In this pilot episode of "CIO Confessions" Natalie Bachour, Devoteam's CIO, discusses the challenges and opportunities she faces as a leader in the tech world, particularly in light of the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI). In this discussion with CIO Confessions's host, Gert Jan van Halem, she highlights the importance of balancing day-to-day operations with long-term strategic planning in a dynamic environment. Nathalie also shares her perspective on how AI will impact the workplace, particularly the service desk, and the need for responsible social change to address the potential job displacement. Devoteam's CIO emphasises investing in people, finding talent, and empowering teams to succeed.

[00:00:16] Jingle: This is the CIO Confessions, a podcast by Devoteam.

[00:00:57] So lots of experience in [00:01:00] technology through a major transformation programs. And then lots of contacts with the business at Devoteam led me to this current position.

[00:01:14] Nathalie Bachour: Absolutely. I started as a computer engineer and a few, and a few years later I had, I did my MBA. And then converted into technology consulting, management consulting and so on. So always been in the tech world. Yeah. Yeah. So

[00:01:32] Nathalie Bachour: Yes.

[00:01:38] Nathalie Bachour: I have a smile every morning. So new challenges every day. I have the opportunity and the chance to be managing great teams in an international environment. So that's very enriching on a daily basis. And the thing is about Devoteam actually is that we learn a lot and it's always [00:02:00] dynamic. So there is never room to slow down or to be bored about something.

[00:02:19] Gert Jan van Halem: So with so a lot is going on, not boring, and that makes you smile. So you're not somebody that thrives in boring environments.

[00:02:35] Gert Jan van Halem: So, can you take us with you in some of the challenges you have? Because so it's not boring. What makes it not boring at the moment?

[00:02:58] And. [00:03:00] Explore new opportunities, especially with what Gen AI and AI are offering. It's about slowing down, but at the same time preparing to be at the right level in order to embrace the future. Otherwise, it would be too late. That's the main challenge for me and my teams. because it's somehow contradicting.

[00:03:50] So these two are the main challenges currently.

[00:04:07] Where do we need to invest? What do we need to do? How do you balance that?

[00:04:31] If I look at how we are exploring AI. We're partnering with the business sitting around hearing out communities and checking are we missing any opportunity somewhere and trying to grasp those. But at the same time, when we identify an interesting topic, we would definitely have to build a business case and check for strategic alignment and check for [00:05:00] our investment on that and so on.

[00:05:23] Gert Jan van Halem: And is that something that you organize around? So did you split your organization or did you do not do that? So is that

[00:05:49] to stop a bit, think about it and take and push for arbitration. Which is hard because most of the teams I have are customer oriented [00:06:00] and they want to please the customer. But at the same time, it's about pleasing on the short term. Is it the right solution? So managers should step back in order to make the right decisions.

[00:06:25] Gert Jan van Halem: And you said earlier, it's also hard at the moment to see what the right thing is to do. Is that typical for now with the search of AI, or is that something that you've seen before, or is that really a typical AI thing that we find it hard to know what to do?

[00:07:16] However, we don't know if this is covered by AI or not. And then IT wouldn't know what to bring to the business in terms of value because they don't know what they are doing. In the details of their daily tasks. And this is where the value comes with AI. It's tell me how you work and I will maybe identify your use case with the AI solution.

[00:07:51] Nathalie Bachour: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:08:00] What do you think is the biggest impact that we will have?

[00:08:27] That's why it's so thrilling because this is about transforming the way we work and about augmenting ourselves. Definitely there is a lot of value there. I have a strong conviction that it's not going to replace, whether it's business or IT. However, if your job is only following redundant tasks with no added value, yes, so maybe that job will be More or less replaced or reduced.

[00:08:59] Nathalie Bachour: [00:09:00] for the service desk, it's gonna optimize it.

[00:09:04] Nathalie Bachour: It's gonna get rid of this tedious, these tedious tasks. However, It's gonna bring more focus maybe on what is the business value or the impact we can bring. in terms of human relation, not only robot chatbot relation.

[00:09:38] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah, always when I go to any help desk, I always first read the documentation and they always start with, oh, in the documentation.

