How Technology Is Becoming More Accessible

Deborah O’Neill , Partner and Head of Digital Europe, shares her key takeaways from AWS re:Invent and how the event has shaped her idea of successful enterprise leadership.

This sheer scale and choice on offer at re:Invent has certainly made it a worthwhile trip for me over the Atlantic. As expected, Adam Selipsky’s highly anticipated keynote contained important updates on new offerings, from higher performance and more cost effective compute, through to the ability to build your own private 5G network in a matter of days.

For me as leader of Oliver Wyman Digital Europe, the standout stories have been from those large, complex organizations, for whom transformation is not just about new technology, but rewriting the rulebook both strategically and culturally. Perhaps this is because technology is changing in a way that democratizes the possibilities across an organization, meaning that a broader set of people can benefit, not only the technology-savvy individuals. For example, in one session, United Airlines Chief Digital Officer, Linda Joj, shared how they had taken a CustomerFirst-approach to developing their new travel tools enabled by cloud technologies. This has radically improved their net promoter score (NPS) but also simplified how customer services staff can help through better information and joined up systems.

Of course, there has been a huge range of sessions on data, machine learning, and the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) to enable chat bots. I was heartened to see a stronger focus on support and tooling for those who haven’t got coding skills but want to make evidence-based decisions. Amazon QuickSight and Amazon SageMaker Canvas will allow users to create dashboards and ask questions of their data using plain English. In the future, they also expect it to help people make predictions, which will be a game changer for those setting strategy or making commercial decisions on where to place their bets.

Equally, no and low code has been a topic of debate for a while and it is great to see solutions that support this direction hitting more of a mainstream offer.

My advice based on my observations here? These conferences are an important forum for senior business leaders to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their technology counterparts. In an unpredictable world, most successful enterprise leaders will be those who immerse themselves in these opportunities to learn how to transform, grow, retain talent, or fundamentally speak the same language as the next generation.