Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

Complexity is the enemy of exceptional service. It slows teams down, drives up costs, and creates friction for businesses, employees, and the customers they serve. In a world where many are weighed down by bloated software and rising costs, Freshworks takes a different approach.

In a landscape where vendors slap “AI-powered” on everything from chatbots to coffee machines, CIOs must take a critical eye to every new technology, and create guidelines that will keep the organization safe and align to its goals. “If we’re not careful, we risk falling into AI-washing—where AI is more of a marketing tool than a practical asset,” says Jess Evas, vice chancellor and CIO of Maricopa Community Colleges and longtime technology leader in higher education.

CIOs have spent decades justifying their existence with complex technical roadmaps and lengthy implementation cycles. Pawan Satyawali throws that playbook out the window. “At the end of the day, every decision should answer one question: What’s in it for the business?” says Satyawali, former CIO of Tata Consumer Products and now head of digital services at Signify. CIOs should identify AI use cases that deliver measurable impact in weeks, not years, he says in our guide to IT leadership in the AI era.