The 10 Businesswomen Overcoming the Pandemic, 2021

VOL 07 | 2021 | ISSUE 01

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B usinesswomen OVERCOMING THE PANDEMIC, 2021

Rigorous Approach Has the Pandemic Changed Leadership For the Better?

Leading the Charge When a Woman Steps Up

Sonya

Andreae

Senior Vice President & Chief Customer O cer

Infoblox

AN INSPIRATIONAL TECH LEADER

EDITOR’S NOT The Flipsides of Pandemic

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t is impossible to forget the difficulties we all went through during the massive spread of the COVID-19 virus. The lockdown that was imposed worldwide, which was widely accepted to prevent the spread of the virus, within no time, turned out to be an ill omen for several businesses globally. The pace at which companies worked was slowed down by several notches resulting in less profitability and, in some cases, a complete shutdown.

In the unprecedented times of pandemic, there wasn’t a certainty of anything at an individual and organizational level. Thousands of people lost their jobs and were helpless; businesses were facing issues of manufacturing that failed to meet the demand of the required supply. On the flip side, several leaders with a different viewpoint took upon themselves and saw the pandemic as a perfect opportunity for their innovative ideas to bloom. These ideas were widely accepted, and the businesses started to pick up faster than ever. Sectors like healthcare, e-commerce, retail, real estate, to name a few, saw a never-before-seen rise in the market as their business began to skyrocket.

Overcoming the hurdles of the pandemic, business leaders from multiple sectors showed the world that if done right, they can face the difficulties to achieve the results they yearn for. One of the positive effects of the pandemic came through women leaders; several women gave their entrepreneurial drive a chance to explore and embarked on a journey venturing in their desired businesses. These ventures became successful and proved to be helping hands for the individuals who lost their jobs and gave opportunities to many women to come out of their shells and try something different.

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Businesswomen

Overcoming the Pandemic,

2021 In the traditional business sector, women leaders shone with their innovative approach and collaborative initiatives. Their expertise and compassionate thinking allowed various businesses to collaborate and assist each other through difficult times. Women leaders in e-commerce and retail were at the forefront of the overwhelming demand for essentials; however, they made it possible by implementing technology to gain data and planned accordingly. Gradually, these efforts of women leaders came to fruition, enabling multiple aspects of society to lead with different approaches. The social, economic, and cultural elements saw a perceptive change in the pandemic, which led to a strong foundation of a better and empathetic future.

Dive with us in this edition of CIO LOOK featuring “The 10 Businesswomen Overcoming the Pandemic, 2021.”

Follow their journey and gain insights into their groundbreaking ideas and innovative strategies to leave their mark in the respective industries during the pandemic.

While flipping through pages, make sure to scroll through articles written by our in-house editorial team and CxO standpoints of the leading experts to gain insights into the industry.

Dive right in!

Aditya Gaikar

COVER STORY

08

Sonya

Andreae AN INSPIRATIONAL TECH LEADER

ARTICLES

14

Rigorous Approach

32

Leading the Charge

HAS THE PANDEMIC CHANGED LEADERSHIP FOR THE BETTER?

WHEN A WOMAN STEPS UP

CxO

22

Leader’s Viewpoint

36

Expert’s Insights

THE QUALITY CHALLENGE: YOUR BACKBONE TO RPA SUCCESS

WHAT PHARMACY BENEFITS ADMINISTRATORS AND THE HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY CAN LEARN FROM MODERN TECH?

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28

Emily Cates

A STRIKING EXAMPLE OF PROFICIENT LEADERSHIP

Lisa Patrick MAKING YOUR FUTURE BRIGHTER

Hitesh Dhamani Editor-in-Chief CONTENT

Senior Editor Alan Swann Executive Editors Aditya Gaikar Alex Spellman

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July, 2021

Featuring Person

Company Name

Brief

Amber Manning CEO

Just Cuts™ Franchising justcuts.com

Just Cuts™ specializes in cutting hair for men, women and children of any age.

Colleen Lindholz President

The Kroger Co kroger.com

The Kroger Co is on a mission to help create communities free of hunger and waste.

Cindy David President and Estate Planning Advisor

Cindy David Financial Group Ltd. cindydavid.ca

Cindy David Financial Group is a boutique estate planning firm serving families and businesses.

Carolina Winterliv Deputy CEO

Card Group cardgroup.com

Card Group is based upon Master Franchise led operations with a major international company along with the enterprise and service of the local country.

Emily Cates Vice President of Professional & Learning Services

Zebra Technologies zebra.com

Zebra Technologies empowers those on the front line in retail, health care, transportation and logistics, manufacturing and other industries to achieve a performance edge.

Francis DeSouza CEO

Illumina illumina.com

Illumina applies innovative technologies to the analysis of genetic variation and function.

Jennifer Green Director of Competitions and Young Women’s Initiatives

Skills/Competences Canada skillsontario.com

Skills Ontario is a not for profit organization dedicated to promoting careers in the skilled trades and technologies as viable, first-choice career options for young people.

Lisa Patrick Founder

Lisa Patrick LisaPatrick.ca

Lisa Patrick is to help CEO’s and founders turn their business dreams into reality.

Sonya Andreae Senior Vice President & Chief Customer Officer

Infoblox infoblox.com

Infoblox is the leader in cloud-first networking and cybersecurity services.

Sujata Dutta Senior Vice President

Vodafone vodafone.com

Vodafone is known for its technology but the truth is, it is humanity that drives our business forward.

