CIONET Spotlight with Melanie Kirkwood Ruiz, ABM

That was a pretty quick introduction. Yeah, it definitely was a good summary. The only thing is I worked at United Airlines, but I thought you said United. I thought I said United, but that's okay. I thought I said United. I'm a big United guy, global services, so I love the airline. You think I would have gotten that one right. Sorry about that. United Airlines of course in Chicago, where you spent a tremendous amount of your career.

Definitely. Thank you and happy to be here. I feel honored and grateful to be here and talking to you today, Mark. I'll start off by saying that I did have a little bit of time before starting ABM to kind of understand the problems they were trying to solve with some of the issues they had, and thinking about their digital transformation like every large corporation does. When I came in, it was like, okay, let's hit the ground running. We start looking at transforming our ERP system and really almost our entire application landscape. But then COVID, it was creeping up but we didn't know what was going to happen. About a week after I started, we were in almost full lockdown. At that point, like every other company, we're like, wait, what does this mean? Things seemed unclear, uncertain. We had to think about, okay, now everyone's at home. We have to send everyone home. How do we pivot to make sure people can work and be just as productive at home as they are in the office and have the resources they need? Coming in and not really knowing the full landscape of our infrastructure and everything was a challenge. Very quickly, within days, I didn't even have weeks, I had to make sure and my team had to make sure that we could pivot fast, and that's exactly what we did.

Definitely. When lockdown came, the first thing that was top of mind was security. When you think about giving access to our systems outside of our network, we were pretty much fully in-office. We had some situations especially in technology where there were remote workers, but for the most part we were an in-office staffing management organization. Obviously we have a large field because we have over 140,000 employees, so we had to make sure people could be connected but securely. What was great is the team when I came on had a lot of detections and things in place because we saw intruders, ransomware, all of that kind of spike up as soon as everyone went to the office. The criminals across the world were taking advantage. So the first thing was how do we create an environment, whether it's a virtual private network or through some of the other platforms, where we can access these solutions, access our financial systems, our ERP system, because we are heavily on-prem today. We needed to give safe access. That was the first thing we did. We did some really quick upgrades working with some of our third parties and partners. We worked with SecureWorks from a SOC standpoint to make sure we had everything in place so that we could turn everything over and go live. Then of course there's things like Teams was rolling out, and we were moving to be full Teams from Skype at the time. Transferring all of that, looking at the telephony solutions, that's what we did within days and weeks.

Day one when things started happening with COVID, we put together a cross-functional operational response team. That team included every facet of the business and every function, which technology was a big part of it. We had two things to look at: the internal, like making sure we could procure devices because that became a big issue as there were shortages across the globe, and what does the client need, what does the client want, how can we provide new services, get people trained and connected really quickly. The strategic team with the business actually came up with some new services which were enhanced clean, enhanced facility. Technology was the enabling factor to get it done: the playbooks, the web training, the reach outs, the connections to the client. We always think of the client first and we include the client in anything that we're developing. They are with us along the way, understanding what the need is, and then we make sure that we create a product and a service around that need. That's how you get enhanced facility, enhanced clean. Technology had to enable it. We had to do it quickly. I think what we learned and is great and we're going to continue with this is that we can pivot. We're a super nimble company even though we're over 100 years old. We are actually very nimble and we can do things and pivot for our clients in ABM. It's hard when you're large to do that, but we saw that we were able to provide something to our clients that were of great value during a pandemic.

Absolutely. I think we were very amazed at how technology helped us do it very fast. We were all used to, even in my prior life, being in an office, flying to see the client. A lot of that may have happened in person, like let's go and visit client X, let's go through what a new product or service would be. But everything was done over the video conferencing platforms and quickly. We all got used to it. We were on our houses, dogs working, whatever. But we were more productive than ever. I think a lot of companies felt that because commute times were taken away. We spent a lot more time actually with each other and with our clients over video conferencing than maybe we would have if we weren't, because it takes a flight, there's a lot more logistics involved.

