Last updated on June 21st, 2017 at 11:12 am

B2B News Network spoke with Alexey Rykhva, CIO of Procter & Gamble Canada, who took over the DXAgents Twitter profile. We asked his thoughts on digital transformation, change and big data, in a Twitter Chat yesterday, in advance of BigData Toronto.

Alexey is originally from the Ukraine, and is a believer in business-centric IT, focused on strategic and competitive value. He is responsible for over 100 business services, ranging from traditional IT/Facilities to advanced analytics.

Q1: Tell us a bit about your role at P&G Canada, and how it relates to big data and analytics.

A1: I am Head of IT and Business Services at P&G Canada, and everything that encompasses, including how business delivers IT services.

Q2: What kinds of skills did you need to qualify for that role? What areas of the business do you touch?

A2: I’ve led major business transformation efforts across information technology, sales, finance, manufacturing, supply chain, and HR.

Q3: Impressive! I’m guessing knitting that all together is a big data mission. How long have you been investing in big data? Can you talk a little about the impact of big data on the business, and your role specifically?

A3: We’ve been playing with it for a while. We starting with testing in 2012, and had a formalized plan by 2014. Key focus: use cases that could be achieved without big data. We redefined the data strategy, given the new capabilities out.

Q4: Is it challenging to stay on top of a field that is contantly changing? How do you manage it?

A4: Yes. I personally spend 4-6 hours a week in learning. I also rely a lot on my team. It’s important to be comfortable with the fact you won’t know everything, and to rely on your team’s areas of expertise.

Q5: What technology available today do you think will have the biggest transformation impact on business?

A5: I doubt it’s one technology, rather a mix. If I pick 3 it would be 1) Blockchain 2) IoT and 3) Cognitive computing.

Q6: You’ve talked a little about how much time you devote to learning; what about other parts of your job? Security? Data management?

A6: If I was to guess – 20% on data management, 10% on security. The rest of my time goes to education, managing other areas, generating new use cases, insights, and innovating with the team.

Q7:What does “digital transformation” look like at P&G? How much is specific to the Canadian market?

A7:  Creation of new business models, and step-changing the performance of core processes. All through the use of technology. Canada is a top market globally for P&G. We test new things in Canada, validating models, before rolling them out globally.

Q8: What do you find most exciting and most terrifying about the future of tech?

A8: The pace of change.

Q9: What’s the best part of your job?

A9: Innovation, definitely.

Q10: What’s your most interesting project at the moment? (that you can talk about!)

A10: Unfortunately, I can’t sa much of anything, so I’ll just say it touches the technologies I mentioned early.

Don’t miss your chance to hear more about data-riven transformation at the DXAgents panel at BigData Toronto this afternoon at 2:30 pm.