Sonya Andreae Senior Vice President & Chief Customer O cer

Infoblox

Cover Story

Sonya

Andreae

AN INSPIRATIONAL TECH LEADER

“

The ability to connect with employees and customers in an authentic way is the foundation of building relationships and trust.

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C

OVID-19 raised a number of challenges for many customer verticals as work-from-home became the new normal. Organizations needed to extend their networks into hybrid and multi-cloud environments to give workers remote access to do their jobs while also protecting corporate assets from the growing number of cyber threats that sought to take advantage of the disruption. Sonya Andreae, Senior Vice President & Chief Customer Officer at Infoblox, is helping customers address these security and network challenges while enhancing their working experiences.

Andreae brings over 25 years’ experience leading customer teams — including Professional Services, Customer Success, Technical Support, Critical Accounts and Maintenance Renewals — to Infoblox, a SaaS unicorn that delivers the world’s most reliable, secure, and automated network.

“The pandemic magnified the critical role our solutions play in keeping businesses up and running during this shutdown,” says Andreae.

A Leader Finds her Customer-Centric Path After graduating from college, Andreae set her sights on working for Apple because she was impressed with their customer-centric technology. She leveraged her student secretary experience at Michigan State University to get in the door at the company as an administrative assistant. At Apple, Andreae worked hard, took technical courses, built a great network of people, and eventually worked her way into management.

Andreae spent eight years in Apple’s Developer Technical Support group in various roles, but always focused on serving customers. Her first explicit role as a company leader came when she was tapped to become the Director of Customer Service at HomeWarehouse.com, a start-up which was later acquired by Walmart.com. Spending so many years in “hands on” roles gave her a strong foundation for leading customer facing teams at Packeteer, TiVo, Drobo, and now Infoblox.

About three years ago, Andreae took on the role of SVP & Chief Customer Officer at Infoblox. She enjoys working on the customer operations side of the business because understanding customer needs is the key to better serving them, and can influence the company’s product roadmaps and strategic direction.

While Andreae has always enjoyed solving problems, she has a natural desire to serve people. “I believe the key to my success was that I had several mentors,” she says.

“Their advice early in my career to build strong relationships and leadership skills truly paid off as my purview and team grew and I climbed the corporate ladder,” says Andreae.

Standing Tall During COVID-19 The COVID-19 pandemic and associated shutdowns have reinforced the shift to cloud-based solutions and the benefits of extending networking and security into hybrid, multi-cloud environments. Infoblox’s team worked quickly to help customers implement cloudfirst networking and security solutions to enable them to quickly shift to remote work. Andreae notes the effect this had on the company’s growth. “To help us meet customer demand, we hired nearly 500 people in 2020. Not only did we on-board most of them remotely, we've maintained productivity through using our own products for remote work.”

Infoblox also proactively reached out to its healthcare

To ensure no disruption to the company’s technical support, Andreae made the decision to move her global team of more than 200 to work-from-home mode a week before the rest of the company did. She knew that if her team members were exposed to the virus, the company would have a lot of sick people as her teams tend to huddle in groups to solve customer issues. Since so many of the company’s customers are in healthcare, banking, government and other sectors that deliver essential services to communities, Andreae knew that she could not risk having a large percentage of her staff out. “We had to maintain 24x7x365 capacity in case our customers needed us,” she says.

Challenges during the Pandemic The rapid pace of technological change is a constant challenge. Customers' needs and the manner in which they want to be served change alongside technology.

Andreae is proud of how her team is constantly coming up with great ideas on how they can improve.

Another challenge is time. For Andreae, it is critical that she and her team can quickly and ruthlessly prioritize initiatives based on ROI and customer impact.

Preventing employee burnout is another priority. It was already challenging to get her employees to take time off to recharge even before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each team member dedicates a lot of effort into taking care of customers, which translated into investing many hours. With the team all working from home, their days start earlier and are filled with back-to-back Zoom meetings, resulting in many of them working into the evenings.

Bringing Efficiency with Innovative Cloud Solutions Andreae feels that this is an exciting time to be working in networking and security. The pandemic prioritized workplace transformation for all organizations that wanted to keep operating through the protracted shutdowns. To enable their remote work pivot, organizations turned to Infoblox for DDI and security services that could be delivered both on-premises and in the cloud.

Infoblox’s innovative cloud-managed BloxOne DDI

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We deliver on our initiatives. We aren’t afraid to take risks and try new things.

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customers and offered to conduct remote network health checks at no cost. With everything they were dealing with, the company thought this would give customers greater peace of mind, and it did.

solution is helping customers extend their networks beyond the four walls of the enterprise, combining the flexibility and scalability of the cloud with the power of DDI and DNS services to enable organizations to manage and secure their network users, wherever they are located. In this way, the company is taking networking into the cloud, just as AWS did for storage and Azure did for compute.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this cloud-first shift. Infoblox provides the cloud-native networking and security services businesses need to simplify their workplace transformation.

An Inclusive Work Culture At Infoblox, the team takes great pride in building a corporate culture that is customer-centric, promotes learning, and is supportive of each other. This means it puts the customer at the center of everything the company does. “We deliver on our initiatives. We aren’t afraid to take some risks and try some new things,” says Andreae. “Our employees respect and care for each other.

Our employees are our greatest asset, and we create an inclusive culture where all feel valued and respected, which has been critical to our success. We also value diversity as it helps us ensure we are thinking about the needs of all of our customers. Maintaining that culture is a daily priority and is deeply embedded in everything we do,” she adds.

Infoblox has several exceptional employee development programs. Its new hire onboarding program is comprehensive and well thought out. In addition to the standard onboarding process to cover employee benefits, the company spends time talking

“

Maintaining our culture is a daily priority and is deeply embedded in everything we do.

