CTIO & EVP @Hempel on Business-Driven IT, AI and Digital Transformation

From Operations to Digital: Rene's Business-First Transformation Journey How do you like the coffee? Speaker 2 Great coffee. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm all all good. All there. Yeah. Good. Perfect. Speaker 1 Can we start out with maybe just give, can you give an introduction to who you are and what you do? Speaker 2 A broad question. I it's my favorite question. I get to talk about me. So there is that number. So my name is Renee or go Jensen for the English listeners that might be a little bit in pronounceable. I'm Danish. I work currently at Hempel. So Hempel is a paint manufacturer. We might touch on what paint paint Hempel does later, where I have the pleasure of being responsible for digital and for for transformation. I've been there for a handful of years before that, a short period of time as a consultant and then almost 25 years with AP Mulla Maersk in immersed line. All that period of time. Yeah, delighted to be here. Awesome. Speaker 1 How, how I think just to understand because you started out and not now you work with IT and technology, but that's not where you started out, right? How how was your journey in in terms of that? Speaker 2 Yeah, true. So, so actually this is the first and so far only digital role I've had. So I guess the role of CIO. So my, my journey into this can we transformation. So over the years, my career I had the first half of my career was in what you might call real jobs, right? So operational jobs, I'd sell something or service a customer or, or operate a ship or help in accounting or something like that. And then about halfway in, I started from doing things to changing things. And so I've been changing things ever since with an offset and operational excellence. Yeah, programs of all kinds of nature, ERP implementation, CRM culture journeys, customer journeys, offshoring, re shoring, anything you can think of that needed changing. I think I've tried my hand at. And so when I joined Temple, there was also with, with the view to help and assist the transformation of Temple. And then later that competency then brought me into digital, which of course is a is a key lever for, for transforming any company these days. So. So that's how I arrived. Speaker 1 So, so you started out being kind of on the business transformation side and then ended up being also on the tech side or digital side. Is that how? Speaker 2 Correct. And it gives an interesting perspective on digital. I think it gives an interesting perspective on any sort of what you might call enabling a support function in the business because when you do business transformation, you come from the strategic objective of the company. What what are you trying to accomplish as a company, right? So in Temple, we have growth ambitions, we have sustainability ambitions, we have product and service ambitions on the behalf of our customers. They translate into things that we need to change. But it's always with a view for the betterment of the company, right? We don't have a digital agenda and we have a business agenda. And so if you come from transformation into any enabling function, that's the one that takes takes priority. And this what, what the conversation started with. And so, so that's an interesting way to be a CIOI guess. It's, it's, I think it's, it's what most enabling functions aspire to be. So it's not new in that sense, but it just came as DNA for me and and the way that I've gone about that task. Speaker 1 I've, I've heard you say this phrase a few times with IT is in the business of business. Well, what do you mean by that? Speaker 2 It's well the, the full form of the question goes, are you in the business of digital? Are are you in the business of business? And so as I, as I tried to explain before, so we don't have anything that we're trying to accomplish on behalf of digital or IT, right. We're, we're trying to accomplish it on behalf of Hempel. And Hempel is in the business of, of manufacturing some really, really cool pink products that solve hard problems for our customers. So digital needs to be in that business. And so, So what does that mean for, for a digital organization? We still produce digital outcomes. And, and so I just changed our vision statement to also include that we produce digital outcomes that Hempel can make money off. That entails a little bit of a change in the, in the way that we think about our relationship with our, the rest of our colleagues. We have to be much more curious about the problem they're trying to solve as opposed to being curious about the requirements that they might invent for us. So, so we encourage all our digital colleagues to, to engage in the conversation with our business colleagues about, you know, how, how do you see value? How do you see the opportunity you're trying to, to seize here? Or what's the, the problem or the, the cost that you're trying to get rid of and trying to understand that. So we can help with technology inspiration, we can help with. Maybe we have a, an app that can already help or something on the shelf that we forgot about or something. So in that space between, between the opportunity the company is trying to seize and our expertise, we can find a common way of, of delivering value. It's not so easy because that conversation in in sort of a classical IT organization happens through business partners or all kinds of translating, translating functions. And I'm not a big fan of those because they sort of, I don't like the underlying premise that that, you know, salespeople can't talk to IT people because didn't and vice versa, because they won't, won't understand each other. I refuse to accept that. I don't think that's correct. We all have a nerdy friend that is, is interested in in something that they, they're, they're something they're passionate about. And it's just something niche and very mark micro and so on. And you might not understand it, but because that person is your friend, you lean into the conversations, you do their best and you walk away smarter, right? If we have that capability in our private lives, we have that capability in our professional lives. And so all I ask is that that our colleagues lean into the conversation, the expert on this side, the expert on that side and try and make meaningful conversation. And that's a, this is a bit, that's a discovery journey for both sides of of that equation. So. Hybrid Models and Real Partnership: Organizing Digital for Business Value How does that then reflect on your way of organising and operating in digital? Are you, do you have product teams? So how are you doing it or is it more traditional IIT organization or how does it look? Speaker 2 So it's, it's at best a hybrid, I should say. So we're not ideologists about the way that we run in IT and and Hamble we're more the, the tool, the right tool for the job. So we have components of our delivery