About Gregory Lewis
Gregory Lewis, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Honeywell, has discussed the company’s digital transformation in multiple appearances. He stated that Honeywell has invested over $1.2 billion in its IT infrastructure over the past seven years, describing the company as being “at the end of the beginning of the digital transformation.” Lewis noted that he previously served as CFO of Honeywell’s Automation and Control Solutions business and was asked by CEO Darius Adamczyk to lead the enterprise-level digital effort, which became Honeywell Digital. He expressed support for CFOs as transformation leaders, saying that having authored the initial strategic plan for the digital initiative was helpful in his role as CFO.
Lewis also commented on Honeywell’s broader strategy and outlook. He said the company realigned into three themes: the future of automation, the future of air travel, and the future of the energy transition. He described Honeywell’s Forge IoT platform and enterprise data warehouse as assets that enable the use of technologies like AI, adding that the company is using these tools internally and for customers. During Honeywell’s Q4 2022 earnings call, Lewis provided financial guidance for 2023, including expected sales of $36 to $37 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $8.80 to $9.20.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Gregory Lewis's recent appearances.
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Transcript (4 segments)
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Interviewer0:04
We're here to talk about transformation. And Honeywell has made tremendous progress in our digital transformation over the last decade. Can you walk us through that journey and what it's been like as CFO leading through all of it?
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Gregory Lewis0:17
Sure. So, as we've talked about in the past, we've really gone through a few stages of transformation here. And then as Darius came on, he really supported and advocated for the digital journey that we've been on for the last seven or eight years now. And then of course, Vimal in the innovate and growth stage is going to have to take advantage of those things. And I talk about it really as we're at the end of the beginning of the digital transformation. We've done a lot to build the digital backbone over this time horizon and a lot of that was a bit tops down in order to get that in place. And now we're at the place where we need to extract the value from it and moving towards, as you mentioned, things like digital operations, and we're only going to do that by engaging the workforce in a different way, and creating the value from all of that investment that we've made. We've invested over $1.2 billion in our IT infrastructure over the last seven years in particular.
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Interviewer1:09
So, Greg, how has your role as CFO evolved over that time period to help really lead this type of initiative?
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Gregory Lewis1:15
It's actually been a really interesting journey because if you just rewind the clock a little bit in the 2014 to 2016 time frame, I was the CFO for our Automation and Control Solutions business, which was about half the company and we had started our own digital transformation at that time, because we thought it was relevant and important. And then when Darius decided to break ACS up and reorganize and realign the company, he asked me to take that to the enterprise level and we started what was called enterprise information management. So, that was the beginning of what became Honeywell Digital and our journey towards trying to become a data oriented organization. That was very helpful for me as I then stepped into the CFO role because I didn't need to be convinced that that was a good thing to do. I had authored, you know, the first strategic plan around that effort. And understanding in depth of what that was required to make it successful, from the CFO chair was super helpful. You know, we have purview over everything that goes on in Honeywell. It all winds up in the financial statements in one way or another. So, I'm very much a proponent of CFOs as transformation leaders. And so I think having that experience and the enrollment of that agenda in the CFO organization has been of great value for the company to make this successful.
