Javier Polit, CIO of Procter & Gamble, Joins Quickbase Board of Directors to Help Others Enable Faster Innovation at Scale

We are excited to announce that Javier Polit, a global chief information officer (CIO) thought leader who has held roles as CIO for Procter & Gamble and The Coca Cola Company, has joined the Quickbase Board of Directors.

Polit has been the global CIO of Procter & Gamble since 2017 where he worked to guide the company’s digital transformation and find new applications of existing and emerging technologies in order to help bridge the gap between IT and the business. He has an extensive background in IT having held several senior IT positions at major corporations, including The Coca-Cola Company and Office Depot.

Polit brings a unique perspective to the market in a time when CIOs across a variety of industries are looking for practices and platforms to enable faster process innovation at scale. Having applied Quickbase to enable citizen development at Fortune 100 scale, Javier brings the real-world experience and expertise Quickbase customers need to safely, securely, and sustainably enable citizen development to perfect the processes that make their businesses unique.

We recently spoke with Polit about his interest in joining the Quickbase board, the greatest challenges currently facing IT leaders and CIOs, and the role citizen development will play moving forward.

Why were you interested in joining the Quickbase board?

Quickbase is [one of the] toolsets that we use in the Procter & Gamble enterprise today. I think Quickbase is certainly one of the industry leaders and can really drive that change that is needed across the business enterprise today more so, and probably at a faster pace, than some of the other competitors.

[Low-code] is an area that is growing quite quickly, and an area that requires a lot of governance. I can tell you that today there are a lot of companies with more than one toolset and that there are not good practices around governance nor awareness in regards to what is being built, and poor visibility hinders velocity of solutions to travel to other business verticals and geographies. So, there is a huge opportunity here to improve operating frameworks and models to further improve the productivity, speed and agility of companies.

Why do you think now is the time for CIOs to start embracing low-code platforms like Quickbase?

When you look at the enterprise and what is happening in the ecosystem today, and as companies try to become more and more competitive, building capabilities at the edges of the business and equipping those resources with tools like Quickbase is going to definitely create step changes.

As businesses now try to be more efficient on the edges in regards to insights and go-to-market strategies, toolsets that enable business leaders — not just IT members — is going to be a competitive advantage. And those that get out of the gate faster are certainly going to have an advantage.

You’ve been an outspoken advocate for citizen development. Why do you think citizen development is the future for enterprise business?

As digital fluency continues to elevate across the business leadership and the business functions, you need to now start equipping them with tools, not just tools like Power BI to have different visuals, but tools that enable them to build specific business and market solutions. You don’t have enough IT resources across the enterprise to do all this kind of work and you can’t support the edges of the business from a central location. Those monolithic approaches do not yield agility.

From your perspective what are the greatest challenges IT leaders and CIOs are facing in the coming year?

Some of the greatest challenges that we have stem from a lot of different areas. Data governance is going to be a big complication especially again going back to the edges of the business and having multiple repositories, and how we ingress and egress data into the enterprise, how we harmonize it and then push it into our strategic hubs or data lakes. That’s going to be a big challenge going forward. The sources of data in the near future will continue to increase, data does create competitive advantages but only when managed correctly.

Another challenge is how we accelerate capabilities in the edges of the business. A lot of people talk about that and your IT skillsets such as business analysts and data scientists are going to be working hand in hand with the business, but you also need to provide toolsets and education and training to business leaders so they can manipulate data that they have access to and create insights as well.

The challenge around that is that some of the old guard will say that these new models will continue to create more silos in the enterprise by allowing citizen development to happen and I would argue against that. It’s not that you are creating more silos, you just need to enable them, and you just need to be able to build a framework and governance model that allows this work to be successful.

What is the impact you are hoping to make by joining the Quickbase board?

To create more awareness across the IT eco-systems and business enterprises. To me, this is a simple illustration of the future or work and what it will look like. Naturally there is a value proposition that I hope to provide to Quickbase in regards to how the toolset can better enable capabilities for companies, so that companies can be more productive and effective.

These new platforms have to be a win-win proposition: It has to be a toolset that enables companies to be more competitive and more agile as well as help the company be successful.

Is there anything else you want to add about the need for CIOs to start embracing low-code platforms?

CIOs need to be aware of the everchanging landscape and have dynamic enterprises and dynamic teams, with growth mindsets and platforms like Quickbase. They must constantly be sensing the industry for solutions that continue to disrupt and enable competitive advantages which help businesses drive velocity to market, grow market share and top and bottom line growth.

There are still some CIOs that are stuck in the past that think these kinds of capabilities just impact the IT function in a negative manner and that’s simply not the case.