that's agile components of our delivery that's full, full waterfall. And you know, we try and make sense of that in, in one big happy family. But the more formal organization, we are still a design, build delivery organization with the with the build part of it organized in product teams. So of course that is a little bit awkward when it comes to support when it comes to I guess part of the road map where overall business front and the product consist of more apps than maybe be spread a little bit. But but we think it can work so far and and and with the good people and the best intentions. It also seems to be delivering results at the moment. Speaker 1 And, and you talked about that both business and digital needs to, to lean in and, and meet at the middle somehow and get to get along in a good way. What what's the biggest challenges there? Is it to get technology people to lean in or business people to lean in or is it kind of a mix or not to blame anyone, but kind of where is the challenges in actually getting that to happen? Speaker 2 Well, I, I think so fundamentally, I just think most people go to work to good to do a good Jay's job, right. So nobody comes into that conversation thinking that they won't don't want to do that best or or try and and produce value together. I think it's more so so there is a a preference in communication that can be challenging in the first outset. So in the very nature IT work is binary, right? It it either isn't not with AI. It's becoming a little bit more fluffy. We can handle more ambiguity, but but the, the traditional schooling on most IT people is, you know, there needs to be a clear set of requirements, a clear expression of what I need to be able to do. And, and if I cannot just kind of distill that, then it becomes very difficult for me to help. So, so the ask for the, for the, for the IT folks is, is typically to come into a journey of ambiguity because business is super ambiguous, right? The, the customers change their mind and maybe they're not sure what they want and maybe they say things that they didn't mean or maybe they meant it, but they had forgotten about some real problem and so on. So, so, so, so the, the digital folks need to lean into this world of ambiguity where it's not clear and help tease out clarity. And on the other side, I think the business folks here, it's more of a transformational challenges, right? It's it's, you come with a view either of a customer of a part problem and it's, it's sometimes very difficult to see how it fits in the overall process or how it fits in the ecosystem of decision making, how the data flows. Or, or maybe think about, even though they have a good idea for an application or solution that it turns into value. And since I'm obsessed with creating value, that conversation sometimes becomes a little bit robust, if you will. Speaker 1 All right. What, what are some of the, can you name some examples of things that you have built in the digital organization or has kind of successful implementations of tools that are enabling business to a high degree, Maybe not thinking about necessarily the traditional out-of-the-box tools, but maybe something that's more bespoke or you need to handle? Speaker 2 So generally speaking, we don't build apps you don't in not very much at least when we do it's, it is where it, it creates a competitive advantage in front of the customer. So how can we distinguish ourselves from our competitors? And one such example is we have a couple of digital solutions we've built where we think we have something to offer that's difficult to copy or something that serves our customers and solves hard problems for them, right. So, so for example, in in our marine space, so one of our products is Hemper Garden. It's called, it's a silicone paint that goes on the outside of these big commercial ships that you might have seen down in the Copenhagen port. And, and this product enables very low friction in the water. So what most people might not know is that unless you have a boat yourself, is that when, when a ship is in water, marine life starts growing on the side of it. So barnacles with these big mussels almost in and seaweed and all kinds of things grows. And as it grows on this very smooth surface, the water resistance increases. And so the fuel consumption increases. Is it awfully expensive? And these big ships, they burn 30 tons of heavy bunker fuel a day. So it's, it's really, really big quantities of fuel that gets expended on pushing all this cargo through the water. And so with, with our paint, we've, we think we've solved most of that problem. But what we to substantiate that, what we do is we land the data from the ships. So how, how fast is the ship going compared to how much power are you giving the ship? And so if that's linear, the hull, the side of the ship is doing really well. And if you have to give disproportionately much power to create speed, you have what's called, oh, the, I, the name escapes really a fouling problem. So the, the growth on the ship and, and so, so we, we collaborate with our customers to land this data and combine it with all the other data we have and give solutions back to customers that may not have our paint or maybe at the back end of that delivery, tell them to put the ship elsewhere or go a little faster. Or, you know, don't be in water that has this temperature or we've seen results of of other shipping lines doing some and so on and so forth to guide them through through their operations in a way that that ultimately makes them spend less fuel and that we, we built ourselves actually. Speaker 1 That's interesting. Guess there's a good business case for that as well, right, Because they they, they know when to potentially dock as well, which is quite costly to do and then when they can time that perfectly maybe. Speaker 2 They they could. So I think with our newest generations of this product actually the the fouling of the ship is a solved problem. So what dictates docking in shipping is typically certifications and classifications and inspections of the ship that hasn't has to happen with irregularity of five to six years. And so traditionally the ship gets painted then, but, but our main product is coding, right? That's, that's what we are really, really, really good at. And here then we've given the operations departments in the in the shipping lines an extra tool to help them save fuel and, and, but but the fuel saving the ingredient is really that the whole side is, is clean and also sustainable. Speaker 1 Is is this in one of the products where you actually produce a digital output that also brings in money as you put in the vision or is this? Speaker 2 No, so, so we are not in that way. So, so we have subscriptions, but, but we're, that's not how we think about value. We're not thinking that we would be at least in the, in the, in the short term that we we'll develop digital product as a major revenue stream for the