[00:09:59] Nathalie Bachour: for the harder [00:10:00] problems. No, we will definitely need each other.

[00:10:15] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah. And for the rest, it's more a helper to understand the problem, really understand the problem so that you can help in a better way.

[00:10:22] Gert Jan van Halem: that's cool.

[00:10:29] Gert Jan van Halem: More than the, your, the company itself, but you mean social in the whole society as a whole. Yes. What do you see happening there?

[00:10:44] There are a lot of people in society that need those small jobs. So what do we do? How do we what do we do with those jobs? And how do we conduct the change? Because we cannot disrupt like all of a sudden a society, [00:11:00] a governance or a government is responsible for. Making it happen progressively.

[00:11:25] And in general, you see only more work coming. But do you see it something else with AI is that's typically different than all the other changes that we had over the time.

[00:11:44] If we don't help out, the society will not be able to cope with that change. And that's a drastic impact on all of us. Yeah. And. All generations, actually,

[00:12:07] Okay, guys, this might change a little bit. We have to catch you on top. Or do we need training? Or are you planning anything to help them take that next step?

[00:12:36] And what I encourage at each level of the teams is to identify opportunities to augment their work, to help. And then whenever I find an interesting use case, especially when I want to look, I don't know, legal documents or structure within a contract and so on. It's so fast, so reliable that and I push it to the teams and there are so [00:13:00] many use cases out there that we need to explore.

[00:13:28] Yeah. Knowing that this is done on top of what, whatever they need to do for the business. So it's really best effort.

[00:13:48] So could you share anything about interesting projects or innovations that you have been involved in lately?

[00:14:19] So I went through a transformation or an upskilling during my four years at group it, but I was in touch with the business. So that wasn't very difficult. What I noticed is that what we're missing, at least at Devoteam is automation mass data management, industrialization. and for me, whenever someone in the team was able to reach a tooling or that would reduce, let's say, the time to market for me, that was a success or a step forward into where we want to go.

[00:14:56] Nathalie Bachour: So lately we have used a low-code transformation [00:15:00] tool called Alteryx for many use cases. Including our mass campaigns we do in order to update the operating model twice a year. And we also used it in order to connect several systems together in order to automate the full chain around the AI process.

[00:15:47] And the real success factor is the strong push we had from the business. So we had a lot of success factors here that are important to highlight is strong [00:16:00] sponsorship from the business from Simon that, you know and then a lot of workshops and brainstorming on trying to project or imagining what if we do this and daring new solutions and at the same time having some tech people.

[00:16:21] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah.

[00:16:49] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah, any tips on how to do that? Because I could imagine that tomorrow there's a new problem. And again, there's a lot of push and we have to fix this problem now. So we forget the long [00:17:00] term for the first problem. What's any best practices on how to make sure that you also implemented long term?

[00:17:09] Out of it, I think we have, we can, that's that facilitates the lobbying in order to have, the investment needed in order to have a more robust solution. And this is what we did also with BI. BI was introduced three years ago, at Devoteam , maybe four years ago because it was a need by finance and fully sponsored by finance, also based on Alteryx.

[00:18:01] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah.

[00:18:18] So How do you see that pain part? Because I'm sure you recognize it.

[00:18:40] And those businesses need some kind of a standard. Otherwise it's very difficult to govern and steer the overall performance. So I'm not saying we should push a complete standard and be rigid about it, but there is a minimum to implement in order to be able [00:19:00] to compare, to follow and to to make the right decisions.

[00:19:33] But sometimes it's just. maybe a comfort zone or a legacy coming from the past in order to iterate again and to repeat just because we're used to it. And so when we are in this situation, that's annoying. But when we are in a situation where the business is pushing for innovation, And for fast time to [00:20:00] market and for value driven solutions that would make an impact.

[00:20:13] Gert Jan van Halem: And there's something else that you said that I wanted to get back to because that was the moment that if you listen to this podcast, you can't see that, but your eyes started to shine a little bit more. And I was wondering, is it for you about the cool technology or about that?