“

about its culture and what it means to be a Bloxer. An executive meets with the new hires and each new hire is assigned a buddy. The company has invested significantly into its learning programs for management, leadership, soft skills, and technical skills.

Andreae notes, “We have several Employee Resource Groups, and I am the executive sponsor for the Women@Infoblox Network (WIN) group and Pride & Friends. Infoblox is committed to a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture that celebrates different backgrounds, ideas, and lived experiences of our employees, business partners and communities. Having a culture where people feel included ensures our employees fully lean in and engage.”

Essential Traits for Businesswomen As an experienced businesswoman Sonya believes that every professional should possess the following major traits: 1. Solid leadership skills 2. The ability to motivate and inspire people.

3. The ability to connect with employees and customers in an authentic way to build relationships and trust.

4. Establishing a culture of inclusive teams.

5. Good listening skills.

6. Trusting your intuition but, also being committed to getting the numbers to validate.

7. Hiring people with different backgrounds and experience than your own. Consider putting more weight on the potential of the candidate versus their current skill set.

8. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and hiring people that are smarter than you and with complementary skills.

9. Possessing a diverse network of people.

10. Having respect for all people and being approachable.

Facilitates Quick Solutions Infoblox simplifies the DDI and security services that underpin workplace transformation. When businesses around the world shifted to remote work, many rushed when extending networking into the cloud, often at the expense of security. This frequently resulted in unreliable connections, security gaps, and a poor user experience. Companies using Infoblox solutions made this transformation smoothly. At the beginning of the shutdown, a global consulting firm called the company to remotely deploy BloxOne Threat Defense to their 200,000 employees. This would have taken months to roll out on-premises for a traditional security software, but Infoblox was able to do it in two days over the cloud, demonstrating its value in enabling the cloudfirst infrastructure enterprises need for the postpandemic world.

Helping Businesses by Adding Value Andreae hopes to always be in a role where she is serving people in some manner. At Infoblox her goals center around customer centricity. She has kicked off several cross-functional teams focusing on improving the experience along the customer journey. She has mentored her peers on developing customer centric thinking and helping them connect the dots to operate in a more matrixed fashion to ensure all functions at the company are aligned to taking care of customers.

“As Infoblox continues to expand our cloud-first solutions to make networking simpler and more secure, my team and I will continue to listen to our customers' needs to delivering the value they need,” she says.

A Note for Upcoming Leaders Andreae advises aspiring business leaders to “Research and learn from other company’s successes and failures.

While it might be tempting to just figure it out on your own, remember that takes time, which is of the essence when bringing a new product or service to market. By researching how other companies have tackled business problems you can jump to the end state and focus on the fastest way to get there.”

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Has the PANDEMIC Changed LEADERSHIP for the BETTER?

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t is easier to thrive in the easiest of times, but the real test is to continue thriving in times of challenges, unprecedented situations, or unforeseen circumstances. That’s the time when the real mettle of leaders is tested and comes to the forefront. It is the very nature of the great leaders that they evolve themselves to fit and thrive in the eras in which they live. Great leaders don’t just believe in surviving the challenge but have the approach of thriving even in times of challenges. They do what needs to be done until they have favorable situations to do what they want to do.

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Rigorous Approach

In times of challenges like the pandemic, great leaders believed in taking care of the basics first, and then they shifted their attention to thriving with the improving circumstances. Great leaders don’t react to the situations, but they respond to the situations more thoughtfully and smartly. They bring a fresh perspective to the table to deal with unprecedented times like the COVID-19 pandemic. They believe in their potential to successfully navigate through the challenges with fresh perspectives and adaptability. In the tough times, they exhibit the best qualities they have for dealing with the unprecedented times. They take the responsibility and lead from the front by creating a strategy to deal with such times, and they implement such strategies to overcome the uncertain challenges.

the circumstances, but they preferred to respond immaculately and with the presence of mind. They helped their employees also to manage the stress of uncertainty successfully and encouraged them to be optimistic. They uplifted the morale of their teams with their optimistic leadership approach.

3. Communicating Reliably and with Empathy: In unforeseen times, leaders chose to communicate with their teammates and clients with empathy and concern for their overall well-being. They encouraged them to move forward positively. They preferred to communicate daily with their employees and clients and ensure that their services were not compromised.

They demonstrated empathy as well as reliability in unprecedented times and ensured that there was no communication gap to ensure the smooth functioning of all processes.

The pandemic has certainly changed the leadership for the better. Many leaders in this time learned and developed qualities such as endurance, adaptivity, selflessness, and many more. They learned to forge ahead with positivity and accepted the evolved ways of leading for growing trust and improving communication with their employees and clients during the pandemic.

They took effective care of their employees and clients with evolving leadership traits and a different way than before the pandemic.

4. Navigating Complexity: Great leaders are great at navigating complexities in a better way. They have the knack of coming with solutions that will solve the problems. In times of the pandemic, many leaders chose to adopt different approaches and were able to navigate through the complexities created by the pandemic.

5. Transforming Challenges into Opportunities: Those business leaders who were smart enough converted the challenge of pandemic into an opportunity by being able to cleverly serve their clients in a more efficient way. They were able to drive more profitability for their businesses while delivering the best services to their clients.

Let’s discuss some of the traits of such successful leaders who handled the crisis of the pandemic and were able to thrive even in challenging times.

1. Developing Adaptability: Unprecedented times always call for unprecedented strategies and unprecedented actions. The unprecedented time of pandemic forced the business leaders to adopt different strategies to handle the crisis of pandemic.