There's a few things. One, the downside is building relationships and being in person with someone, understanding who they are, seeing their body language. We probably take that for granted a little bit, but it's important. I brought on a new team. I was new. I did get to meet quite a few people luckily. I didn't have to interview on Zoom. The positive thing is I met everyone in person, not everyone but a big portion of the teams in person right before we went to lockdown. I think that helped. But I saw people come on board on my team who haven't had a chance to even meet anyone even still. There's a little bit of a miss in the relationship building. Think about if you're coming in, these are really for people coming in on board, not just IT but in any company. We want to be entrenched and embedded in the business. What makes technology successful in general is knowing the business, being a part of the business, and not just being a back office traditional function. What's important for me and my team is that we go do ride-alongs, we shadow, we're out there in the field with our front line, understanding their day-to-day because that gives us more perspective when we're thinking about solutions and trying to solve problems for the business and our clients. We miss that. A lot of it is on Zoom. It's difficult to shadow on Zoom. You're trying to talk through a user experience. Of course we had a lot of people especially on the strategy team and the business that were part of this, so they know it. From a technology point of view, it's just more difficult. The other thing I learned, and maybe it would have still been hard because everybody was uneasy about being around people, is I think we should think about a CIO's offerings to people at home. There's the video conferencing and VPN and all those things, but what about making sure they have the right network or connections or web access? Those points, especially for our leadership and as you can move down to certain critical roles, I think we should think about an offering for home. As we leave this, there's probably a lot more hybrid happening across many Fortune companies and many companies in general. How are we going to serve them from a technology standpoint, an infrastructure standpoint, now that we know not everyone's going to return to work across the globe?

I have this idea where I just explained how I want technology to be embedded in the business. A lot of traditional organizations do ride-alongs, shadowing. Same thing in this space. I actually think it would be great if business leaders and executives and all up and down the chain from different communities and backgrounds actually shadow, visit, understand other communities, understand the equality, inequality that's out there. Sometimes it takes maybe going to a lower socio-economic area and spending time with people and talking to them so you can see why there is a challenge. It may not be the most comfortable or thought about thing to do, but I'd say it would be eye-opening for some people who have an experience maybe what some underrepresented minorities have experienced growing up or in life. I can tell you that it's obviously made me who I am. I appreciate everything that I have. Not that anyone else doesn't, but I will tell you when I come back to where I grew up, which is where I am now actually because I moved back to Houston, talking to the kids and just understanding and seeing the education levels that they may get in their environment could be different from another side of town. You can see that and it changes your mindset. You're like, oh, I get it. Now how could I impact that? So you do partnerships, but you make the partnerships not just like checking a box with these minority partnerships. Let's make it work. How can we actually put the time in and make a difference and not just write a check? This is in general for all businesses and leaders. I think that's really critical. I do think the self-awareness that all of us have, I think we need to spend more time just understanding what our biases are. We all have them. It doesn't matter who you are, what color you are, what gender you are, what sexual orientation you are. We have biases. We should understand what those are and make sure we remove them as much as possible at work and be deliberate about it. When it comes to hiring and things, it is sometimes natural that we want people like us. We feel comfortable. I think we all have to do it. It doesn't matter who I am or anyone else. I need to look for diversity so that we're not all thinking the same. Everyone's bringing different thoughts and challenges and solving problems together. I think that is a huge differentiation for companies when they do that, and that's exactly the path that ABM is on for sure.

