EC20 Takeaways: Enterprise IT Leaders on Point

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Enterprise IT speakers: (top row, from left) Jennifer Featherling, Priceline; Neal Obermeyer, TD Ameritrade; Gary Kohlheim, Walden University; (second row, from left) Kim Corazzini, Capital One; Kristina Russell, MedStar Health; Jennifer Berry, Cigna; Gauri Bhalerao, Yum! Brands; Josee Duchesne, Pembina Pipeline; (bottom row) Kari Mattek, Northwestern Mutual

From technology to career development, a variety of enterprise IT executives shared their perspectives during myriad sessions at Enterprise Connect Digital Conference & Expo. Here’s a sampling.

Enterprise Summit: Moving Forward on Communications & Collaboration

“… we wouldn’t have survived … if we had not made the shift [to Amazon Connect] from a contact center standpoint. I never once worried about trunking. I never worried about the underlying tech supporting it. It was just let the people keep calling … whatever they’re going to do, let it happen.” — Jennifer Featherling, director of global contact center technology, Priceline
Having previously adopted Slack, “we’d basically already normalized the idea of working and accessing information differently — shrinking that space between people and what they need — well before the pandemic came along. So, we were just sort of incidentally perfectly prepared for the transition to remote work.” — Neal Obermeyer, senior manager of channel effectiveness, TD Ameritrade
“We spent several years getting to where we are today from a cloud and application perspective [with 8x8 cloud platform and Microsoft Office 365, with Teams]. So what I see us doing over the next year or two is really leveraging those; … we're now in a good position to where we're starting to push the vendors on things that we're looking to do.” — Gary Kohlheim, director of services management, Walden University

Women in Communications Roundtable

With cloud contact center, “the flexibility of being able to change on a dime and hand over capability for routing changes and controls and such to the business has really been a game- changer in terms of getting some of the day-to-day work out of the hands of tech, and letting us focus on more of the monetization opportunities.” — Kim Corazzini, senior director of CX transformation, Capital One
“In health care, unfortunately, you don't always have a lot of room for error because it truly could be life and death. So, the hurdle that I've been working on [for communications and collaboration] is making sure that if something needs to change or we need new technology, that we can do it, that we can do it quickly, and that we can do it without any errors.” — Kristina Russell, UC director, MedStar Health
Beyond technology, a focus for us is “not to forget about the mental state of the employees during this [pandemic], and to really put an emphasis on giving them the flexibility … and access to mental health and employee assistance programs. … It's in our nature being technologists that we forget about some of the personal side, and having focus there was really important, too.” — Jennifer Berry, architecture director – voice infrastructure and contact center engineering, Cigna
“As we go into the implementation of Microsoft Teams and some of the other collaboration platforms, what I realized was that we did make bold moves and risks. But at the same time, as a woman, … there were times when I realized that I was overthinking. So one of the things that I had to do to make sure that we moved forward was not to think twice … to do [what my gut] told me.” — Gauri Bhalerao, senior manager, collaboration, networking strategy, and engineering, Yum! Brands
“Hold your voice [strong] — it’s not about being a man or a woman; it’s that everybody wants to be the next voice to be heard. So you have to make sure you keep on that competition to be heard.” — Josee Duchesne, supervisor for networks and telephony, Pembina Pipeline

Developing a Diverse and Inclusive Workforce for Today & Tomorrow

“Opening up the door [and] allowing people to ask questions is really important. We're all in our own journeys; we all make mistakes. None of us knows exactly what to do, but having [those] candid vulnerable dialogues with each other … is the first step [toward achieving diversity and inclusion]." — Kari Mattek, senior director of digital product management for workplace portals and content services, Northwestern Mutual

Of course, these takeaways barely scratch the surface of all the great insight shared throughout last week's event from these enterprise IT leaders. EC20 Digital Conference sessions, including those noted above, are available for on-demand viewing now through the end of the year. If you missed out, tune in soon!

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