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Top AI trends and strategies to make the most of them
June 04, 2024
Technological advances, surging investments and the competition for talent are all working toward one thing: artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally changing how business gets done. In this episode, Joe Atkinson, Vice Chair - Chief Products & Technology Officer at PwC and Sal Companieh, Chief Digital and Information Officer at Cushman & Wakefield check in on the top AI trends for businesses – highlighting the need for smart AI choices, responsible AI practices and upskilling leaders to harness its full potential. They discuss how AI can accelerate the value of data-driven decisions and be the 'missing link' for your data investments, helping you stay ahead of the competition. Join us to learn how one of the world’s largest commercial real estate services firms has been using technology and AI in some innovative ways.
Find out more about how PwC can make generative AI work for you.
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You may also be interested in listening to our PwC Pulse podcast episodes on Generative AI: What it really means for business and Responsible AI: Building trust, shaping policy.
About the podcast participants
Joe Atkinson is a member of PwC's US Leadership Team, and is responsible for leading the firm through the next wave of digital transformation. This includes accelerating growth in go-to-market products and digital solutions, as well as the firmwide technology capabilities.
Previously serving as the Chief Digital Officer, Joe defined and executed the vision to digitally enable the firm, and better leverage technology and talent to bring greater value (and experience) to the firms people and clients. Prior to that, Joe was the leader of PwC’s Technology, Media and Telecommunication consulting business for the US, Japan and China, and he has built a reputation as a trusted, pragmatic and thoughtful advisor to clients as they navigate through accelerating technology changes and increasing regulatory complexity.
Sal Companieh is the Chief Digital and Information Officer at Cushman & Wakefield responsible for providing solutions that improve Cushman & Wakefield’s operations, enhance client service and drive new business. Sal has over 20 years of consulting experience in process and technology transformation and has led the firm through numerous acquisition integrations as well as implementations of global platforms.
Sal joined Cushman & Wakefield in 2011 as Vice President, Global Applications, and since that time has held technology leadership positions across the business, most recently as co-Chief Information Officer (CIO). She also previously served as CIO, Corporate Solutions, where she was responsible for building processes that collect, curate and optimize enterprise, client and property data, and as CIO for the firm’s facility services business, C&W Services. Prior to joining the firm, Sal was an independent consultant at Covidien and held senior technology positions at IBM and Lindt & Sprüngli.
Episode transcript
Find episode transcript below.
Welcome to PwC Pulse, a podcast to provide insights to help you solve today's business challenges.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:00:10:00 - 00:00:32:06 Hi, I'm Joe Atkinson, Vice Chair and Chief Products and Technology Officer at PwC. I'm excited to have with me today, Sal Companieh. She's the chief Digital and Information Officer at Cushman & Wakefield. Cushman & Wakefield is not only one of the world's largest commercial real estate services firms, but they've been using technology and AI in some very innovative ways.
00:00:32:09 - 00:00:43:11 Today, we'll be diving into AI for business. What it's doing now? What it will do next? And how GenAI has changed the game? Sal, welcome to the podcast.
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:00:43:13 - 00:00:45:03 Thank you for having me, Joe.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:00:45:05 - 00:00:54:13 Before we dive in, we've got some rapid-fire questions to get to know you a little bit better. So, let's start with what's your favorite city in the world to visit?
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:00:54:16 - 00:00:56:19 We'll go with Paris.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:00:56:21 - 00:00:59:07 Paris. Anything you particularly love about Paris?
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:00:59:12 - 00:01:04:21 I love the, getting lost into the neighborhoods, just walking around and taking it all in.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:01:04:24 - 00:01:09:08 I love it. Is there somebody that you look to today or in history as an inspiration?
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:01:09:12 - 00:01:10:23 Definitely, my dad.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:01:10:25 - 00:01:12:23 I love it. Do you want to share a little bit why?
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:01:12:25 - 00:01:25:00 He is very well-grounded in his thinking. He is not driven by title or position or power. It's just impact and so he is a sense of grounding for me.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:01:25:02 - 00:01:34:04 I love it. There's a lot in there. Thanks for sharing that with us. So now let's jump into our topic for today. Generative AI is taking over headlines, has taken over the C-suite discussions. Feels like it's taken over everything.