company. We, we will, if there's value, we'll charge. Of course, it's, it's a common business sense, if you will, that we share the value we create with the customer through through a fee. But, but that's, that's not the strategy at the moment. We have other apps also in energy and infrastructure space where architects have to calculate how much paint of certain types you have to put on steel structures, for example. That's a complicated engineering task, and we built some tools that can do that for them. So they upload their drawings into our app, it hums over that for a little bit and it regurgitates paint specification and saves them an awful lot of time. So, so in that way where we find that we can, through digital tools, help our customers solve a problem for them that we will lean into and do a bespoke build. Speaker 1 You mentioned the the strategy. Can you, can you give a few pointers to what you are focusing on now strategy wise from the digital perspective? Hempel's Digital Strategy: A Balanced, Value-Driven Approach to AI So are there certain pillars that you are moving towards or or how? How is it structured? Speaker 2 Yeah. So digital wise, we spent some years building some competency to tackle the digital challenges in the, in the company. And I'm, I'm very happy to say that we've been able to build a very competent organization. So that was my strategic short term objective was simply to, to get my colleagues and and everybody aligned to what we're trying to accomplish. Overall, we're through quite an ambitious digital road map at Hempo. We have a set of large platforms that we're we're either at the finishing touches of acquiring or at the beginning or middle of rolling out. So this is in the spaces of customer contact management or procurement or other places where what we find that we can better harvest scale, benefit from using platforms. Also in the CIM space, we think we can service our customers better if we utilize the platforms better. So, so in the medium term, it's sort of rather sizeable digitalization of the company with an eye to AI of course, right. So, so I know we'll talk about later a view on AI and the opportunity that affords. And here I think in, in the short term tactical space, we are selecting platforms that have AI Rd. maps that that makes us comfortable that at least we'll be able to harvest some of the benefit that this technology affords us by by simply activating agents inside the platforms that we're acquiring. So, so that is, is it, that's our focus at the moment for the next or the year, year and a half. I think in the longer term, it's really. So first of all, it's a, it's a strategy in conversation. So I don't have a digital objective. I have an objective of supporting our business strategy and here we we have a set of objective set of markets where we'd like to of course dominate our product space. And here we'll probably see a set of more customer facing apps that are bespoke to those markets to be able to give us competitive advantages. We haven't scoped that that work out yet, but I I expect that's the next to come for us. And then, of course, if, if the exponential development of AI continues, then we'll have to reassess to see whether our platform strategy is the correct 1. I don't expect that in the short term, but maybe if we invite me back in the year, we'll have a, we'll have a different, different conversation about how that goes. Speaker 1 Now that we are touching upon AI because I think one of the things that we, you, you talked about earlier as well was that you're having a balanced view to AI. And so, So what, what do you mean by that? Because now you lean into the platforms and their Rd. maps. Are you doing something specific as well or or how are you approaching that part? Speaker 2 So we are, but I think this balanced view on AI, maybe it's a little bit arrogant also to think that I have the balance and so on, but at least I try. And I, I think it's in, in a storm of news. If, if you are the one who fundamentally have to decide capsule location, you have to weigh, you know, all the news. And I think the, the one thing that you can say about AI these days is that whatever your opinion is, you're correct because you will find a space that will, that will confirm that you're correct. So if you say AI is yesterday's news, it's, it's going to fizz loud. It's going to, you know, it's not going to amount to much because not very many companies seem to be able to monetize it. You will find a group of people will agree with you and you'll find some cases that's correct, right? If you're in the other end of the spectrum and say AI is going to revolutionize the world, you and my job will be gone in a matter of years, a few years. If you're really extreme, then you'll also be confirmed or affirmed in your beliefs because some somebody will will say that's true and all of these people will will have credentials to substantiate the opinion. So, so it becomes difficult to navigate if your focus is outcome. So if your focus is not technology, but your focus is business value, then this becomes a difficult question to navigate. And this is what I mean by balanced is that I keep focusing on how, where can I deploy my capital for maximum bottom line return. And so in the short term, those those opportunities are few. Right, At least if you look at around us in in the business landscapes, most people will share with you that they have implemented some AI solution that has been successful and typically in these stories and it's also have no, no reason to question the integrity of the story. I'm sure it's true. But then when you look at the overall PNL of the company, it's not made much of A dent. So, so in the short term, it's just difficult to navigate value. In the longer term, I consider value almost to be given because the technology is pointing in that direction. So how so when I try to balance the list, how much do I need to keep my powder dry? Because there's immature technologies that gets lots of fan fan, lots of hype, if you will. So, so you need to be on the on the train, otherwise you're losing out that kind of hype. And how much do I need to sit out early teething pangs of of growth banks, I should say, seeing difficulties of technology that would be substantially more mature in just a year or a year and a half. And then if I commit capital, then I don't, I will have a substantial second move advantage. So this this is the conversations we're navigating at the moment. It's exciting times. I'm from a technologist in me. I'm super excited it seems to be able to do anything but slicing bread and that's just a matter of robotics, right. So, so I think it's, it's really, really cool and and you know, super exciting what they will afford the world. But but from a, from a pure deploy capital for return point of view, it's a difficult conversation to answer at the moment what we're doing about it. I, I think is we have two, two AI