieve those objectives,
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leveraging technology,
but also leveraging top leadership,
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influencing org models,
also operating models and business models.
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So there isn't that expectation.
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It's a lot higher than it was
ten years ago.
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There's also an expectation from the CIO
to engage with the executives, engage
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with stakeholders
within and outside the organization
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to have a better understand
for the whole organization ecosystem
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because there are so many risks
now that come with I.T.
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Data privacy, risk of reputational risk,
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of cyber risk of a lot of the huge risks
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that may impact organization
both internally or externally.
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So suddenly the role of the CIO is a way
beyond the pure hard
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core operations of I.T..
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Yeah, and I'm hearing that
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from a lot of senior tech leaders and CIOs
is that it's really now about, you know,
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technology
running across the whole business
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security,
having to be a part of the whole business.
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You know, you're not like in the i.t.
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Crowd
keeping it, switched it on and off again.
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It's a whole process of ensuring
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that everyone understands the technology,
how it will improve business outcomes
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and that really segways
quite well into our next question,
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because the last time we talked,
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we talked a little bit about automation
and technology, you know, and how
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technology is building and creating value,
especially in the area of automation.
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So I spoke recently to one CIO
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who said that he's working on a project
with automation in robotics,
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and it helped create $1,000,000 in savings
for the company he leads.
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Everyone was quite pleased about that
because it's really diving into how
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we can use technology
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to help create some savings,
but also help create better processes.
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So just wondering
what your thoughts are on this
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and how you believe
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automation will continue to shape
the future of various sectors?
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Yeah, definitely.
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You know, I had the I had a chance to
to make a previous career
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working in heavy industries,
manufacturing, mining, aerospace
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and a big part of my scope
was automation of operations
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and the shop floor of production
logistics, warehouse management,
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etc. And yes, the potential in that field
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in that area for heavy industries
is, is, is huge, It's immense.
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And the thing is, back then,
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just again, ten years ago,
automation was very expensive.
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Automation, product speed
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hardware or software
piece of it were very, very expensive.
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But since then we've seen software,
as we say software, it's in the world,
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we've seen software
getting into the automation space
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and more and more of the impacts
of that versus the variety of products
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that's out there and solutions
to choose from.
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And second of all, a steep reduction
of pricing of these products.
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So they're becoming more
and more affordable,
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which makes the business case for
automation easier to build and to sell.
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There is, of course, the issue
of execution because using automation,
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leading manufacturing companies,
for example, is this complexity
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is because you're dealing with core
business, you're playing to the core
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business operations
that you have to manage very carefully
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the operations expectations
and how your payment systems.
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But opportunities are huge.
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Then there is the automation of the
backend office, the the, the, you know,
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the traditional business processes
that I used to work in.
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So automation of finance
of which are procurement,
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and that will be accelerated
more and more with advance of AI.
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And what's happening
with all this noise around the
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automating workflows
and the work of knowledge workers.
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That's the reality that is happening,
that is coming our way.
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There's no way around it.
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So yes, automation
is there with a clear mandate
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of cost reduction
of efficiency, acceleration of execution.
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But I think it's important to think
about it in terms of a new revenue stream,
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the new products and services
that could be used,
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that could be generated
based on that automation.
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And there is a lot of examples
we could share there.
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But that's
I think I will see how you think about it
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more than a cost reduction opportunity,
but also a contribution to the business
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and to the revenues as well.
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Now that's really interesting.
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So do you think that that shift them
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from backend office to the front end
delivery to the customer delivery?
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They think that from an automation
perspective,
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it sounds like what you're saying
is it's all becoming more integrated right
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across the board.
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Everyone's noticing it right
across the board
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as opposed to it only being with robotics
or manufacturing or supply chain.
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It's now you're feeling like it's
going to approach the full business now.
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Totally.
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And that's
that's back to your first question
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about the expectation from the CIO is
now that it's for everyone.
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So term is the full business end
to end the whole value chain of the of
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the company and how the company fits
within the value chain of the industry
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and to be able to come back
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and propose solutions
that go end to end to that value chain.
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You know, we will always need to point
to point solutions like an improvement
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to the payroll system and payment
to the warehouse management system.
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And that's fine.
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We'll continue to win
that for the foreseeable future.
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But it's very important to step back
and look and to enter the value chain
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of the organization and see how technology
can change things and move things
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forward from one area to another.
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Well, I appreciate that.
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And that really leads into
our next question, which is around data.
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And I so really wanted to talk
a little bit about that.
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As you mentioned,
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you know, the generative and everything
that's coming in market right now,
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people trying to understand
how they can create better efficiencies
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within their workspace.
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So, you know, the integration of data
and analytics
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and AI is, you know, really we're looking
at transforming industries.
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You know,
what are some of the key benefits
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you believe will help technologies
and maybe what are some of the challenges?
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And, you know,
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how do you see AI transforming with data
to advance business outcomes?
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Yes. So it's it's
the subject of the hour, right.
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So we cannot avoid it.
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But yes,
it is the next frontier in i.t space.
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And if you put that within a context.
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So instead what we're talking about,
then we move in how we get value from that
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and get back.
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30 years ago
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i.t function was responsible
for delivering this mainframe systems
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where hardware and applications
and data were all together delivered
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by the same OEM coming all together
nicely.
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Not, not not separated.
And then over time.
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So ten years ago
oversimplify and 1010 years later client
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server technology came in
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and now suddenly we're
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decoupled the application layer
from the infrastructure layer.
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And here we are 20 years later,
we're starting to decouple to data layer
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from the applications layer,
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which is already decoupled
from the infrastructure one.
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And I think that creates
a whole set of new opportunities
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where you can actually build
solutions, products out of that data
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that will allow the business
to make better decisions faster.
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That's that's the
that's really the end game there.
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It's not about,
you know, running a workflow
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or business process anymore
that's expected to be done years ago.
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Now it's about optimizing that to the max
using data and use and algorithms.
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So yes, that's the next frontier
and they think it's a nice project
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that will allow us allow it functions
or are ready for the game
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to really up their game
into using the data
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to create additional services
to improve the customer journey,
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to improve the employee journey,
and to go beyond just pure hard
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core efficiency
and and operational reduction of costs.
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And going beyond that in their thinking
what they can do.
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Really appreciate
and I really love that answer.
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And I think, you know, in my mind
I was going, okay, so it really is
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just creating a landscape of opportunity
for any business to be able
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to create more productivity,
more efficiencies, more learnings, right.
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About their internal structures
and systems
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that they can benefit
the end user and the stakeholders.
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So I appreciate that.
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And well,
so we have one last question here,
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which is I call it my Rapidfire question,
but it's a it's a rather fair question.
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And and that is what is the future of it?
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If I have to summarize that very quickly,
I would say the future for I.T
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is about turning the back end services
infrastructure,
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applications system of trackers
into utility that you use,
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just like you use tap water or electricity
and then work in parallel or grow into
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AI and data platform
into a differentiator for the company
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because that's what differentiation game
will be happening moving forward.
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Wow. Incredibly insightful.
Thank you so much, Sam.
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And I really appreciate you
joining us here today.
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Thank you for having me. It was fun.
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And if you're interested in viewing
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this video or others to support the senior
tech leader in their business journey,
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welcome this interview
and a link at the conference last year.
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Thanks again.