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:01:35:03 - 00:01:35:10 Yeah.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:01:35:20 – 00:01:51:06 But can you share with us a little bit of your background. Before we jump into Gen AI, let's talk about what caused you and brought you to a career in technology, Sal? And how your background was shaped in the current role, and how your background shaped your approach to that current role as a Chief Digital and Information Officer at Cushman & Wakefield?
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:01:52:23 - 00:02:16:07 I think of it as a series of serendipitous and deliberate decisions. I started my career in consulting, and I loved everything about it. We were doing a lot of ERP work, which meant that I got to dabble into multitudes of industries, learn fast, consume environments at a fast pace, think at an enterprise level, think at a data-centric but connected level.
00:02:16:09 - 00:02:36:29 And so doing that for 15 to 20 years allowed me to build muscles that are very useful and applicable to today's environment. We learned to move fast and to think on our feet, so that was fantastic. Beyond the consulting days, once I got married, I decided that I did not want to be on the road 100% of the time and went to concentrate in distribution management.
00:02:36:29 - 00:02:57:08 So had a lot of fun in different environments creating distribution centers from scratch, automation, robotics, conveyors, all that fun stuff. So, I had a great time doing that, and it landed me in a subsidiary of Cushman & Wakefield, which is now C&W Services and have had a fantastic 12 plus years here since then.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:02:57:11 - 00:03:08:03 It's quite a story, Sal. It's just awesome to hear how different experiences in your career built on new opportunities. And I also love your point about serendipity. I would say all of us would love to say we made every great choice. And but sometimes you just are lucky.
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:03:09:04 - 00:03:09:08 Exactly, exactly.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:03:10:08 – 00:03:26:05 Open up to an opportunity. So, speaking of an opportunity and a thing that's going crazy and something that's moving really fast, when GenAI really entered the mainstream last year, we know there's a lot of history behind what we all saw. It made it easier for people to really understand and start to envision its use when it went mainstream.
00:03:27:04 - 00:03:41:07 But value can be so dependent on finding the right use cases and finding the right applications. It's not a tool that applies to every use case. So how do you think about that in your role? How is Cushman & Wakefield thinking about that, and what's that doing to the way that you're approaching your use of GenAI?
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:03:42:20 - 00:03:59:07 So look, Gen AI has a place and a time that's applicable, and every single company has its own unique set of needs and processes that they have deployed. I think of AI in general or technology in general further than that as home decor. What works for me may not work for another company.
00:04:00:06 - 00:04:18:02 And it needs to be true to us, true to where we are in our data journey, true to where we are for how we service our customers. So, the way that we've unpacked it. First, we had to educate. There was a lot of media attention towards GenAI. And what I found fascinating as we have been on our AI journey for some time.
00:04:18:08 - 00:04:36:05 And we've never actually used the word AI, we had just said digital, and we had said automation, and that was satisfactory to the business as we were driving that forward. And suddenly, we had to actually educate towards the fact that, no, you actually have been using AI for quite some time. We've historically not used those terminologies, perhaps, as we discussed in the broader schema outside of technology.
00:04:37:06 - 00:04:52:09 So we started with an education of where it works and where it doesn't. We started with identification. We had already done a lot of heavy lifting around the way that we partner with the business and understand their true workload and where it's coming from, what type of tasks it's coming from.
00:04:54:01 - 00:05:17:08 So we were able to opportunistically identify some of that first round of application of GenAI, very unlike many others, on document extraction and creation of content is where we concentrated. But we also looked at our existing roadmaps and decided where we're going to tuck it in and embed it into our overall employee experience versus creating one-off capabilities.
00:05:17:10 - 00:05:33:10 So it became a tool in the toolbelt. We had to discuss differently around it. We had to educate differently around it. But it didn't fundamentally change our strategy of what we were doing for digital and data uplift. It did create some obviously immense capabilities for us that we didn't have before.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:05:33:12 - 00:05:41:00 There's a number of really powerful points in what you said. One of them is that most organizations that are tech forward have been applying AI in different ways long before it hit the mainstream. Right. So.
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:05:42:02 - 00:05:42:06 Yeah.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:05:42:10 - 00:06:03:05 One of our partners often refers to it as good old AI. The machine learning and all the algorithms that have been built into our technologies for so long. And then, of course, GenAI hits the mainstream, and everybody asks where all of your AI is. And I think the other point that you made that bears some emphasis is this idea of embedding it into your roadmaps and embedding it in a thoughtful way. I think there's just a lot for listeners to think about in all that you just said.
