Executive VP and Chief Information & Digital Officer, Lowe's Companies Inc
Lowe's CIO Explains Current Cybersecurity Concerns From A Retailer Perspective
Seemantini has more than 25 years of global technology experience. Before joining Lowe’s, she served as senior vice president, digital and marketing technology at Target Corp., where she oversaw the company’s global e-commerce, enterprise marketing and loyalty technology strategy and operations. Prior to Target, Seemantini held multiple senior technology leadership roles at Sabre and Travelocity.
Seemantini earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical and electronics engineering from the National Institute of Technology in Nagpur, India, and a master’s degree in computer science from Texas Tech...
About Seemantini Godbole
Seemantini Godbole, Executive Vice President and Chief Information & Digital Officer at Lowe’s, has discussed the company’s approach to cybersecurity, technology investment, and artificial intelligence. In a December 2023 interview, Godbole stated that cybersecurity and organized retail theft are significant issues for the retail industry and Fortune 500 companies, and said Lowe’s focuses on preparedness through its asset protection team and technology such as RFID-based Project Unlock. She noted that the company has deployed more than 50 AI products into production at scale and has been experimenting with generative AI since the release of ChatGPT. Godbole described her role as growing Lowe’s business, including having P&L responsibility for lowe.com, and said the company invests heavily in technology under CEO Marvin Ellison, who she described as a “true believer” in technology. In a 2019 profile, Godbole shared personal reflections on her career and advice for women in technology. She said she was drawn to math and science because they allow for experimentation and immediate results. Godbole advised women in tech to “hang in there,” continuously learn, and believe in themselves. She also described her approach to navigating being a woman in the workplace: not taking advantage of being a minority while not allowing others to write her off.
Transcript (22 segments)
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Diane0:11
President Santony, good to see you.
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Seemantini Godbole0:15
Great to be here, Diane. Thank you for having me.
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Diane0:18
I have to start first. Great to see you. But when I think about people in your role, I think about having to be anti-theft, cyber security, talent, all the issues that must keep you up at night. Maybe they don't, but tell me what the biggest challenges are of your job.
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Seemantini Godbole0:38
You're right. As a Chief Digital and Information Officer, there is a tremendous amount of product development we do to bring great experiences to our customers and associates, and that's a delightful part of my job. At the same time, you're absolutely right about issues. And more than keeping me up at night, we have a tremendously talented team. Our goal is always preparedness: how do we make sure we are ready for the situation, and how do we build our technology ground up to combat some of these threats? What keeps me up at night, frankly, Diane, is not these specific problems, but I always think about making sure we are retaining the right talent. Because if you retain the right talent, engage the right talent, if they are really into Lowe's and engaged in Lowe's, then I feel like there is no problem big enough for us. That's really something that I keep thinking about.
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Diane2:11
And I'm talking about generative AI, but of course many other tools as well. How are you able to do now what was not possible a few years ago?
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Seemantini Godbole2:25
Yeah, Diane, I think that's also a fantastic element of technology. What was just not possible like three or four years ago now suddenly is within reach, very much possible, and that opens up possibilities of what we can do for our associates and customers. That's the fun part. Even just five years ago, I'll walk through two or three technologies. We are in a great position when it comes to having our workloads deployed, whether it's cloud, our own data center, or back of every store we have created a micro data center. We remove all this friction from our engineers to make sure they can deploy anywhere they want to, and we have really mastered that. The other technologies you talked about: we have more than 50 products that deploy artificial intelligence into production at scale. This is not experiments or proof of concept; these are at-scale solutions. Over the last five years, or even the last two to three years, generative AI took the world by storm. We have been experimenting and trying to figure out what this technology means to us. It's fascinating. We are a people-first, technology-led company, and I feel we can open up avenues for both our customers and associates.
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Diane4:34
As you're talking about that and the fact that we were wowed as consumers, I've often wondered: were CIOs like yourself or CDIOs wowed as well by ChatGPT? Or did you see it coming? Give me a sense.
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Seemantini Godbole5:10
We knew that all these things were being worked on and experimented by really big technology companies. One surprising thing, which happens in technology way too often so it should stop surprising us, was that an entrant like OpenAI said, 'Hey, we'll take a chance, we'll expose this service to our consumers and see where it goes.' We were all the beneficiaries of working with it and trying to get answers to various questions. It wowed me many times about the questions I asked ChatGPT and the answers I got. I'll give you an example: I asked ChatGPT, 'When do I use the conventional type of AI and when do I use generative AI?' It gave a really nice, balanced answer. If my CEO were to ask me, I think it was a really nice answer for somebody who probably knows AI and generative AI not at great depth but wants to get an answer. It was crafted very nicely. It said to the effect that if you have a tremendous amount of data and want to do natural language processing, generative AI is a great solution. But if you have limited data, a lot of domain knowledge, and business rules that are very crafted for your own business, then what it calls analytical AI, or what we sometimes term conventional AI, is what you could use.
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Diane7:10
To the extent where certainly when I talked to CIOs several years ago, it was very much about cyber security, the threats, and also the gatekeeper role, making sure what's brought into your ecosystem is safe and efficient. Now it feels like the role is also aligned with business development, transformation, less about cutting jobs and more about finding new opportunities. That's my observation from afar. Tell me how you think the role has changed for yourself and others.