They got adapted to new workplaces and prioritized taking care of their employees by facilitating a remote work environment. They kept communicating with their clients in remote ways. They learned to adapt to circumstances, stay relevant, and sustain their competency in the market. They adapted to changing work culture and brought innovative ways to the table to sustainably their services to their clients.

We can certainly conclude that pandemic has evolved the leadership for the better as the leaders got to learn a lot through the unprecedented time of the pandemic.

They have not only just survived but were able to thrive by adapting different and better traits in them.

2. Managing Stress Successfully: Great leaders exhibit calmness and courage even under pressure. They didn’t succumb to times of uncertainty or pressure. They managed the panic situations or stressful times successfully with their calmness. They didn’t react to

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Emily Cates A

her function would report into, and she was also asked to become the Services Chief of Staff to help integrate, build and transform a new services organization and customer experience. As she considered this opportunity to transition from HR to Services, she realized this was a career journey pivot and that she quickly needed to educate herself on the role and services industry at large. She is thankful for her esteemed network for their guidance and support.

Emily now looks forward to transitioning into a new role as VP, Sales Transformation and Operations at Zebra Technologies, which brings together Sales & Channel Operations, Sales Enablement, and Sales Transformation to accelerate the company’s go-tomarket approach.

n expert in sales training and development, and a result-oriented professional, Emily Cates is that open-minded leader who always looks to maximize the business partner relationships. Any company would be lucky to have Emily as their partner as she integrates technology, business acumen, and strategic approach to achieve desired outcomes.

Emily has superior soft skills including communication, diplomacy, and tact. She is a rare blend of both a problem finder and a problem solver. She is also very effective at developing strong partnerships within her organization as well as with external suppliers. She is a true professional, a great team leader, and above all a great human being.

A Result-Driven Career

Emily has worked in Human Resources and Services for over 20 years. In this capacity, she has successfully proven the ability to transition careers from HR to Services and has helped lead business transformation at multiple companies, turning ideas into action and creating dynamic inclusive cultures. In addition to being passionate about culture, she is also an active inclusion and diversity ally and sponsor. She co-leads Women’s Inclusion Network at Zebra.

Emily grew up in North Carolina and started working at age 15 after applying for a worker’s permit so that she could begin to gain experience and stretch her levels of independence. In doing so, she realized how much she loved to work and serve customers.

Emily was incredibly proud to secure her first role in Human Resources at a Software Technology start-up that quickly evolved into an HR Generalist position. At Motorola, she became the head of employee learning which took her into a specialist role with talent development and learning. While at Motorola, she also led operations for the Global Women’s Business Council.

Walking Through Adversities Emily often found that she was the only female in the room for a good majority of her career as well as the youngest. Wanting desperately to add value and hold onto her seat, she realized that until her experience caught up, she needed something to validate her ideas and back up her recommendations. This led her to take an outside-in approach. She found research

When Zebra announced the acquisition of the Motorola Solutions Enterprise business, she was approached by the “soon-to-be” head of services which

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Emily Cates VP, Sales Transforma on and Opera ons

Zebra Technologies

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‘‘

HD4000 head-mounted display to provide experts with complete visibility into the current onsite situation in remote locations.

I’ve always found that large organizations need entrepreneurial mindsets and have a wealth of opportunities and initiatives to get involved in; take those opportunities, put yourself forward, and before you know it, you’ve carved your own path and what used to feel overwhelming becomes exciting and limitless.

A Take on Impactful Leadership According to Emily, impactful leaders leave a mark on who you are. The leadership style she prefers and has implemented at Zebra is a roundtable approach.

“Everyone is welcome, equal and included, come as you are, expect to work as a team, share across the table, put the tough questions right in the middle, find a rallying point that moves the group, and then all hands in to deliver results and exceed beyond what any of us could do on their own,” she asserts.

In the opinion of Emily, ever businesswomen should possess the following traits: • Exceed expectations and deliver results: This is the best way to get noticed and build a positive reputation.

• Be inclusive: Invite more to your table, the ideas and cross-functional input are invaluable plus it’s an

‘‘

associations that could provide data and analytics from a wide variety of member companies and benchmark the organization against industry practices. Taking a data driven approach allowed her to bring wisdom and learnings beyond her years with credible recommendations. This also helped her build her network, and she learned how to spot trends and prioritize initiatives that would yield the best results.

She continues to leverage data and external research as it puts facts on the table that can be pragmatically evaluated, lending to faster more informed decision making.

Prioritizing Employee Safety Emily mentions that at Zebra, employee safety is first and foremost and has been at the forefront of its sustainability plans. When the pandemic first started, her team held ideation sessions across the organization to identify new ways of working to provide customer continuity and keep on delivering a great experience for the customers and partners. The company joined with a partner to resell a device sanitization solution using UV light, and worked on most of its training and sales enablement to support virtual selling. They also launched a Remote Expert solution using the Zebra

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• •

opportunity to pay your success forward.

Lead outside your role: Get involved, participate in company initiatives, and help influence broader decisions.

Be thoughtful and put your people first: Creating a culture that fosters employees first is one that we all want to be a part of, so be that leader for your team. It will also carry into customer satisfaction as customer-first organizations have a people-first approach.

Focused on Providing the Best for Community Zebra Technologies offers data insights that solve business and social problems – inside and outside the company. And while it is the company's ability to bring a performance edge to the front line of business that has driven Zebra’s growth, it is also doing well by doing good!

Zebra offers innovative technology that improves productivity, safety, security, and emissions. The company invests about 10% of its revenue in Research & Development and shaping the future of work on the front line across all the industries it serves.