00:06:04:25 - 00:06:25:00 So now I'm going to go on to that data journey that you talked about. AI runs on data. There's no AI, good old AI or generative AI without the right data. A company like Cushman & Wakefield has mountains of data, I'm sure. So, one of our predictions this year is that GenAI will actually help close the gap in organizations that are trying to unlock massive amounts of data that it can help unlock true power.
00:06:25:02 - 00:06:30:12 So first, do you agree with that? And secondly, how are you seeing it already impacting your data strategy?
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:06:30:17 - 00:06:56:11 One, I do agree with that. I do agree that Gen AI has the power to unlock data at a faster pace. I think about that. I break down into two different segmentations of why. The first is the consumption of data. The simple consumption of data is what drives users’ experience, and generative AI opens up the door to consuming and serving up that data in a more natural pattern to our employees and our colleagues.
00:06:56:14 - 00:07:10:06 So having somewhere to actually consume it in a simplified manner allows us to collect it and curate it and improve it. Because the carrot at the end is you get to consume it in the more simplified manner and at a faster pace than historically possible. So that's one lens.
00:07:10:09 - 00:07:28:01 The other lens is we have a combination of structured and unstructured data within the firm that historically would have taken longer to collect, curate, and correlate for insights for our clients and our colleagues. So we've been embedding it into the simplest of transactions for us would be a lease.
00:07:28:08 - 00:07:44:06 Properties have a lot of leases. Leases are unstructured data sets. There are multitudes of methods. How do we extract contents from leases and have probably over 25 use cases of application of lease data to our broader eco system? But it's not about just the lease.
00:07:45:15 - 00:07:56:09 It's the connectivity of that data to the broader data set that's proprietary within Cushman & Wakefield to really put in front of our clients the best information so they can make the most strategic decision around their real estate.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:07:56:11 - 00:08:15:21 Yeah, the concept of where your proprietary value is and focusing on the proprietary value, bringing that together in a really powerful way. And then of course, everything you just said that was about the experience for your clients and your customers on the front end of your relationships. And I think that's another really powerful place that it's easy to get distracted with the complexity of all these things that we're talking about and the technology challenges.
00:08:15:21 - 00:08:32:06 And there's always been those. But at the end of the day, we're trying to produce better outcomes for our people, for our organizations, for stakeholders, for our clients. So, and I think there's a lot of really good thoughts in what you just shared. So, let's talk about stakeholders for a second. PwC, we have our clients, of course. We have our people.
00:08:32:06 - 00:08:54:24 We have regulators. We have other stakeholders in the community and in the markets that we serve. All of these stakeholders care so deeply about trust in AI. They have high expectations of organizations like ours and organizations like yours about safeguarding data, making sure outputs are reliable, that we're using these capabilities and tools in a responsible way. How are you thinking about and implementing responsible AI practices at Cushman & Wakefield?
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:08:54:26 - 00:09:18:18 First, is the diversity of thought at the table on where we apply AI. So, from our talent team to our DEI team to our Cyber team, all collectively deciding where we go and where we apply this technology and two is being honest with ourselves around our data, the maturity and the diversity within our data set, and what it could potentially result in from a consumption of generative AI.
00:09:18:21 - 00:09:38:21 At the end of the day, I'm steward of our client's data, and I take that very seriously. We're in a lot of different segmentations inclusive of financial services, and we hold ourselves to the rigor of cyber and data utilization for our financial services organizations. And so, if I'm a steward of their data, I treat their data as rigorously as I would treat mine.
00:09:38:24 - 00:09:55:03 And what that means is we actually take every opportunity to embed our cyber thought leadership, embed our data maturity evaluations at every step of the way. It's not an afterthought. It's not a pause and check in with the project level. It's actually embedded into everything that we do.
00:09:55:09 - 00:10:06:03 And that's how I believe we can bring the best protection and thought leadership by ensuring diversity of thought from the get-go of how we're applying technology across the organization.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:10:07:06 - 00:10:29:11 Sal, it's interesting because so much of that are the fundamentals that we've talked about in the industry space for years, right? GenAI didn't change any of those responsibilities you just articulated, didn't change that responsibility. You feel the curation responsibility, that stewardship responsibility, and making sure that all of us as technology leaders are embedding that in our approaches going forward, I think is really the task that's in front of all of us.