conversations. I think 1 is built in AI and it gets a, it gets a little bit of a second priority in the conversation. I think it's a pity Boston Consulting was out the other day saying something sensible about AI supply chains. I thought that was really clever. Let's say that you buy some app, you think it will deliver value to you today. Well, if you're corporate, that will create a lot of transformational problems to implement in it because you need to change. If that app doesn't come with an, a road map of upgrading and and capsule allocation on behalf of your vendor, then you're stuck, right? And so so the way we think about AI supply chain is that we we buy platforms what we think that the platform vendors allocate enough capital to keep the AI current and deliver value there. I think that that is that is a decent this this inbuilt AI is not getting a whole lot of press. It should because it is by far the easiest way to get to value. If you can spool up the agents inside an app rather than build something on top the build something cool new app, the promise of can't you just I will be fancy if here. Revolutionizing R&D: AI, Autonomous Labs, and the Promise of Quantum Computing I think we're more in the space for Hempo more in the space of R&D. So we have some, some of the world's best chemists or chemical engineers, I should say. Chemists, I think mean something else in in English, but they're chemical engineers and they have also in in our, in our industry. And we've, we've recently start to enable them with, with the lab information management software platform to harvest data. The next step here for us is robotic experimentation. So self driving labs, autonomous labs that will experiment for us. And all this will land in bespoke AI. And if we really think a little bit of far ahead, it will land in quantum computing because for, for material sciences, if you're not thinking about quantum, you should stop now. And this is built from material sciences almost, you'd imagine. So very sad about that perspective. But we need to sort of to through a data platform and a data generation source before we really, really materialize value here. And here we're super excited about and allocating capital more to bets if you will, because we think the return opportunities here are substantial. And that is maybe more clear to us how the technology is, is, is suitable for the problems we have. Speaker 1 Yeah. So you're applying, so I guess the R&D department is probably where most of the value is generated over time, right, Because that's where the new products comes out and then you have something new to offer to your clients or customers. So applying AI bespoke there is, is a big differentiator for you. So you want to, are you then planning to be a first mover or a fast second or or what? What's the the plan in that space? Speaker 2 So we already deploy AI in R&D, right? So for example, we, we use AI to look at pictures of test results and they can assess them quicker and at least as accurate as humans. And so we, we have both efficiency and, and also some accuracy plus we, we can access our knowledge base of testing and so on. So, so there is AI in R&D, if you will. I think on self driving labs we're second movers. So this technology has been in in the world from with efficiency maybe for three or 4-5 years, give and take. I think here being a second mover is advantageous simply because the robotic technology fueled by AI has improved so much that for the capital that we'll deploy now, we'll simply get much, much, much, much more for the money. We've also seen in some of our competitors that they have deployed substantial capital into AI sort of more find new chemical compounds and so on. So far we've not really seen a plethora of new products come out of those. So, so we think that capital and maybe not yielded the returns they had hoped for. We think that the technology is now maturing to a point where it's it's really worth investing and we think that we we could see a road to returns. Yeah. So, yeah. So that's how how we try and never do that. Speaker 1 You mentioned quantum. Speaker 2 Yes. Speaker 1 That's probably the next big wave of things that will happen at some point when is a bit difficult to say exactly, but what do you think that would mean for him or the R&D department? What, what it's like? What would be the difference? Speaker 2 I, I simply love thinking about quantum, first of all, because it is an understandable thing. And I take a little bit hot in and I heard somewhere that that Einstein had said he didn't understand it. So, you know, if, if you didn't get it, then maybe it's fair also that, that, that these, the, the compute and the way that, that, that, that is produced. That's a little bit of a mystery to the rest of us, but, but it's wonderfully exciting and simply because quantum computing mimics physics, right? Or I should say rather it's observable physics rather than it's transistors in the way that we know from linear computing. Then we're we're, we're observing physics happen. And this is ideally what we'd like to do in the lab. Ideally we'd like to observe on the on the atomic level, what happens when we mix our compounds to turn into paint. That's that's the problem we're fundamentally trying to solve. The computers can't do it yet. And we have high hopes that that that quantum computing simply will make that a solved problem. And I, I think that is just such a tremendously exciting proposition to think about in the world that that chemistry becomes solved now. It's simply something that you know, you want to fully understand and you can predict interactions between chemicals and on an atomic level both immediately and over time and and so on and so forth. So to, to access quantum in a meaningful manner for a company like chemical or material science company and, and to be able to deploy, deploy data for then, you know, clarity would be game changers. And, and when I think that technology matures, I think there there'll be a real arms race amongst chemical companies in our business at least, but probably also material sciences in general to, to harvest that value. That said, it's not easy, right? The quantum math is not the math that you and I picked up in school. And you need some really, really smart people to help you formulate the, the problems that we've been formulating mathematically, But yes, in a different way for the computer to be able to chew those problems. The way I understand the current thing of solving that is that you put an LLM in front of a high performing computer and so the high performance computer solves the linear math and then outsources the non linear math to a quantum computer and then solves that and services back into the HPC. And the HPC then presents it in a meaningful manner in the LLM. I've only heard it described in concept. I think it sounds very, very, very cool. I know that Microsoft Collaborator is tear trialing that way