Why we are shaping a new IT foundation at Workato

Where you start - the foundation you build - is critically important to a successful IT strategy. I was reminded of this axiom when I recently hosted Gary Flowers, CIO of the nonprofit Year Up at our Confessions webinar series. Year Up is a great organization that helps young adults build career skills and land internships with an equality-focused mission. It’s been around for 25 years, and Gary has kept their IT strategy current and nimble.?

In our conversation, he mentioned something that really stuck with me: Over the years, he’s built a straightforward process for transforming an organization from within the IT function. It takes place over three years: year one is foundation to innovation, year two is innovation to transformation, and year three is transformation to acceleration.

By design, the three stage approach supports a five year company vision. Gary made the excellent point that an IT transformation cannot support a five year company vision if the transformation is also completed in the same timeframe; the IT transformation needs to be in place so the company vision can use the technology to scale. This is a powerful reminder of how the CIO role continues to become more strategic, and how, no matter how long a company has been around, it is never too late to rethink your foundation.

A new foundation is a fresh start

Just as the foundation of technology is the most important for business success, the foundation of Gary’s process is the most important of the three years. The great news for any of us in technology leadership is that any time is a good time to reexamine and start fresh with your foundations.?

To that end, we’ve decided at Workato that we are going to reexamine our foundation too. After years of leadership in enterprise automation, the Workato processes I discovered when joining last year were already far ahead of the norm thanks to the widespread use of our own platform internally. I marveled at the the work that is already done:

• Employee onboarding and offboarding is seamless and automatic
• Lead routing automation is game changing
• Stand up meetings around the company are conducted automatically with a Workbot in Slack
• Birthday gifts are automatically delivered to every employee

But in IT, we should never rest on our laurels. In addition, the beauty of enterprise automation is that it is fundamentally about iteration and improvement. That means the automation that we built in Workato is not set in stone. By design, it is built to change and grow with us.?

Bigger scale means bigger goals

Workato has expanded from just 285 employees in 2021 to over 800 today. We’re refactoring existing recipes to support the next stage of scale, and with that our VMTs (Visions, Methods, and Targets) are all focused on setting a strong foundation for the newest phase of Workato’s growth.?

This year, I’m looking at my VMTs from six key angles. After guiding IT teams through 3 IPOs in my career, I’ve learned that IT supporting hypergrowth goals cannot succeed without all six of these elements:

• People: how can we cultivate deeper Workato expertise for our people, and do even more to embrace the ethos that everyone should be empowered to automate?
• Visibility: how can we ensure that the work we do becomes known internally so teams can capitalize on it, and externally so our customers can benefit from the innovation?
• Data: renewing our relentless focus to get the right data in front of the right people at the right moments
• The foundation: revisiting the Workato Way and ensuring it remains in a state of constant improvement
• Employee experience: how can we delight our team more every day?
• GEARS framework: never lose sight of the architecture plan and required governance to ensure everyone can innovate safely

Helping the next generation reach their goals

As I wrote late last year, I have never been more inspired by the next generation of IT leaders. They are hungry, creative, and harder working than anyone could have predicted. As Workato continues to grow, it is crucial that our foundation continues to rebuild to support the work of these inspiring people. When the creative minds of today reach for that next major milestone, the technology needs to be there, ready to support them. It’s important - for Workato - and for you, too. It’s never too late to build a new foundation.

Watch the recording of my Confessions of a CIO webinar with Gary Flowers here.