Zebra is also focused on contributing time, talent, and treasure to advance the economic and social prosperity of the communities where its employees, customers, and partners live and work. It encourages community service through two programs: Donations for Doers and Volunteer paid time off.

Each of the company’s employees globally has four days of volunteer paid to time off that they can take to give back locally. For example, this past spring, Zebra had 50 employees who used about 700 volunteer PTO hours to support the vaccine distribution for one of its local health departments.

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Leading COMPA World's Who's Who, Tech Innovation Global Inc. announces a $200 million funding round July 16, 2021 technology Tech Innovation Global Inc. founder Alicia Carroll, an engineer, who performed COVID-19 data analysis to be honored among the World's Who's Who, July 21, 2021, an edition once every five years, she will be honored for her work in COVID SARS CoV 2 emergency. It will feature her success stories, life challenges, emotional upheavals, leadership qualities and represent global collaboration, despite many odds, in most grandeur form, coming out triumphant from the world crises while highlighting its pillars of who have helped the world stand in 2020. Alicia Carroll performed COVID-19 analysis, supply capabilities, training in communicating technical issues, processes to improve implementation of guidelines including face mask mandates and alliances.

Tech Innovation Global Incorporated will also feature companies, GenConnect recruiting to global workforce solutions, travel, health to vital living and products.

Honors include Global Leaders LLC, CIO Magazine and feature in the British Chamber of Commerce. Alicia Carroll is also nominated as advisor to a foreign chamber.

Tech Innova on Global Inc. announces a $200 million funding round on July 7, 2021 in collabora on with the Be er Business Bureau, companies and SCORE Mentor www.score.org for technology ini a ves during 2021 to 2031 (10 years).

You can go to https://www.techinnovationglobalinc.com to invest or sponsor community programs and pay for services featuring: Ÿ Seerletics fitness app seerletics.com Ÿ GenCennect Recruiting Ÿ Tech Innovation Global Incorporated techinnovationglobalinc.com Enviroculture and Agriculture Ÿ Travel app-based services and Promotion of Health Ÿ Community activities (Museum, Calvary Hill, Libraries) You can also pay for other services or requests at https://techinnovationglobalinc.com/product/request-services/.

ANIES of the Year

Mail To: Tech Innovation Global Incorporated 3408 Wall Triana Highway Post Office Box 21133 Huntsville, AL 35813 Or Scan QR Code for more information to give by bank account number, credit card, or paypal:

For more information go to Tech Innovation Global Incorporated, 600 Boulevard Ste 104, Huntsville Alabama 35802. Thank You Our basis of estimates are based on developments, https://www.ngos.org and upcoming global initiatives at resources for NGOs as related to technology initiatives, health, travel and more for company insights. ©2019 - 2021. All Rights Reserved.

The Quality Challenge: your backbone to RPA success 22

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Leader’s Viewpoint

The importance of quality is a topic usually stressed in the context of building customer loyalty and in relation to the pricing of products. Quality is just as important to the success of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) programs.

From its early days Blue Prism, an industry pioneering RPA technology provider, recognized the need to build quality automations to optimize benefits. Blue Prism continues to advocate the application of configuration standards and recommends customers establish a 'Design Authority' to ensure consistency and adherence.

Similarly, Reveal Group quickly learnt the importance training new developers in techniques and practices to optimize quality, speed, and benefit realization. Since becoming a Blue Prism partner in 2015 Reveal Group recognized its success would be reliant on seamlessly incorporating quality so automations could quickly be developed and deployed into production.

Robust, high quality, right first-time automations are a hallmark of Reveal Group. The achievement of being the first and only Blue Prism partner in the world to meet Blue Prism's Platinum accreditation hurdles for both Capability and Delivery is industry validation of Reveal Group's quality leadership.

Reveal RoboReview® underpins Reveal Group's practices and results.

The Quality Challenge Blue Prism has led the way in the promulgation of best practices to support the scaling of RPA programs. This is recognition of the direct linkage between scaling and success. Since Blue Prism introduced its Build Review Checklist this technique has been used as a basis for assessing automation quality by Design Authority teams around the world. However, the checklist and related configuration standards fell short in their completeness and granularity, some of the guidelines were open to interpretation, and original scoring was simplistic.

Blue Prism's recommended approach to quality also relied on a Design Authority comprising experienced practitioners, knowledgeable in best practices. Furthermore, these 'in demand' resources must be prepared to do 'code' reviews where much of the review looks at the 'basics'. For many, despite acknowledging the importance and having initial enthusiasm, quality reviews have become a chore.

Experienced practitioners are typically in high demand across a spectrum of activities so not surprisingly many Design Authorities struggle to keep up with demand. This results in backlogs and bottlenecks, which elongate development sprints and delay benefit realization.

As a compromise, many have reduced the frequency of quality reviews and aligned them to when code is migrated from Development to Test and Test to Production.

Quality programs invariably rely on data and metrics. In the case of RPA programs, teams rarely track quality metrics. Despite understanding quality being key to performance, bot utilization, manageability, and maintainability, as programs scale these organizations cannot ensure consistency of reviews and remediation.

In working with clients, Reveal Group has experienced many of these challenges. As Reveal Group grew its global team and undertook development across ~100 developers the need for a solution became paramount.

An Innovative Solution Reveal RoboReview® (RoboReview) was born from the desire to automate most of a Design Authority's work, including all the 'blocking and tackling' work (i.e. the lower value, routine work of checking adherence) undertaken by experienced practitioners. The design was

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incorporated in weighting factors to reflect probability and impact. The scoring has now been used by large and small organizations, across a breadth of industries around the world with actions and the experience of users being measured to identify opportunities for improvement.

predicated on quality custodians only needing to focus on areas where their expertise can add value.