of thinking about it. We have a meeting with them soon about it, but it's just difficult to predict when and and by how much. But we, we collaborate with quantum companies, we we try our best to stay current. Speaker 1 That's awesome. Speaker 2 That is a very good way to put that, yeah, yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, because there is not yet, it's limited what practical applications you can get with quantum because it's still in very early, right. But it's cool that you were then already now experimenting with partners. How, how? How does that work? Speaker 2 Yeah, How does that work? That's a good, that's a good question. We're we're teaching ourselves to express problems that they understand first of all, right, So, so there's a skill in in expressing a chemical problem mathematically. And then somehow, so we we understand linear math and then so we need to go understand that a little bit better. Maybe that's not the right term, but traditional classic math, if, if that makes sense. And then we, we're teaching ourselves to, to talk to quantum people who will then take these problems and, and translate them into algorithms that will then be tested by quantum. It's an experimental space. What can I say? I don't want to share all the secrets also, if you will, but but it's, it's, it's a space that we're looking at and it's just exciting. We haven't produced paint off it yet, but maybe it'll soon come soon come. Speaker 1 Jumping back to one of the things that we talked about earlier where we talked about business or IT in the business or digital in the business of business, then I think some would probably get the impression that then kind of ensuring the right fundamentals in the technology or digital organization would be less of a priority. Value Over Dogma: Hempel's Pragmatic Operating Model and Collaborative Culture Is that the case? Are you still ensuring that you have a proper operating model, processes, roads, descriptions? What are SO show the fundamentals in place to actually be able to deliver to the business. Speaker 2 I don't know how to answer that with apart from yes, so, but I think that's, that's table stakes. We're just not dogmatic about it. I think it's it's probably the best way to explain it. So, so we have an operating model. It's described how we play together, how the enabling functions, integrations, Pi and so on, data, master data and the like play together with the product teams, for example. So, so that's a described process. People know what the roles and responsibilities are and to the extent they don't then but then we try and solve it, right. Of course we have a a segment inversion. So, so we start with with this sort of revenue generating part of the business that is the primary entry to us and then we try and work with the enabler functions in the rest of the business to support that. But I think I'm our operating model is reasonably well described. But when I say we're not dogmatic about it, if there's a problem to solve that doesn't fit my operating model, then the problem wins. And so, so then I don't mind taking two people out of the organization. That said, in the operating one says your job is now to go do this in a way that we don't know how to handle because that's what the, the, the problem requires. So that causes a little bit confusion every once in a while when I make crazy decisions like that. But I, I think at the end of the day, we're the value wind. And so, so I don't think anybody really has the luxury of being dogmatic about the operating one. But we have one and we, we're, we care about it and we teach people how to, how to be in it. But but the the business value will always win. Speaker 1 So it's, it's dogmatic or pragmatic with how we want to put it right. So you you ensure that you can actually make it fit to the issue at hand. So you kind of always have the business purpose in mind and changes changes things accordingly. Speaker 2 Yeah. So, so by way of example, we're part of our business is, is what we call decorative business. So this is what you will know from your local paint shop when you're painting your apartment. That kind of paint or or in our business term is called architectural paint. And here this business unit operates as a slightly different clock frequency that than the rest of the business. We're here, we're in business to business in in performance coding, like the marine paint I talked to before over here we have stores, retail and retail or, or at least business to business to consumer. And in retail it's just a different beat. You know, you, it's, you know, the, the store closes half an hour, you lose business if you're invoicing service in business to business in performance coding goes down for half an hour. You know, you spool it up whether your customer gets the invoice half an hour later, nobody in business to business really pays much attention. So, so here we've had to build a different way of attacking the decorative segment. The way we organize the product line lead reports to me instead of into sort of a broader space where Yacob runs it. We've set up some some country specific teams instead of this major organization we have for performance coding because decorative stores is a country operation. And so there we took our operating model and said, well that that doesn't work for this business unit. So we'll just have to do something different. And so we navigate that. And so that's the, that's the way we think about it that, you know, there's, there's business problems to solve and we're just organised to that. I don't have an overriding paradigm, if you will, that rules the way I think about the way IT needs to be, needs to be organised. Speaker 1 You also like I think 111 interesting thing that was when you arrived at at Hemphill, you started out with the transformation of this head on, correct? And then you after some time you got this CIO hat to wear at the same time, right? How, how, how did that influence the way that you see these things? Is that primarily just still the business for business or is there something that's kind of going like a red thread that goes through all of this that actually gives you this approach to do the operating model and IT and digital in general? Speaker 2 It's a, it's a good, good question because I think so. So being in transformation to the vast part of my career, I've been either as a, as a project manager or some advisory function, business process owner, some excellent function or or program leader of something for the last many years, larger and larger projects, but but still in the sort of an externalized function, if you will. I didn't have an operational responsibility. I haven't had that since I think 2000. I don't want to say that, but you know, it's, it's not, it's not in the teens at least. And, and the, the, the interesting thing here is that, that IT is an operational responsibility as well. And I think for me, what I