[00:20:41] Nathalie Bachour: They are equally important to success.

[00:21:01] Gert Jan van Halem: You see it as your job to make sure that connection is is the right one.

[00:21:30] Otherwise, it's a huge risk.

[00:21:37] Jingle: IT Confessions Box. Every IT career has its challenges. In the Confessions Box, our guests share their lessons learned and resilience gained.

[00:22:05] Nathalie Bachour: No, if we don't fail, we will. We never learn actually.

[00:22:21] Gert Jan van Halem: Ah, yeah.

[00:22:39] But one of the major failures I went through at Devoteam is what we did with the E. R. P. Project.

[00:22:50] Nathalie Bachour: Very difficult one. However, a key lesson that forced us to completely review our strategy and to [00:23:00] build our conviction elsewhere.

[00:23:04] Nathalie Bachour: And also what I went through wasn't the CIO then, but I'm lucky to.

[00:23:19] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:35] So I would never. I would never give up.

[00:23:40] Nathalie Bachour: But then in the first actually it was in the first month of my MBA, after five years working as an engineer, the first thing I learned was about the business case. Yeah. And then about, sometimes, we stop projects. And it's not about [00:24:00] doing the project but also about doing the right project.

[00:24:23] Gert Jan van Halem: We share the same background.

[00:24:36] Nathalie Bachour: It's not in 24 hours. No, it doesn't happen in 24 hours. That's a lot of thinking, lobbying, checking all the perspectives you could have from business, from different domains. Also HR, finance. And that's a lot of also discussions with the top decision makers. Like how are we relying on the strategy here?

[00:25:23] Gert Jan van Halem: Your business case is gone. It's gone.

[00:25:55] Let's stay different and local, however, let's [00:26:00] consolidate on another level. That requires a lot of maturity and strategic thinking. And I witnessed a lot of back and forth, meetings in order to achieve this decision. But definitely it is business, a business decision in terms of finances.

[00:26:35] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah. Interesting.

[00:26:38] Gert Jan van Halem: no silver bullets,

[00:26:47] Gert Jan van Halem: Yeah. But I, that's, I see that in a lot of projects as a difficult decision also because you already put a lot of money into it. And then you have to abandon that. So I sometimes see the, and I think it's a wrong argument, [00:27:00] but I already put money in it, so I'll keep on doing it because I have to get something out of it.

[00:27:08] Nathalie Bachour: Yeah, and I would say if there is the right governance, in order to check business viability on a regular basis, that's key. Yeah. In order to check the strategic alignment and business viability.

[00:27:24] And I think to close it off, what I'm very interested in, and it's not that we have to do this in five seconds or something, but so you've been a CIO now for a short period. You've seen the world of it for a long period. And I'm I could imagine that there's out there people that listen to this that want to become CIO or also our CEO just for a short period.

[00:27:53] Nathalie Bachour: Several advices. Actually there are a lot of dimensions that are key [00:28:00] for a successful CIO. But it's also about finding the personal balance because not all the CIOs are equal. It's not the definitely the same mix of whether you are a strategic thinker or a leader of opinion or a good manager. or someone who is very good in finances and keeps the budget very tight and safe.

[00:28:58] Whenever there [00:29:00] are individuals who are slowing down the team performance, then there to ask yourself, do I have the right team? And it's about daring to review the casting, even though sometimes people go through maybe a tough periods and you try to be patient about it to give them a chance, which is okay, a chance, another chance, but if it's not working, then there to stop because this is impacting the team.

[00:29:38] Nathalie Bachour: Yeah of course, because they are not at the right place. Exactly.

[00:29:46] Nathalie Bachour: Absolutely.

[00:29:55] And there you also mentioned, but this will have a society impact and this will also have an impact in how we [00:30:00] work. And your advice to everybody out there is okay. It's about the people. So we're just back again and you're a CIO, you're a techie, but it's about the people.

[00:30:12] Yeah.

[00:30:26] Nathalie Bachour: Thank you, Gert Jan, for the opportunity.

[00:30:33] Gert Jan van Halem: Stay tuned for that.