I don't agree. It's tough because sometimes again, when you think about bias, how people think, no one's really as kids are growing up, what type of toys and how would they play with in video games. You're right, you definitely see more males in research that show that. But I would say the good thing about today is look at all of the technology, the kits, the toys, anything everything that's out there. There's so many things geared towards STEM that we can actually give these to our kids at a young age. They already have the iPads, but you can give them these certain coding games at the age of two. I just encourage parents, it's not very expensive things either, and you can encourage and see if your kids are interested at an early age so it doesn't kind of go in the same path. But I think as the generation is churning and technology is embedded and you have one-year-olds using iPads, that's going to switch anyway. I think it's just important for us to point out when we see kids, especially women, who have that interest, who have that capability, the acumen to do it. I've noticed it even here, being back in Houston, coming back to my childhood neighborhood, talking to young girls at the elementary school age and just how smart they are. They enjoy math. I'm like, hey, they have these STEM kits. I've been engaging with them, just that's me working with kids and trying to get them to think differently so that they don't follow maybe the same path or traditional path. That's important. It takes all of us as adults that recognize that to make a difference in that age group.

They are. There's so many resources now. Those did not exist when I was younger. I was lucky. We had the Apple computer and we played all those games and I was always like, oh this is interesting, and I took it upon myself to take coding classes and things. It helps, but not everyone has that opportunity. I'm saying like Pascal or whatever was around then, we had it in the schools I was in, but not all schools offer that. It depends on the school system you're in. We have to be more deliberate in helping our young kids get involved and engage because it's out there and it's easy, it's in reach.

Definitely. Data, I mean data's always been there for a lifetime. It's really just about building those insights. Because of AI, machine learning really maturing, I think there's an opportunity to do a lot more predictive insights versus just current insights or lagging insights. What's interesting is when I think about our industry and some of the technology, and I obviously came from real estate before so it was similar, we had services there. Everything goes back to experience with our clients and the end clients of those clients. We want everyone to have a good experience. Technology has made the experience better, it's also given us more transparency. Some of the tech that I think is coming up and will continue to mature over the next five years that we can look at are the smart building technology. That's pretty broad, but think about some of the sensors. I can be at an airport in a bathroom, and this is just an idea, but you think sometimes you see different things that you can press and say, hey, was this a good experience or not? But now you can actually have sensors that, with full privacy, no cameras or anything, tell you how much the bathroom was utilized, and based on how much it's utilized, does it need a cleaning, which stalls need to be cleaned, how long should we clean, and then that leads to staffing, how should we staff for this. There's so much being incubated right now around sensor technology that's actually fairly mature. What I think a lot of companies have to do, and ourselves, is take that technology and help it give a better experience to our clients but also create more operational efficiencies. Those are probably more relevant now. Some of the robotics I think is going to take a lot of time. Plus humans just aren't comfortable with robots yet. When you think, people are saying, hey, are you guys going to get like a robotic cleaner? It just doesn't seem like it's time, but it's always great to pilot, understand why it's a challenge. I think disruption is an old word now, but it's still happening where technology is coming in and taking over human interaction and human tasks. We need to understand that for our industry as well. I think we are on the forefront of it. We have innovation teams, we have innovation strategy. One thing that I think ABM has done right is we've aligned technology with strategy and transformation. Technology sometimes is aligned with the financial organization or operating organizations, but we're actually aligned with strategy and transformation, which is fairly rare. It's great because when we're looking at our corporate strategy, it is enabled by technology both on the client side and internally. I think that's a big difference.

I think as part of modernizing technology and organizations in general, it's about empowering your people and your team. The caveat is you have to have the right leadership team. It's good to make sure you have people you can trust, you have people that are specialized and maybe even smarter than you or more experienced in their specialty. That's okay. I think some leaders feel threatened by that, and you can't. You want to have the best of the best team and you want to empower them to lead. You also want to make sure you encourage them, like I said earlier, to be embedded and involved with the business. That is fairly new for a lot of traditional IT organizations where it's just been more about the nuts and bolts, the infrastructure. No, we want to be on the forefront of technology, we want to change the client experience, we want to change the business, to partner with the business. I think those two things: empowerment of your leadership, but make sure you have the right talent at the leadership level, and secondly, embedding yourselves with your clients and your business is extremely important to the success and the progression of the organization.

For sure. That is the number one thing now that we're kind of coming out into a safer environment. That is what we are focused on.

All right, you too. Thanks.