took on was a greater appreciation for the nuts and bolts of running IT. So since I came into it from a change agenda, I, I, I felt reasonably comfortable in bringing technology and, and, and you know, the customer express through the business together to create values or to create new things and change things and so on. I was reasonably well versed in that server uptime, cybersecurity, network operations, app management and so on, was a little bit of A, at least for me and under an underappreciated skill that that now I'm responsible for. And fortunately for him, plus a run by really, really smart colleagues to wound our CISO and Yens Erica, our operations person. And, and, and now I understand, of course, that this, this is a, this is a skill that deep, deep subject matter experts to keep this running at the cost that we can afford. So, so for me, I think the learning about IT was more on the operational level, but it hasn't changed the perspective at all. It's still we're there to produce good customer outcomes. We're there to produce an enablement of strategic goals. And, and it's not, it's not subservient to strategy in the way that I, I understand some of my, some of my peers is sometimes a problem. But but when we're we're fortunate and Hampel that when our business units formulate strategy, we're part of the strategy formulation, we're not only part of the strategy execution and this part of strategy formulation is is a really enviable place to be because then you become partners, not service providers. Very happy that that our colleagues in Temple Trust is enough to invite us into that space. I'm also really proud on behalf of my organization that they weren't that trust that they're capable of leaning into that conversation and contribute on a business level with value conversations so that that we seen as a valuable spying partner when it comes to strategy development. Speaker 1 How did you end up there? Because I think a lot of CI OS or digital organisations IT struggling on that part, having that close partnership with business. They end up in a situation often where they have to kind of a lot of people talk about business IT alignment because there is not alignment due to the fact that they're not invited in for the like in this strategy process. How, how, how did hemp? Speaker 2 How did that, how did we end up here? It's a really good question actually. And I'm not, not too, too sure that I've been able to sort of distill it into 3 bullets that that sort of says do this and then everything is fine. I think first of all, I, I'm just fortunate that I am on the EXCO, right? So, so on, on what we call the executive group management. So, so when we formulate strategy together with our CIOCEO, Michael, then, then I, I get to be in the room, right? And, and I think that's, that's already a step up from some of my colleagues who, and I should say my peer group who, who don't have that luxury. So it's of course easier to influence the conversation if you sit at the table. But I do think also we do some other things that are important is that we simply refuse to have a technology conversation with with the business without having a business conversation 1st. And this is a rule that that we have in, in the, the interfaces to, to our business is that, that we, we are disinterested in talking about how we might technology enable something unless we talk about, you know, how are you making a buck? And, and of course, it becomes a little bit annoying to talk to us for a little while if you expect a different conversation, but over time, you're in the right to play, then you have to be a competent business person, right? You to have to have that conversation. I think most people have the intuition that they can lean into that if they're senior leaders. In any case, it's, it's worked for us. The one key enabler where we're also fortunate. And I also understand that the peer group is not maybe shout with that fortunate situation is that we control all the money. There is no alternative vendor in Hempla. So I don't need to justify that they have to call me. I don't have to sort of we we don't have also internal customer satisfaction analysis apart from one help desk simply because there is no other place to go. And if there's a conversation about whether we're the rights buying partner, we'll have a conversation about the case where that is in, I don't want to rely on metrics and so on. We'll have a conversation of equals that is not working for me, also not working for me. We'll figure it out because we're forced together in, in this relationship called Hempel. And, and so, so we collaborate about achieving outcomes on behalf of Hempel. We can insist on it because there is no alternative and we can earn the right because we're competent business people. And then we set up a framework that, that simply enables that conversation a lot. I've talked a long time ago giving out good advice. I, I just share people that share things that work for us that might work for you. I don't know if this, this approach will work in any other company, but it works for us. And and I I think it's an in viewable position to be in. Speaker 1 Definitely. Do you think there is a cultural perspective to it as well? Is it like the engineering mindset or something that goes across temple or anything else that could influence it? Speaker 2 So first of all, I think from a, from a work culture, from my, from my time as a consultant, I had the opportunity to see many companies in, in, in Denmark and, and I had the opportunity to work a little bit with them. And I just think there's also a reason why I work for hemp is I think we have one of the most collaborative non political organizations that I've seen. And so, so this, this non political, apolitical aspect of, of the organization usually coming together around the substance or with a football analogy, we play the ball and not the person is, is actually enabling for, for this way of thinking about it. We also very caring organization. So, so we sense there's a lot of empathy and sympathy in organization that that if you're not comfortable in our relation, we'll be curious and and caring about that, that we need to alter function together. So this curiosity and and empathy that drives good relations and that make the whole thing easier if, if you have a more everybody's in it for themselves kind of culture, of course, this would be a challenged way of approaching it. So, so, yeah, I think we have the best culture in in the country. So, so you know, so I'm, I'm sure that's a core asset for us also. It's, it's, it's an interesting thing with culture because our, especially when you think about our customers. So I've been in, in companies, of course, where, where we, we, where, where the, the customer satisfaction is almost a mechanical thing, right? So, so you'll do C sat analysis, you'll do survey and, and you do action plans. And so this is the feedback and we do