00:10:29:12 - 00:10:47:19 And I know all of us are taking it very seriously. Let me jump to a little bit about leadership and capabilities. I'd characterize this maybe as one of the favorite myths about generative AI and AI broadly, which is it's going to impact only, if you will, the junior levels of our organization, the people that are at the start of their career, the people at the beginning of their career.
00:10:47:22 - 00:11:06:02 And clearly, it's going to have impact on the tasks that are the entry level tasks in most organizations. But what do you think about senior leadership, people like yourself that are leading complex agendas, your colleagues in the C-suite. How do you think AI, broadly generative AI specifically, is going to impact senior leadership and then employees at large?
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:11:06:04 - 00:11:26:06 I think generative AI is a vehicle to elevating data centricity in every organization. The existence of it and the simplicity of usage really draws out the discussion of where are we in our data journey, and how mature are we in our data journey. And driving data centricity at the heart of every conversation that you're having.
00:11:26:50 - 00:11:41:06 Every business leader conversing differently around what they historically had thought to be unusable data. Or you think about unstructured data or even their knowledge bases, research articles, etc. that were, you could read it and consume it.
00:11:41:08 - 00:12:01:00 This brings out a level of data centricity that I've never seen at the same cohesive level across the organization, which is phenomenal. I think from a leadership perspective, you have to honor that, and you have to actually understand that you have multiple levels of understanding and baseline information out there.
00:12:02:14 - 00:12:18:00 And as leaders, it's your duty to one, get yourself educated and understand where the power is for your clients and your colleagues, and two, how do you serve as a translator for those that need support? Translating what the, so what of this is, and really taking that role seriously.
00:12:17:09 - 00:12:36:05 I think there's never been a time that technologists have been playing this critical of a role to unpacking reality and the hype and the marketing, and there's very real capabilities out there, but you have to be able to unpack that for your constituency, both from a client and employee basis.
00:12:37:26 - 00:12:57:24 I think the way the role changes is more and more we serve as change agents, and we need to take that role seriously and step up to that. Whether it's your tasks are being impacted or not. It's not really the conversation. The conversation is the type of talent you go after may change. The time to productivity may change.
00:12:57:24 - 00:13:15:09 So how do you think about your talent persona that way? There's a lot to unpack there, but I think we serve as the voice of change and modeling the behaviors to be balanced in approach and making sure that you're gleaning the most outcomes while being prudent and responsible with your approach.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:13:15:11 - 00:13:22:15 Yeah, I think that point about serving as the lead translator, the change agent, in many ways, that's been the burden that's fallen on technologists for…
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:13:22:19 - 00:13:23:03 For a long time.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:13:23:03 - 00:13:43:17 Decades. Right. But your other point about how fast this is moving and sorting through the hype versus what actually can be applied to bring change and bring value, and then there's a whole question about the technology capability is in some ways so fundamentally different in terms of what it unlocks, that it also requires all of us to think a little bit differently about how we want to solve problems and to get creative.
00:13:43:20 - 00:14:05:21 I think there's just a lot for listeners to think about how to apply in their own organizations. We've been talking about this as maybe moving from the hype stage to the private stage of AI and generative AI specifically. But one of the things that you talked about in terms of capturing those capabilities, and you've said these words throughout your commentary today, is the education challenge that you have, and the skilling challenge you have.
00:14:05:24 - 00:14:17:15 So maybe dig into that a little bit. What steps are you taking with the workforce across Cushman & Wakefield to skill them? Not only the potential, but all those other elements of responsible use and the data stewardship, etc.?
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:14:17:17 - 00:14:33:01 We're taking a two-pronged approach. One was education at the executive level to really discuss where it fits in our environment. Where are we to really look at ourselves in the mirror on where are we on our data journey and where we need to concentrate and understand the sequence of events.
00:14:33:03 - 00:14:47:03 So understanding that while consumption through a particular data set through generative AI is on the next step, we really, in order to unlock the power, have to do the real work, which is on the data side and being okay with that. So that's one side of it.