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Seemantini Godbole7:53
Diane, I'm going back a little bit in history. In the early days of the CIO role, you could have a general management background, be an MBA without any technology background, and be put in these roles because there was a lot of buying of software. Technology was more like an enabling function or a behind-the-scenes background function. Those roles at that time made sense. There weren't many technologies available in-house, development was really expensive. I do remember in my early days buying CDs from Microsoft, paying for those, and doing Visual C++ programming. What I'm observing is there has been a sea change, not just in retail but across industries, where there's a realization that you really need a core skill set of technology to manage the technology function of a Chief Digital Officer, Chief Information Officer, or Chief Technology Officer. I don't necessarily look at my job as a gatekeeper at all, though prioritization is really important. You can't be doing everything for everybody, and you need to make sure your investments are deployed to the right places. But Diane, my job is really to grow the business of Lowe's. I have the P&L responsibility for Lowes.com, so I absolutely play that role for the business, and less about gatekeeping or controlling.
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Diane10:14
You talk about priorities. Let's talk about some of those priorities right now. Life is about hard choices; there's only so much money. What are you prioritizing? What are you doubling down on, and what are you perhaps spending less on?
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Seemantini Godbole10:35
We spend a really healthy amount at Lowe's on technology because we understand. More than me, Marvin Ellison, our CEO, my boss, is a true believer in technology. He has always said that all great retailers have a few things in common, and one very important one is technology. I haven't had to convince Marvin that technology is important. Money given to you is always limited, and you always have to make choices. We have structured ourselves in product teams and around OKRs. Every product team has objectives and key results, and all the OKRs are around associate or customer satisfaction. We measure it by various measures, and likelihood to recommend is one of our big measures to see if we are doing the right things for associates and customers. Then there are goals around enhancing the customer experience right now through these technologies.
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Diane12:16
Let's talk about some of the challenges. Earlier this year, you talked about how you're addressing the challenge of theft, which perhaps is less of a problem for Lowe's than some drug stores we've seen in the nation. What are the new tools there, and how are you trying to get out ahead of organized retail theft?
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Seemantini Godbole12:45
Organized retail theft is really a problem, Diane. At Lowe's, what we have done is through our investment and a tremendous team that does a really nice job of making sure they are not taking away from the customer experience or associate experience. But it is hard work in today's environment. What we have done is a combination of people, process, and technology. Technology plays an important role along with the asset protection team, which is all about people and process. We have a combination of technologies that are in-store, also looking at the order flow and inspecting it from a digital fraud perspective. In the in-store physical environment, we make sure through visual means in our parking lots we have enough intelligence to tell us if we have a situation. I'm not sure if you have heard about it, but we are experimenting and working with various partners to see if we can implement RFID-based technology. We are trying to figure out if we can implement that technology without taking away anything from customers or associates, while also deterring theft. It would be as simple as having to pay for a tool before you leave the store. You're used to it; you take it for granted. The process of scanning for payment would make sure your tool is unlocked and you can use it, almost like a phone or a gift card. You can't use it unless it's been paid for.
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Diane15:11
You've worked across a number of different industries and companies. What have you learned in terms of advice? Are there new threats emerging, or is it just new tools for the same old threats?
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Seemantini Godbole15:30
Diane, first of all, I'll give you some background. The technologies that are so good for giving great associate and customer experiences are also available to bad actors, and they are using them to launch attacks. Whether launching an attack by using the power of any cloud, the environment has helped all these technologies can be used for good or by bad actors, and that's what we are seeing. On the other hand, we have to continue to evolve because bad actors, in a very organized fashion, are continuing to evolve in technology and maturity in how to carry out these attacks. It is absolutely imperative for all Fortune 500 and all corporations to always be in a state of readiness, continue to assess threats, and always make sure we have the right defenses so we are not taking away anything from the customer and associate experience. Bad actors are continuing to be creative, and corporations just need to continue to stay one step ahead of them.
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Diane17:21
I want to switch a bit to the personal to end off. I don't know if you knew what you wanted to be when you grew up or when you went to college, but here you are in a C-suite leadership position at a global company. Talk a little bit about what motivated you in terms of what you studied and what was formative along the way. Let's start with what you wanted to be when you grew up.
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Seemantini Godbole17:49
Diane, I think I always loved math. It was like solving puzzles for me. If you knew how to do it, you didn't have to stay up late into the night trying to read up stuff right before your exam; you could be out and about playing as a kid. I always did that and still managed to do pretty well in all these subjects. They just naturally came to me. Then I chose engineering as my profession. I also feel that although these topics came naturally to me, Diane, all of us know in our professions that you have to put in your 10,000 hours. I have spent countless hours trying to keep up with technology, making sure I really understand as technology advances. It's been hard work. I could never wake up in the morning and say, 'I think I've got it.' It's an evolving journey. There is a new problem every day, and that fascinates me and brings me where I am today.
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Diane19:24
Excellent. Well, obviously the impact you can have too. Any advice to other leaders or even consumers as we look into 2024? What's on your radar you'd like to put on ours?
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Seemantini Godbole19:41
My advice would be, Diane, that the technologies we are working with right now, for example even take generative AI, can be very powerful. I also want to make sure that we are aware from the very beginning that we are in the business of bringing value to our customers and associates. Just focusing on that and asking yourself every morning you wake up, 'Are you bringing value to your customers and associates with new technology, with these new experiments and explorations?' As long as we keep that as our North Star, that we are here to improve the experience for our teams, our customers, and our associates, I feel we can be on the right path and making progress.
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Diane20:46
Great advice. Not just the tool, but what the tool is being used for. Thank you so much for joining us. I look forward to...
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Seemantini Godbole20:51
Thank you, Diane.