Posted on 13 of December of 2023 .

Iván Castro: "Technology is not just a service, it should be part of the business strategy"

The role of technology in traditional sectors has gone from being a complement to companies, to become the differentiating element of any type of business, including traditional ones.

We met with Iván Castro, CIO of Corporación Hijos de Rivera, at the company's facilities, so that he could tell us first-hand how technology contributes to improving the business and production of a traditional product such as beer.

In this talk, we delve into the current technological challenges for large companies, the possible solutions through which 'non-digital' companies can streamline their digital transformation processes, or the way in which generative AI could contribute to improve business efficiency.

What are our challenges?

Cybersecurity is essential in a production environment like ours

My name is Iván Castro and I am the CIO of Corporación Hijos de Rivera, and I am in charge of leading the group's technology and digital teams. We are a company dedicated to the production of traditional products. We have certain very special characteristics, but one of them is that we have a factory and that means we have a lot of technology that we have to control in order to get our products out.

what are the main ones we handle? Well, all the automation part of our factory, all the sensorisation, all the IoT work we do for quality control, but also all our corporate platform that helps us so that all the departments can work in a unified way. At the end of the day, the end-to-end of our product is very long, it involves many departments and this has to be unified in a single platform. Other challenges we have is the treatment of data, which is another of our big challenges for this year.

On the other hand, there is cybersecurity, which is fundamental in a production environment such as ours, and is something we have to work hard on how to evolve. But if you were to ask me what is the fundamental difference between our sector and perhaps other sectors, it is that we have that, what I said before, a factory and therefore our OT environment is an environment that we have to work hard on. And one of our challenges is how we are going to evolve that OT environment to the cloud and how that is going to merge with our current IT environment.

Engaging the technology team with other departments

But beyond the technological challenges, in a company like ours, the great challenge is a cultural and methodological challenge, how to mesh the work of the technology teams with the rest of the departments so that the work speeds are adjusted and we can ultimately add value to our product value chain, because basically we do not make technology, our goal is to have the best beer possible.

For our industry, IoT technologies are very important technologies because they are the ones that allow us to control our entire manufacturing process and do all the quality controls. The entire factory automation are the key points for us. We are working hard, and I think it is fundamental, on data management. I think that is a big challenge for all companies.

Digital solutions for 'non-digital' businesses to accelerate their digital transformation

You don't need to be a technology company to be able to develop projects

All these as-a-service solutions, software as a service, as-a-service infrastructures that have come out in recent years, well, in the last 10-15 years, are very much in favour of non-technological, non-digital native companies being able to enter this wheel and speed up their digital transformation plan.

Why? Because they remove two fundamental barriers to entry. One, the cost of investment. In the end, you usually pay for these services on a pay-per-use basis and therefore the initial investment cost is much lower. It is much easier to have budgets to deal with these projects. And the second is that you don't need large development teams.

In the end, you don't need to be a technology company to be able, thanks to these solutions, to be able to develop projects, products in a very agile way that allow you to test, allow you to make mistakes, allow you to make new ways of doing business in a much more agile way and therefore, by removing these barriers, it allows us to make this plan much more ambitious and we can do it in a much more agile way.

Hyperscalers to develop projects at the speed you need

In addition, all these hyperscalers allow you to use their native solutions, so you can develop a project, turn it on, turn it off, scale it to the speed you need. It is therefore essential for companies like us to have broken down these barriers to entry and to be able to develop these products much more quickly.

In the last years, 10-15 years, the working methodologies in software development have developed a lot. This is due to the idiosyncrasies of software development, the way software developers work, much more agile methodologies, much faster methodologies, but in the end the job of the CIO is to see how we are able to unite this speed of work of software developers with the rest of the departments that are more traditional, less native, digital and that have other rhythms, because in the end the factory has another rhythm, our sales teams have another rhythm and that is one of our great challenges.

The work of the CIO

I believe that the CIO should have a fundamental role in the executive committees or management of companies

As CIO, we have to be able to ensure that we are able to assemble talented technology teams capable of developing digital products in a fast and agile way, and at the same time that these teams are able to work with more traditional methodologies to serve the other departments, which are actually the ones that make the company's business wheel move.

Maybe it is wrong for me to say it, but I believe that the CIO should have a key role in the executive committees or management of companies. Personally, I believe that those companies that are capable of including this in their strategic plans, the digital transformation plan and that the technological part is not just a service offered to the business, but forms part of the group's strategy, are those that are going to have the best chances of being successful.

Even companies that are not digital natives and that, like us, offer traditional products, the figure of the CIO is going to be fundamental. On the one hand, the rest of the teams, managers, CEOs, commercial directors, have to visualise how the CIO of a technological part, perhaps until now more positioned to provide a service to these departments, must be included and participate in the business ideas. And it also has a job for us CIOs.

Until now, we have always had a role, perhaps a bit secondary, of providing service and not participating in the business, and we have to learn from the business. We have to be aware of what the day-to-day business is so that we can not only offer solutions, but also participate in these business decisions that will be fundamental, because the technological and digital part will be key to the future of any company in any sector.

Generative AI to generate more efficient departments

I think generative AI is going to be transformative, as we work in many of the companies

The time has come to talk about generative AI, which is on everyone's lips. Generative AI is going to change the world, people are going to be out of work. Well, I have a pretty clear opinion on this. In the end, like all great technologies that come to make an evolution, at the beginning there is a very big wave where in the press, in all the forums, there is a lot of talk about how it is going to transform all sectors. But in the end, as I'm very Galician, it's better to wait for the wave to go away and see what's left after the hangover.

And I think that's where we are now. I think generative AI is going to be transformative, as we work in many of the companies, but I think it's going to be staggered. Just as I said before, that As a Service solutions have helped companies to develop more agile products, I believe that a series of products, a series of services are going to be developed around all the generative AI that will allow companies to adopt them. In the end, many companies, the more traditional ones, will not have the capacity or our focus will not be to develop their own solutions, but I do believe that there will be a great service, a great offer of services and solutions and products based on generative AI that will help us to make our departments more efficient, to improve our production chain, to know our users better, in the end, to make our entire value chain more efficient until we reach the end customer.

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