Blue Prism's configuration standards and best practices were used as a starting point to develop assessment criteria in RoboReview. In cases where guidelines were ambiguous or open to interpretation, Reveal Group refined criteria to be more prescriptive and to reflect proven standards Reveal Group has applied.

In the current version of RoboReview ~80% of an automated solution are automatically assessed.

Outstanding items are predominantly process levellogic which still requires review and action by a Design Authority. In future releases, it is expected that RoboReview will be able to automatically assess an increasing percentage of automated solutions, although will most likely never get to 100%. Therefore, a Design

In preference to giving each item the same weighting, Reveal Group adopted a weighting technique which factors in each quality standard's impact on the operation of the automation in production.

Subsequently, risk management frameworks were

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Quality Score A Quality Score in RoboReview was developed as a means of quickly gauging compliance with and adoption of Blue Prism recommended techniques and standards by each developer.

The primary objective of the scoring is to enable developers to obtain 'on-demand' feedback on the quality of the automations they are building so deviations are quickly identified and corrected i.e. quality is 'in-built' into each automation.

A secondary benefit is the timely feedback and provision of improvement actions to developers. The expectation is that developers with the aptitude for Blue Prism will be trained better and faster in best practices. In time, the frequent use of RoboReview by a developer may diminish but there will always be a need to assess quality ahead of any migration from Development to Test or Test to Production. A Quality Score helps to keep the importance of adhering to best practices a 'front of mind' topic.

Reveal Group internally, and most of its clients, require a 90% plus Quality Score to migrate automations from Development to Test and 95% plus Quality Score to migrate automations from Test to Production.

Reporting and Dashboards While RoboReview's primary objective is to assist developers to produce high quality Blue Prism solution, use of the tool by customers has identified significant benefits from the availability of trend information.

Authority review will still be needed and the score for these components will need to be included in the overall Quality Score.

Assessment criteria have been grouped into one of five categories as follows: manageability; scalability; security; stability; and maintainability. This categorization supports a wider understanding of trends across the portfolio of automations i.e. are developers making the same error because it has been incorrectly taught.

RoboReview includes reporting on various facets of development and production including:Supplier Performance – compare productivity and quality of each supplier's developers. Ÿ Categories – identify trends and where there may be a requirement for additional training. Ÿ Geography – objectively measure quality in a multi-site, multi-geography, or offshore environment. Ÿ Production – ensure teams are aware of the problems and consequences of any quality defects. Ÿ Developer – assess developer aptitude, capability and competence, and onboarding progress. Ÿ Benchmarking – measure performance comprehensively and consistently across peers.

Conclusion The Robotic Process Automation industry is still relatively young but particularly in a post-COVID world is of increasing strategic importance to all organizations. The incidence of disappointing and unsatisfactory results is invariably a reflection of the lack of expertise, standards, and application of best practices. Undoubtedly, the inability to cost-effectively, and on a timely basis, monitor quality has been a factor.

RoboReview is a 'first of its kind' tool for all Blue Prism customers to trial and assess for themselves.

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Making Your Future Brighter

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officer at a very young age. At the time, it was tough for a woman to get into law enforcement. The entire field was dominated by men. I was only one of five women accepted into Grant MacEwan College in their Law Enforcement program.

hen you deeply think about the launch of startups and businesses, thousands of startups never took off, and thousands of businesses didn't expand as planned. Come to think of what went wrong with these catastrophes, and there could be several reasons. Proper guidance is a must when venturing, which is what Lisa Patrick understands. She is the Founder of her venture, Lisa Patrick, which focuses on personal brand integration and business development consulting. She is a startup advisor, entrepreneur, award-winning podcast host, investor, speaker, and author.

Tell us something more about your company and its mission and vision.

My mission at Lisa Patrick is to help CEO's and founders turn their business dreams into reality. We simplify business problems and create brands that are distinctive. We usually end up being embraced by others as part of their family.

Lisa Patrick is a highly sought-after expert known for her ability to help you gain clarity using her investigative process to help you find a new opportunity to create impact.

The vision involves disrupting the normal. I am always on the lookout to acquire or partner with thought leaders to startup and scale businesses through acquisitions, strategic relationships, and marketing.

In our endeavor to find 'The 10 Businesswomen Overcoming the Pandemic 2021', we at CIO Look came across Lisa. We talked with her to understand how she drives her clients result-driven future with her unique strategies.

“Building your dream business.”

Below are the highlights of the interview.

Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at Lisa Patrick.

What challenges have you had to overcome to reach where you are today?

As the daughter of a retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, I became determined to become a police

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Lisa Patrick Founder Lisa Patrick

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Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the Management Consulting niche through your expertise in the market.

I primarily work and partner with experts and thought leaders. I help them gain the clarity required to build successful business strategies, create breakthrough products and other world-leading initiatives that drive impact, transformation, opportunity and ultimately success.

Ÿ Don't Live in the Prison of Comparison Dare to show up as yourself everywhere. As long as you cling to others' definitions of truth, beauty, and happiness, you'll never surpass your potential. Ÿ Accumulate Relationship Capital People buy from people they feel they really know, like and want to share a whiskey with. Products and services are just the vehicles to help them solve problems.

Partnerships are the fastest way to grow and scale your business. Partnerships can prevent stagnant thinking and help you achieve business and career goals that may otherwise be out of reach. Through partnerships, you can gain access to new areas of expertise and institutional knowledge that will provide a boost in intellectual capital. That boost can make you a more attractive leader, employer, employee or professional and a more authoritative and credible presence in your market.

