From Virtual to In-Person
After a long wait, our in-person The Chief Transformation Officer Summit is done! Shout out to all our great speakers, sponsors, attendees, and partners for making it possible.
The Chief Transformation Officer Summit on 28 October 2022 was a part of the CXO Innovation Summit featuring high-quality content from 15+ C-suite speakers from global companies. The event also ran parallel to the Chief Customer Experience Officer Summit in the same venue at the same time.
In the past 2-3 years, we have been through dramatic upheavals for digital transformation leaders. You can argue that it was the biggest transformation period industries have faced in past decades.
The shake-up is not only limited to technology and digital, which has been undergoing a revolution in recent years, but also in terms of people, partnership, governance, culture, and so on. The list is endless.
Gathering the Chief Transformation Officers
At The Chief Transformation Officer Summit, we gathered 60+ C-suite professionals from global companies across industries to share with us their pain points, advice and personal stories they’ve experienced so far. There was plenty of networking and exchange of ideas throughout the summit.
We picked the four pillars of transformation to include in our live summit – Partnership & Innovation, People & Culture, Project & Governance, and Technology & Data. Four interactive panels have been dedicated to discussing each topic respectively and interacting with attendees with lengthened Q&A during the session.
Summit Highlights
Digital Transformation is probably the most familiar type and it’s no surprise that a lot of our speakers were familiar with this topic as the digital revolution marches on as well as the push from offline to online. A few highlights below of what we’ve covered:
Partnership & Innovation
Starting us off was a panel on partnership & Innovation. In this panel, Alan Wong, Senior Director, IT Transformation & Operations, St Luke’s ElderCare Ltd first indicated that organisations have to “Establish Vendor Partnerships. Think Sustainable. Build Agility”.
Strong partners form a very integral part when organisations start to take on ESG, Cybersecurity and Digitalisation. Unless your organisation has a dedicated team and structure that already undertakes this. There is a need to shift the focus and combine ERP and whet the assets we operate and own and then take in the customer and staff journeys when they go digital.
People & Culture
Moving to people & culture in transformation, Dr Adam Chee, Chief, Smart Health Leadership Centre, Institute of Systems Science, National University of Singapore emphasised that “Open communication coupled with sensible empathy is a good formula for facilitating collaboration within internal teams.”
A successful transformation must create intrinsic value through cultural evolution and mindset shifts to embrace and embed best practices in day-to-day work.
Project & Governance
When it comes to project and governance in digitalisation, both internal and external, “Transformation is a marathon – you need to find a way to keep the organisation energised, willing to change and focussed on the future.” – Jan Wuppermann, Chief Digital Officer Asia-Pacific, NTT Ltd. Asia Pacific.
“Do ask for change BUT over-index on why it needs to happen. Be focused, and tactical, and understand your internal stakeholders as much as your external buyers. Always connect it to the longer-term excitement/vision.” – Peter Bentley, Chief Innovation Officer, Aon
Technology & Data
Last but not least, it’s all about the tools and data we manipulate. Troy Barnes, Group Chief Transformation Officer, FWD Insurance concluded our morning sessions with the following takeaways:
- Transformation should always start from the outside in. What existing or future customer are you going to impact, how and why?
- Think big, start small and act fast. Speed to deliver value is key and adaptability will ensure you can move at the pace of the world around and pivot when you need.
- Celebrate all the small stuff. If transformation was easy, everyone would be doing it. Every small win counts – for the customer, the team and the business. Press pause to recognise them and the people who deliver them.
Our audience took full advantage of the interactive panel sessions with 25+ questions submitted across the 4 sessions.
Roundtable Discussion Sessions
After lunch, we organised two sessions of the roundtable discussion on the topics:
- Driving Digital Transformation with Organisational Alignment
- How Collaborative Partnerships Matter in the Era of Digital Transformation
Everyone participated in facilitated interactive roundtable discussions with peers in groups of 8. They discussed and shared thoughts and stories with other attendees in a roundtable setting. Each table presented its findings and key takeaways to the entire room.
Coming to an end, we would argue that the transformation experienced in the past year is unprecedented but the focus has now shifted to the future and the lessons learnt will prove to be invaluable.
Future Engagement
Last but not least, as well as coming back to Singapore, we’re also landing in a new destination in 2023 – LONDON! Check out: https://cxoinnovation.com/chief-transformation-summit-london
And, a huge thank you to all our partners and transformation leaders who joined us in networking and learning at the summit.
The CXO Innovation Team is delighted to have hosted an elite and engaging community once again. Stay tuned for more to come by following our social media accounts.
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By: Teddy Fung, November 2022