00:14:47:04 - 00:15:07:04 The second side of it is through our employee population, and we are going to be on a journey. We're about a-year-and-a-half into being more product oriented and project oriented as an organization, which means historically the toolkits, the methodologies, the mediums we would use to train, they may not apply here, they may not scale with us.
00:15:07:29 - 00:15:28:16 And so we're partnering with our talent team to reimagine the way we actually educate. And what I find fascinating about GenAI, the education is actually this distributed education as people are using it and having their ‘aha’ moments of how they glean benefit from the data, or how they reshaped a story or narrative for a client to make the best outcome.
00:15:28:18 - 00:15:49:24 And how do we capture those to then educate? It's almost like crowdsourcing of those ‘aha’ moments. And how do we create an environment where that can penetrate the most of our colleagues and really, really make an impactful outcome for our clients? So, there's a lot of work we have to do in this space. I will not pretend like we've got it figured out, but we have a multi-pronged approach.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:15:49:27 - 00:15:52:02 And I think there's all of us working through how to really scale up that learning, that insight.
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:15:53:08 - 00:15:53:11 Yeah.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:15:54:10- 00:16:10:04 In a lot of ways, it is one of the more fun parts of the job, though, as you watch people discover capability and build capability and really change their careers as they open themselves up to what these skills can mean and what these technologies can unlock. So, Sal, we have this wonderful tradition. We ask you these big-picture predictive questions.
00:16:11:05 - 00:16:28:01 The good news is I'm not aware of anybody that goes back and checks whether or not we get these predictions right. But let's go big picture. What are the biggest changes you think we'll see on? I won't take you to a long-term horizon, let's say about three years. When companies are maybe much further long, even fully harnessing the potential of the current AI capabilities.
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:16:29:11 - 00:16:46:06 I would say my dream is that we open up doors to talent that historically may not have had an opportunity within certain industries because we're tool-kitting them and enabling them differently. And with the consumption of both the data and the generative AI capabilities, we're making them productive faster.
00:16:46:30 - 00:17:07:05 And in an industry where there's a high component of transactional ferny any work, it excites me to create an opportunity for others to enter a fascinating industry like ours. And furthermore, I think it opens the door to organizations just operating differently. And we actually drop every deck from every organization.
00:17:07:11 - 00:17:21:04 And we're just looking at data and we're not talking about PowerPoint. So maybe just within our career point, we will be in organizations that have absolutely no PowerPoint to tell a data story. So that's what I would love to predict.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:17:22:13 - 00:17:44:00 I love what you said on building people up. All this conversation we're having about generative AI and job disruption and task disruption. It's real. That will happen. But the opportunity that it unlocks, the ability for our organizations to use this great lever to unlock more opportunity to bring more people into the organization, to help skill people up, and create opportunities that perhaps they might not have been able to achieve otherwise.
00:17:44:03 - 00:18:00:27 Because these tools help them bridge those learning gaps, those access gaps, all the things that we've all been trying to work on for so many years. So, it's been an absolute pleasure having you join us today. And it's always a great pleasure to hear somebody with such deep, real-world experience in the amazing career that you've had.
00:18:00:29 - 00:18:20:03 Particularly exciting to hear how Cushman & Wakefield is innovating around AI, and how you're thinking about that, and pressing the envelope, so eager to continue the conversation. As you said, we're all continuing to work to a great destination, but thanks so much for spending the time with us today for sharing a few ideas on how we can get that concrete value out of AI, and what the future looks like when we'll come back and check your predictions in a little while.
SAL COMPANIEH:
00:18:20:05 - 00:18:21:26 Thank you so much for having me.
JOE ATKINSON:
00:18:21:28 - 00:18:30:26 And to our listeners, thank you for joining us on this episode of PwC Pulse. Please share this episode with others who might be interested in the topic.
ANNOUNCER:
00:18:30:28 - 00:18:44:22 Thank you for joining us on the PwC Pulse Podcast. Subscribe to PwC Pulse wherever you listen to your podcast or visit pwc.com/pulse podcast to hear our next episodes.
ANNOUNCER:
00:18:44:24 - 00:19:01:05 This podcast is brought to you by PwC. All rights reserved. PwC refers to the U.S. member firm or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates and may sometimes refer to the PwC network. Each member firm is a separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.
00:19:02:09 - 00:19:08:04 This podcast is for general information purposes only and should not be used as a substitute for consultation with professional advisors.
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