"Family well-being and joy are the true treasures of life, turning each shared moment into a cherished chapter in our journey."
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Welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview with Chris Hand, a seasoned C-level executive renowned for his exceptional leadership and a proven track record of steering companies through remarkable growth and transformative phases.
In this captivating discussion, Chris provides a glimpse into his illustrious career, featuring leadership roles at Fortune 500 giants such as HP, Arm/SoftBank, CA, Avaya, and Alcatel-Lucent.
Having achieved outstanding milestones, including multiple NASDAQ IPOs and scaling businesses to astonishing figures exceeding $1 billion, Chris Hand stands as a visionary in the tech industry.
This interview delves into Chris’s journey of integrating artificial intelligence into business operations, uncovering the profound impact it has had on various sectors.
From spearheading technological transformations to orchestrating multimillion-dollar acquisitions, Chris shares invaluable insights into the dynamic landscape of AI implementation.
Join us as we explore the challenges faced, success stories realized, and a visionary outlook on the future of AI in business, guided by Chris Hand’s wealth of experience and forward-thinking perspective.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Chris Hand: C-Level executive leader/team builder, NASDAQ IPO + scaled businesses above $100M+, $500M+ & $1B+ growing 900%+. Leadership roles at Fortune 500, mid-sized and startup companies – HP, Arm/SoftBank, CA, Avaya, and Alcatel-Lucent.
Multiple technology transformations and integrations including $2B, $4B, $8B, $19B acquisitions increasing shareholder value.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
- Growth: 900% HP Cloud, 400% ARM/SoftBank, 474% Avaya, 118% Promethean, 100% CA SaaS, 38% Dealertrack.
- Large: HP $100M$1B+$10B Pipe, Dealertrack $800M$1.1B($4B Acq), CA $500M($19B Acq)
- Mid: Promethean $275M$600M, Avaya $87M$500M($8.3B Acq.), Motricity $80M$133M(IPO).
- Startup: ARM $25M$125M ($40B NVIDIA Acq. Offer) & Xylan $20M$150M ($2.1B Acq.).
- Successfully launched $1B+ new HP Cloud Solutions including Microsoft, SAP HANAaaS, SaaS, IaaS, Security & PaaS.
- Cloud Wins: 10-20K SaaS deals/yr. hundreds $MM wins, SAP $1.2B, Microsoft, ING $110M, Citi $500M, Italy $36M.
- Multiple acquisitions and integrations: Implemented systems, tools, people, process, enablement and KPI’s.
- Team Leadership: 5,000 channel partners, 2,600 matrixed field teams and 500 direct teams.
- Organizations: Sales (Field, Channels, Inside & Technical), Marketing (Corporate, Field & Digital/Web), Sales Ops (Revenue & Enablement), Customer Success, Services (Professional & Customer), Consultants, DE&I and Leadership.
- Shareholder Value, IPO | Exits: NASDAQ IPO & successful exits $2B, $4B, $8B, $19B & $40B (ARM | NVIDIA offer).
Can you share with us your journey towards integrating AI into your business operations?
Chris Hand: Over the last five years I have been fortunate enough to engage with a pair of AI platforms that include a $600M acquisition of an AI CDP(Customer Data Platform) and and exclusive distribution agreement of an AI Digital Assistant.
One original intent of the AI acquisition was to look across our tech solution stack spanning from semiconductors, SIMs, SIM Management/Provisioning Systems, IOT, IOT Security, IOT Connectivity/Connectivity Management System and leveraging the data and insights to guide businesses with data and information from this tech stack suite.
We quickly found another very powerful (and revenue producing) use case to leverage the AI CDP as a Marketing “Intent” Engine. Our customers GTM/Marketing efforts were nicely enhanced through our AI CDP capabilities.
The AI Digital Assistant is much like a “Siri for business”. It allows you to look at workflows, tasks, routing trees where you can ultimately increase productivity by reducing the number of actions required to completed intended outcomes.
What specific areas of your business have been most impacted by AI, and how?
Chris Hand: Some very exciting customer use cases for our AI Platforms are as follows:
- One of the worlds largest gaming companies used our AI CDP to integrated over two dozen global client databases to run a single global marketing campaign for their latest mega product launch – saving money(by not having to do over two dozen marketing campaigns), time and increasing revenues on a successful launch.
- One of the worlds largest beverage companies used the AI CDP platform to look at weather patterns and marketing campaigns aligning timing to capture and satisfy thirst associated with heat waves.
- Large chocolatier company used the AI CDP platform tied to events that people want to share or show recognition to others.
- Large automotive company used the AI CDP to gain a 360 degree full digital view of customers so from their digital footprint when they were looking to purchase (either online or in store) there was over a 30% increase in win rates.
- Large consumer products company looking at tomorrow’s washrooms, increasing revenues (by faster consumables replenishment), increasing customer satisfaction (consumables replenished in a timely fashion), and ultimately the powerful utilization of the data guiding things such as traffic flows and support staff (hours best utilized for support services).
- Large tobacco manufacturer launching vaping products looking to leverage a larger tech stack for utilization, hours, volumes, flavors, reduction in counterfeiting which protects consumers (vapors heat cartridges to hundreds of degrees by your lips and you don’t want failures caused by counterfeit products) and also increases revenue capture.
- Large gaming company looking at cross sell and upsell for in-game activities and increased revenue spending.
What are the biggest obstacles you’ve faced in implementing AI, and how did you overcome them?
Chris Hand: As these concepts and capabilities were brand new to the market – this means clients/key stakeholders/decision makers don’t know many of the use cases they can take advantage of and from those concepts how it would impact their business.
In order to progress this forward we had to do the typical new market launch activities spanning: new product/capabilities, how we are taking it to market (direct, indirect), market awareness, education, new assets & artifacts, proof of concept/trials, engaging key stakeholders, getting a champion, building a business case, expected ROI, proving ability to execute, deploying and ultimately meeting and exceeding client planned outcomes.
What advice would you give to other CEOs looking to integrate AI into their business?
Chris Hand: Pick a smaller number of AI initiatives and prioritize them based off how they align and support your Mission, Vision and Values, how that aligns to your PLM (Product Line Management) and Go-To-Market, plus rank their expected real return to your business.
There are so many use cases for AI that you don’t want to waste time and money on science projects that don’t have desirable business outcomes as well as don’t align closely to your business.
You can also find early/first movers in the market that have gone through the learnings and ideally have measured outcomes – this can provide quick education and leveraging other companies time/resources already expended on use cases that can potentially help their business.
How do you see AI evolving in your industry over the next 5 years?
Chris Hand: AI has the potential to touch all aspects of business and workflows. The use cases our teams have been focused on today are new product capabilities and launches, more productive marketing campaigns (with the AI “Intent” engine), improved efficiencies with removing actions needed for specific tasks, etc. Many of today’s use cases are more scripted vs. generative.
As more generative use cases unfold, it has so many possibilities that we have not thought of – so to me, this is the “Art of the Possible” on what AI brings for tomorrow. This is more promising than scary – we need all industry participants to make sure AI remains as good actors.
What does “success” in 2023 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Chris Hand: 2023 encompassed three of life’s major events for our family, spanning a son’s wedding, a parental loss and a career change.
Success in 2024 begins with health and family all being safe as well as happy together. With our first son just getting married and my second son dating my wife and I are extremely excited (and blessed) to be part of the next chapters in their journey including new family additions!
From a business perspective, I am highly interested in taking on my next executive leadership role in a growth oriented, transformational company.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Chris Hand for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Chris Hand or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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