Ÿ Give First Always Work fearlessly and relentlessly at ensuring that we are always contributing in a meaningful way.

Undeniably, technology is playing a significant role in almost every sector. How are you leveraging technological advancements to make your solutions resourceful?

The person who puts the effort in to foster the most attention, gets the most opportunities to say yes or no.

I use a variety of technologies to help me, and my clients thrive. For instance, we need to think of social networks as a resource. Social platforms are tools in our toolbox for professional advancement. What most people fail to acknowledge is that

Describe in detail the values and the work culture that drives your organization.

A shared belief of the following four Guiding Pillars and four Unwavering Principles.

Guiding Pillars Ÿ Forward Not Perfection: Steady, strategic, forwardfocused, consistent action for constant improvements. Ÿ Find A Way: Try new ideas and workarounds. Be intentional and ask curious questions to get intelligent answers that uncover the results and then document the shit out of what works and discard what doesn't. Ÿ Get It Done: A fast-paced decision-making process that achieves the goals. No emotional attachments or what I call "hurt feeling reports" are required. Ÿ Let Loose: Feel safe enough to show up as yourself, contribute and have fun doing it.

Social media and the internet are primary pieces of infrastructure in your business. People need to take more responsibility for how they use it as a lever in their organization and with their personal brands.

Most don't take advantage of the internet and social media because they believe they have to master content strategy, creation, and distribution. They become overwhelmed with all the technology that enhances the way we distribute our messages. The reality is that maximizing the use of social media is a difficult and long process, but when you tackle it one day at a time, 365 days a year, it doesn't have to be the beast you believe it to be. It can, rather quickly, become the greatest asset in your operations moving forward.

Unwavering Principles Ÿ Be A Rebel Come to the table with a strong point of view or idea worthy of debate. It's not simply about going against rules or what others say just for the sake of being different; it's about having a conviction in your potential to explore and lead others through uncharted waters when no one else can.

Ancillary content creation tools such as Streamyard allow you to not only live stream but to populate all social media feeds at one time. There's no need to create multiple bits of information, although, at times, it's wise to speak only to one audience or another.

Leveraging your network to include guests in live streams brings you added notoriety as well as provides

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your followers new knowledge beyond what they've learned from you.

Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run, and what are your future goals for your company?

My purpose is to help as many people as I can move forward in their greatness. The more connections I am able to make with as many amazing humans as possible and help them thrive, the happier I am. No fancy claims - just me! Take it or leave it.

What would be your advice to budding entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the Management Consulting sector?

Show up and live in abundance in the moment. No one is going to be there more or be more invested in what you are trying to accomplish than you.

So, when you build a team, it's your obligation as the Founder of an organization to be "ALL IN.' Outwork your team. Set expectations that are reflective not of a founder but a leader.

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Leading the Charge

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"We are putting a significant focus on customer analytics.

Beyond a 360-degree view of our interactions with our customers, we also want to understand customer telemetry within our products. We want to understand which combination of features they are using and what value they realize from those features. Also, we are working with our customers to help them communicate this value back to their management and critical stakeholders," concludes Sonya.

eople often had underestimated the value of women who stepped out of their comfort zone and tried to do things differently. Over the course of history, women leaders have faced and overcame numerous problems which rooted their core strength to the foundation of the future that we stand upon today. Their efforts have inspired generations of women to be more confident and enthusiastic in their work to bring a different perspective that could be disruptive to that industry.

Women leaders are trying to unite other women who are thriving in cybersecurity and aspiring professionals across the globe to collaborate, share their knowledge, network, and mentor. They are creating opportunities through professional development programs, conferences, career fairs, and more. The recent trends seem to offer a positive approach towards young women and provide them with opportunities that have impacted and started to move the needle.

For example, let’s consider the cybersecurity industry during the pandemic situation. The COVID-19 pandemic promoted a remote work culture globally, and people were stuck working from home. However, this caused a huge uprise in the number of cyber and ransomware attacks targeting various data-based organizations. Women leaders in cybersecurity had to bring their A-game to stop these attacks before their execution. It was crucial to be more agile and provide security that made people feel safe about their data.

Cybersecurity organizations are broadening their horizons of backgrounds for women employees in wideranging fields as compliance, auditing, psychology, and sales have all found success in cybersecurity.

To eliminate these organizational threats, leaders like Sonya Andreae, Senior Vice President & Chief Customer Officer at Infoblox, stepped up with her team to utilize modern workforce transformation to deliver efficient, cost-effective security services for over 12,000 companies.

Numerous organizations in cybersecurity are serving the needs and promoting women in the workplace by having annual conventions to get executives together to discuss women's issues in cybersecurity and address them to make working more comfortable for women.

What's genuinely required in cybersecurity is for other expert associations to offer an equal chance to women, like featured subject matter expert jobs and different noble gestures. However, the pattern in these associations is positive, so ideally, they are going the correct way.

Sonya shared her knowledge and her profound role at Infoblox. She says, "Infoblox will continue to expand our SaaS solutions and make networking simpler and more secure. My team and I will continue to listen to our customers' needs and ensure that we are customer-centric whenever we roll out a new policy, process, or system. We will continue to look for opportunities to build trust with our customers and ensure we are serving them in the manner they choose, whether that be omnichannel support or providing a robust self-help platform designed with them in mind.”

