Kiran Palla: Spearheading Digital Transformation with a Mix of Business and Disruption

OneNine AI is a no-code AI platform that democratizes AI to everyone. It reduces entry barriers for individuals and businesses to start using AI and machine learning. The company's goal is to bring AI to everyone and accelerate digital transformation and organizations' AI journey. Its robust SaaS platform offers a self-service wizard-based interface for data analysis, data visualization, and predictive models. OneNine AI leverages several top services besides professional services engagement. The company's Automated Data Analysis lets users uncover new insights from their data with self-service exploratory data analysis. The users can also pick and choose from the marketplace of some of the most popular machine learning models in the world. It helps them learn AI concepts and develop models at the same time. 

The platform also allows people to build neural networks or traditional machine learning models just by answering a few questions. Furthermore, it allows non-experts to develop a concept from an idea to model in minutes. Its modern data exploration and visualization feature allows the users to explore and visualize the data, from simple line charts to highly detailed geospatial charts with few clicks. No-code viz builder allows them to connect to any SQL-based data sources or upload CSV files. The users can also search open data from Data.gov (The home of the U.S. Government's open data) and other sources to discover a correlation between their data and open data from around the world, Open Government Data is a philosophy and increasingly becoming a set of policies – that promotes transparency, accountability, and value creation by making government data available to all. Public bodies produce and commission huge quantities of data and information. 

A Multi-Talented Leader with a Customer-Centric Mindset

Kiran Palla came to the US in 1992 and completed M.S from the New York Institute of Technology and an MBA from Northern Illinois University, IL. He is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at OneNine AI, which is a no-code Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning platform. He has a strong consulting background by forming AVS Consultants Inc in 2001 and currently serves as a technology advisor, executive mentor, board member, and board chairman for multiple organizations. He is the recipient of the United States Presidential Gold Service Award.

Kiran admits that his passion for education made him start his online academy, AVS Academy, which is a college prep academy that focuses on developing persuasive leadership skills through effective communication. Under his guidance, more than 1,759 students went through college preparation, and they are currently studying in 96 global universities. Kiran further describes that he conducted 759 online seminars on topics in education, family health, finances, and career planning. He ran 158 Edu talk shows at major NPO organizations, educational institutions, and private corporations.

Kiran recounts that when he was in his first IT job at Andersen Consulting, the company used to have daily issues with replication, and the business leaders were worried since IT had no solution for the problem for a long time. One day, Kiran tried a small script of two-line code that stopped replication errors for 1,600 servers. The business team sent goodies, cakes, and flowers, and started treating him like a king. He says, "I was like why is the business team was so excited for my small fix. I did not realize that business teams were losing almost US$50,000 per day due to the issue." 

 He further talks about how Andersen CIO was called upon the stage at a Lotus Notes conference, and he credited him on that grand stage for the fix. The CIO had a coffee with him and said one thing "Kiran, your fix saved IT reputation." Kiran explained that the brief talk and subsequent incidents where IT was valued with simple acts prompted him to start his journey into roles that had wider influence. In this process, he started his own company in 2001 and stayed in business for 21 years with a customer-centric mindset. The roles at various c-levels brought him a responsibility that demanded skill, character, and empathy.

Compassionately Bending the 'Misunderstanding' Curve

Kiran was frank about sharing the challenges that he faced at an early stage of his career. He says that it was mostly about understanding the business processes and functions. He explains that the management seldom exposed him to the business and that brought a lack of understanding of how systems interact as per business needs. While working with information technology, Kiran recalls that he used to think that whatever the systems he implemented worked with business. But later, he realized that it was incorrect and at that time, he struggled to understand the overall business impact. 

In the later part of his career, while traveling around the globe in consulting roles, Kiran started interacting with different business cultures, processes, functions, and capabilities, which enhanced his capability to become more customer-centric. He also describes that in his role as a business continuity professional, he dealt with real-time disaster recovery processes where he realized that IT supports businesses when it is a part of the business value realization. He asserts that it was an eye-opener for him as he realized that when he is talking about IT systems, he is actually talking about the process it supports. Later in his career, Kiran reveals that he thought more about cost containment and cost savings for everything that he implemented.

