Walk in the Cloud podcast

People are the engine of every organisation. What will it mean for them as organisations move to the cloud? Nicole Knott, Managing Director, HR Consulting with Accenture UK, looks at how the cloud opens up new doors of inclusivity, productivity and talent management. Nicole argues that organisations can only meet expectations for an employee experience if they embrace the cloud.

The cloud can help us to make things better—and to make better things. Manufacturing and logistics are fuelled by information, which creates all sorts of opportunities for strategic cloud transformation. Maddie Walker, Industry X Lead for Accenture UK, unpacks how the cloud can create the digital intelligence that will drive the fifth industrial revolution, dives into how the cloud is changing the role of the Chief Operating Officer (COO) today, and shares how today’s manufacturing leaders think and what they do differently.

Marketing hasn’t always thought of itself as a technological field, but new tech like the cloud is placing tremendous new opportunities at the doors of marketing leaders. Accenture Interactive Lead for the UK and Ireland, Pritesh Gadhia explains how Chief Marketing Officers can embrace the cloud to achieve more with less and drive customer obsession.

Ambrose Shannon, Accenture’s CFO and Enterprise Value UKI Practice Lead shares why cloud is one way for CFOs to arm themselves with faster insights to inform business decisions in today’s fast-moving world. By embracing lifelong learning, Ambrose explains, CFOs are in the unique position to help organisations successfully navigate cloud transformations.

Which came first, the cloud transformation or the data? We’ll let you ponder that in your own time, but Applied Intelligence (AI) leader Vikas Sindwani makes a persuasive argument that the best cloud transformations start with innovative dreamers who spot the potential in vast lakes of data, then dream up business-changing things to do with them. Chief Data Officers (CDOs) are becoming increasingly common around the nation’s boardroom tables, and their enterprise data strategies are driving a new breed of super-responsive, super-flexible organisations. Vikas explains how they do it.

Chief information security officers (CISOs) may seem the champions of anxiety when it comes to cloud, but they have a point. As with any business tool, cloud comes with its own distinctive risks. CISOs play an invaluable role in spotting and mitigating those risks to the rest of the organisation can get on with building the dream. Cyber security guru Jane Frankland explains how the best do it, while bringing up some hidden threats they may be missing. Amongst them: a worrying lack of women in the field which may leave doors open to targeted fraud.

CEOs who think of cloud simply as technology and relegate it to their tech teams are doomed to failure, argues Accenture’s Strategy & Consulting lead Rachel Barton. Rachel talks about the three categories of CEO she tends to see when relating to cloud and the challenges facing each. Nobody is finding it easy, but those who think transformation first, then explore cloud’s potential to support their vision, are on the right track. She offers examples from clients she’s worked with. The desire for the UK to build back better after COVID-19 and Brexit makes this episode particularly relevant.