this process change and, and, and, and, and so we'll survey again and so on. In Hempo. We also do of course, customer satisfaction service, but we have a really high one. And it's, it's not because there's a KPI that says that the C set has to be a certain level. It's because people get really genuinely sad when we, when we don't do what we had agreed with a customer like any other company. Occasionally we don't get it entirely right, but it's not out of KPI or service regulations. It's just they feel for it, they genuinely feel for it. And this, this strong empathic gene in the company is, is a superpower in front of the customers because it's not fake. It's not. We genuinely care when when the customer's not getting the outcomes with the product they'd expected. And that that's just through the whole organization and, and, and helps us, of course, in our work in digital. Also cool how you get all because you get all excited chills, right, right. No, but it is a luxury to work in an organization like that. It's, it's, it's so many problems you don't have to solve because that that that fabric and that fiber of the organization is there. Speaker 1 Now we've talked a bit about AI and quantum and things like that, but I'm curious to hear from from your perspective. Disposable Software to Enterprise AI: Navigating the Future of Digital Innovation It doesn't have to be any of those or if there's something else, but what are you most excited about right now from a digital perspective? Like for the next coming years, you can decide the time horizon. Speaker 2 It's just an exciting time to be alive. I think up until December, you know, coding was a thing. Then Cloud Code came out, not advertising, not sponsored by client, but you know, anthropic. But you know, it just seems that, that now there's a real trajectory to solving that. OK, I, I didn't that, that's, that's exciting, right? Imagine, imagine if software is disposable, right? So, so you need a, a podcast app for us today to keep track of your notes and so on. You don't have one, you ask for one. It's delivered to you in minutes. It does the thing because the, the, the, the the incremental cost of a line of codes gravitates to zero. It cost you a euro to spin up it's use and throw away. What kind of perspective does that give on digital on the use of power on the individual's ability to create businesses? Our how can I enable our, our sales people's fantasy in serving our customers? How the heck do I keep that secure, keep the users and access rights under control and keep it under governance And the same time enable this creativity I know we have in building an organization, but in humanity at all to create new and exciting things. I mean, if if you're not excited about that, like the the the power that the technological power that's unleashed here, I think you should not be in technology. It's simply simply too exciting. It's simply too moving too fast to not not get carried away by the energy that's on 30,000 foot. Then when it's Monday morning, you know, and the problems getting practical and you have to navigate it, then maybe, you know, the excitement gives way to more practical problems of as I spoke to before about the capsule allocations, but fundamentally it's a technologically crazy time and and you know, it's just good energy from that. There is also, I should say, a shadow side to this technology right there. There's a societies will have to over time. I don't think it's as fast as the fastest people think it will happen, but over time we'll have to absorb technology into society. We'll have to find new ways of generating value as people will will have to find out, you know, what are people good at and then distill that into work and, you know, somehow make that into jobs and what's technology good at and then make symbiotic relationships there. But I'm not so pessimistic about that. I think for all the technological revolutions that humanity has been through, the, the total output of humanity has just increased. So, so I think we'll see an output explosion more than we see see a resource reduction and and you know, that's also an exciting future to lean into. So yeah, exciting times. Yeah, it's a little difficult to contain the. Speaker 1 Do you think now we earlier we talked about this build versus byte dialogue, right? Yeah, how, how do you think that will change? Do you think building will become more more thing now? You talked about the platforms, right, because you're kind of going into some of the big vendors and that might be something that that's changing in that regard, maybe it makes sense to actually build some of it the things instead or what do you think? Speaker 2 Well, the the stock market surely think that that's going to change the other day, right? So it shaved 30% of the software as a service stocks, right. So if you weren't liquid on that day, it was a bad day to be in in the stocks. So, so I do think that that that build will be more prevalent. We, we have actually tomorrow we have a hackathon at Temple where we'll, we'll try and build an, an app for kicks, right? Not to see if it can be done because we know it can be done. We know that we'll use Anthropic tomorrow, but any of the tools can can RIP up some code in the jiffy and it'll be good quality and probably solve the problem we're trying to do. We're building it with the aim to tear it apart again to see what are the libraries of importance, What are the APIs that it subscribes to? Where does the data go? How does it manage cyber and you know, encryption? Where does you know what the database's structure look like on need? Will they perform? Will they scale roles and responsibilities Actually, right. The whole ship bank simply tear it apart for what you might call enterprise robustness. And it is, I don't know yet because we haven't done it. I haven't seen much literature on that topic yet. So, so we're generally curious how far has it come? My expectation is not very far. So, so from an enterprise point of view, this build will have to come with those tools. I'll have to be able to deploy my enterprise policies into those build tools before I can trust the outcomes. And so that none of the big vendors have delivered yet. And and I'm sure it's on the road map somewhere and it'll come soon and then build will be much more attractive With the third caveat that I'll challenge any vibe coder out there to go vibe code SAP. And that's not because vibe coding cannot build an SAP, it's because nobody can express the complexity that is built in. I doubt that SAP can express that complexity these days, right? It's a humongous app. It's built over, you know, 50 years. It's it's bold on of functions and services and so on modules that I don't know that there's a good overview over anywhere. So, so you're not going to vibe code a SAS application anytime soon simply because you are unable to express the complexity that the SAS application solves for. And so