The 4Cs Modern CIOs Should Follow

According to Kiran, every CIO must have the agility and be aligned to change the business needs. He considers that CIOs should have the following four key characteristics- Courage, Collaboration, Compassion, and Communication. Kiran refers to this as the 4Cs of modern CIOs. He believes that bringing change in big organizations is a hassle but the courage of a CIO to bring timely change is what makes the CIO unique. 

For Kiran, the courage to communicate about the business risks and changing infrastructure and operations requires boldness on behalf of the CIO. He feels that compassion is the most important characteristic where the CIO takes into consideration sensitive customer behaviors that can be impacted by a change. He gives examples that a lot of times, CIOs tend to claim early victories saying that they implemented systems but miss the boat in assessing the underlying unrest from businesses. Besides this, he thinks communication is the key as the need for fast communication to a broader audience is constantly evolving. A CIO's communication should be crisp with the motto "business first while IT at its best" and focus on business value realization. He also advises that dropping buzz words, catchy phrases, and long statements should be avoided since the attention span of a person is now at 22 seconds. Furthermore, Kiran states that collaboration is also crucial. A CIO's collaboration with business and IT instantly reflects on the outcomes. With the current state of affairs where everything is becoming a necessity, taking key stakeholders into confidence and understanding their viewpoints needs immense collaboration.   

'Market-Driven' Approach to Trigger Innovation

Kiran thinks that product or solution innovation should be market-driven. He admits that he sits on boards, executive briefing sessions, panel discussions, and other knowledge sessions to understand the market trends. He currently works for an AI organization and the platform deals with reactive AI and low memory AI, but its target audience is already thinking of the theory of mind AI and self-aware AI. Its roadmap includes an aggressive R&D in these advanced AIs and educates businesses on the potential benefits. Kiran explains that OneNine never assumes that its target audience knows very little or nothing, but is cognizant that they have all the information they need, and caters to their needs right away.

Disruptive Technologies are Beneficial, Yet Challenging

In Kiran's opinion, disruptive technologies keep the leaders on the edge. He thinks that the role of a leader has currently evolved from adopting change, leading the change to disrupting (in a positive way) the change. As per his views, the leaders have become tougher to ask for business justification of the innovation that is boasted by these disruptive technologies. He explains that leaders are cornered or left with no choice but to embrace change without change, there is no future in this digital era. So, the leader is now a change management agent and a true negotiator. Kiran also declares that leaders are now fostering innovative sessions, encouraging new ideas and new generation thinking. He believes that the integrity, honesty, and viewpoints of a leader are closely watched by the business since leading the monumental task of bringing a disruptive change means putting the organization at high risk.

Taking Business IT to New Frontiers with Cloud Migration

Kiran reports that digital transformation forces companies to scale down IT and may probably push IT into business and brand it as business IT. While talking about the future of the company, he says that a lot of new products will come to meet the market demand and enterprises may become product shops with agile delivery. According to him, cloud migrations will take the operations and infrastructure management hassle out of the mix and force IT, teams, to become product owners working in business groups. As per his vision, the AI and Industry Revolution 4.0 will make this transformation much more agile and by the end of 2030, the economy will be driven by those who establish a digital footprint that is much more resilient and customer-centric. 

Word of Wisdom for Emerging Leaders

Kiran advises budding CIOs and leaders to stay on top of technology and to align with business needs. He explains, "As an emerging leader, your fresh perspective on things and the style of operation is welcomed once you start producing small wins, aka low-hanging fruits." He also insists on not carrying away with buzz words and trying to use them in front of the enterprise since that is viewed as scare tactics. The most important advice that he gives is that the leaders should not try to build their own kingdom with known people or people they interacted with in the past. Instead, they should try someone who really values the organization's business model and becomes a lieutenant by challenging the leader and not praising them.