Leaders like Sonya Andreae are becoming role models and inspiring other women to enter the cybersecurity field and achieve the success they deserve. The future holds a lot of possibilities, and it is just a matter of time to see how women will change the face of cybersecurity sooner or later.

She added, "I have kicked off several cross-functional teams focusing on improving the experience along the customer journey. I have been challenging my peers across the company to lean in, step out of their silos, and operate in a more matrixed fashion to ensure we are taking care of our customers. Our mantra is don't worry about "who" think about the "what" and "why." "What do our customers need?" Once we understand that, we can figure out how to deliver it and who will deliver it.”

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When A

Woman

Steps Up

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Expert’s Insights

What PHARMACY Benets Administrators and the HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY Can Learn From MODERN TECH? - By Rick Bates, Founder and CEO of RxSense

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pharmacy is many things to consumers: a point of connection and care, and often a focal point of their communities.

According to MedRate, 5.8 billion prescriptions were written and filled by pharmacists in 2018 -that’s a significant amount of disparate data points operating behind the scenes.

1. Many health insurance plans have shifted to high deductibles, and now nearly half of adults under 65 are responsible for paying for their own prescription drugs, because their insurance won’t cover them -- sometimes until they spend thousands of dollars out of pocket first (an average of nearly $1600, more than doubling over a 10 year period, according to Kaiser research).

Pharmacy benefits administration is seeing a fundamental shift in the ecosystem. Traditional pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) do not operate within one, central, unified database, often leaving data fragmented among insurance companies, employers, and other middlemen.

Software built to improve pharmacy operations, adjudication efficiency, and data management is crucial for better and more personalized healthcare plans. The application of modern technology and consolidation of data, along with the optimization of old analog methods of storing information, improve patient outcomes and lead to an overall healthier world.

2. The American population is aging and living longer (the number of Americans ages 65 and older will more than double over the next 40 years), which puts more pressure on the ecosystem and which causes drug utilization and associated drug spend to increase.

To combat these trends, there are two primary solutions that pharmacy benefits administrators can implement. This includes utilizing modern technology, and providing transparency including the cost of drugs with the goal of lower prices and associated spend.

Two primary factors are modifying the status quo process:

MACHINE LEARNING / ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 36

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Roughly 25% of US health care spending is estimated to be wasteful, with administrative complexity accounting for the highest share of spending at $265.6 billion per year, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning creates efficiencies that help lower the cost of healthcare, including medications to patients and employers. By breaking down and evaluating populations in smaller segments rather than by an average, AI can gather intelligence in the right order in which treatments should be administered and better formulate patient-focused health insurance plans. Furthermore, AI is able to personalize benefits, treatment hierarchies, and formularies. For example, by utilizing medical and pharmacy data, AI can help pinpoint patients that are “uncontrolled” (where disease is progressing or symptoms persist) and most at risk for hospitalization. With early detection and providing the right support and treatment before this patient progresses, AI can help prevent this hospitalization and get the patient back on the right track towards treatment goals.

Fortunately, there are modern technology solutions available now that are helping address these needs. One of them is RxIQ, RxSense’s industry-leading analytics platform, as it aggregates all of this data and provides automated reports to clients -- including pharmacy benefit managers, regional health plans, health systems, third party administrators, new healthcare and pharmacy entrants, and healthcare technology companies -- providing a 360-degree view of how their business is doing. These reports can include access to real-time pharmacy data and healthcare plan performance, and clinical or operational 37

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anomalies. RxIQ also allows for companies to easily make changes to healthcare plan options and benefit packages.

of the data. As an example, RxSense has numerous security compliance certifications that are issued by independent accredited security auditors. This includes the highly-regarded HITRUST, ISO27001 and SOC 1 and 2 certifications for security, and the ISO-22301 certification for business continuity.

While AI can’t tackle health concerns such as COVID-19, aging, and hospitalizations, it can help track data and statistics over time to better predict beneficial treatment plans and minimize the impact of poor health in the long run. The machine learning component also allows AI healthcare systems to better predict future societal health patterns and improve overall wellness, ensuring a seamless care journey for each patient, from seeing a physician to visiting the pharmacy.

With RxAgile, we’ve built a truly leading-edge platform that solves the problems of delivering pharmacy savings and benefit management with a more efficient and elegant solution. The cloudbased technology provides immediate speed, scale, and efficiency: as an example, businesses that previously took 6-12 months to set up pharmacy benefits on legacy systems can now do so in 6-12 weeks using RxAgile.

As AI grows in popularity and becomes fully integrated into the healthcare industry, we can more easily tackle challenges too big for a notoriously outdated, manual, and timeconsuming system, to significantly reduce costs and create better care pathways for the future.

Those not planning to integrate these innovative tools will be left behind.

Our business exists to help employers provide exceptional benefits to employees. By leveraging modern cloud technology, AI, and machine learning, PBMs, health organizations and employers can make dramatic improvements in efficiency, transparency, and cost savings, and by extension, offer far greater value to the consumer.

CLOUD ARCHITECTURE There is a broad need in the healthcare industry for organizations to replace legacy systems with cloud-based services enabling on-demand access and analysis and increased efficiency. These legacy systems include Excel spreadsheets that require manual updates, and decades old operating systems on physical mainframe servers.

New cloud technology allows pharmacy benefit managers to access competitive drug prices, purchase pharmaceuticals, reimburse clients, and analyze it, all in real time. It also means that companies can decrease IT costs and spend less time managing data, while keeping sensitive patient information secure. Storing information in the cloud, when paired with security controls, improves any oversight. This is an incredibly important component when it comes to prescriptions and medication as it effectively decreases errors, which is critical given the nature 38

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