that's the barrier, if you will, that's a barrier to, to that becoming solving the, the big problems in companies of collaboration and then following the value stream is the complexity that you would have to harness. Excited to see how they solve it, but for now I don't know that there's a big trigger to that. Speaker 1 I think it's an interesting perspective with this part of that, that coding and building is probably like the, the technical part of it will become super easy, but the process part and understanding what is it actually supposed to do is becomes the difficult part. Like it's, it's the user experience and the process and getting that to function together with the business processes. I think that that's definitely, as you also mentioned with SAP is that that's probably what they have of uniqueness in the tool is that they have that already and build that at one time. Speaker 2 Precisely, I think if we, if we Fast forward some years, maybe what becomes more interesting is so I think so this, this inbuilt AI, if you will, the, the view of that our accounting system will have agents that does accounting that I don't need an external AI to think about accounting because I expect my accounting system provider to have that as a solved problem on behalf of accounting departments in the world, right. So, so that I think that's a reasonable expectation to have to the big ERP vendors that they figure that out. It's the core business, right? If they don't figure it out, also you can say they'll be out of business and they have more capital than rightfully ought to be centralized anywhere. So they have all the money, they have all the opportunity. And inside I expect them to go solve that. The, the future of AI is maybe more of an enterprise level. So what does the Hempel AI look like? And for that, I need to go solve for 2 problems. One problem is to stage all this platform data in a way that is meaningful and accessible for an AI. So that means definitions have to be similar. So I don't know an employee needs to look the same one in one app as it does in the other app. Back to defining objects in your master data, It's it's all classical disciplines, but will become worth a lot if you get that right. I think example we're we're well positioned because we're buying new platforms. The data structures of those are reasonably pristine. So it becomes an easier problem for me to tackle. The other thing Gen. AI or LLMS need is a constitution or or a worldview document. So so you might have seen the leak a while ago that what the big anthropics open AIS Geminis. So Google's constitution documents were leaked. And so here there's a 2300 pages of prose, normal legible text that talks about ethics, talks about choices. Don't lie. You know, try not to say that the AI will kill the rest of the people, you know, try not to talk about things that are legal. You know, if you have this dilemma go this way, what does that look like in a company state? That's expressed through, well, of course, our ethics guidelines, We have those business conduct guidelines, but also in Sops, in policy documents, Product Safety sheets and so on. All this big volume that the companies have been amassing of internal documentation on how we act as a company that will in the future become the world view of the constitution document of the company, bespoke AI. And so between that constitution repository and the transactional data staged in a meaningful manner, you can imagine that AI will be really, really, really powerful in front of the customers. It will know our tone of voice from having sifted through our last 100,000 emails. It will know our most reasonable solution paths. It will know all those things from a combination of, of this constitution document. I think that's, that's the, the journey we're on. It's about how we're thinking about this problem to be ready when the technology is ready. It's super exciting, very, very exciting on, on how we can imagine the customer problems we can solve with that. It's really, really cool. Definitely. Speaker 1 One last question, actually, you said that you have kind of stopped giving advice, but now I'll ask you to do it anyways. Curiosity and Value Creation: Key Traits for Future Tech Leaders So to to someone that aspires to be in a position like you, what is it that that person should focus on going forward? Speaker 2 That is a good question because I, I think I've been blessed with a lot of luck and a lot of, a lot of people who had faith in what I could do to end up in the position I have. So, so that's a little bit hard to copy, if you will, But I think it depends on where you, where you're coming from, if you would like to become ACEO. So if you're coming from the business side, you simply need to learn some technology. I'm not a technologist of training, but I'm dangerous in many technologies, right? So, so I, I took training. I was curious for power that is a common denominator for whatever approach you have to be simply curious about about the components of the business you're on the way into. So there's a learning journey if you come from the business side about technology. And equally if you come from from the technology side and you want to aspire to be here, then you need to learn about how how money is made to the extent that you can sit at the table and and discuss it. I did, I did talk something with another colleague the other day about this dysfunctional infatuation that that enabling functions have. And it doesn't really matter whether you're in finance or whether you're in HR or whether you're in digital or prostate excellence or compliance illegal or whatever it is. There seems to be this love for our own words, for our own process. Like first, we're agile for a couple of years ago, the, the big wave was that the whole company needs to be trained in agile for, for that development methodology to work. And, and you know, I was also a little bit infatuated by agile. I think it's super cool. I'm, I'm a lean person of schooling, right? So, so that followed over into agile thought it was really cool. But the fact that that my boss had to be trained in my methodology for me to do my job, I, I thought he'd probably have a view on that was not favourable. So, so somehow we have to get over this self love about our operating models, about our words and the jargon and all that and start talking about the value we create and how our little contribution creates value for the overall company. That conversation will get you ahead any day in the boardroom, in the Exco, in the management meetings, outside your function because it's what the company's there to do. And so the more you can focus on that, the more you stage your conversation about value creation, the better I think it will be for everybody. It worked for me, it might work for you. So cool. Thank you very much. That was a very. Speaker 1 Insightful. Thank you very much for having me. My pleasure entirely.