Cadillac Fairview

As a Director, Technology Portfolio at Cadillac Fairview, Victoria Phan oversee the portfolio management office providing project delivery governance framework to projects and project managers. In addition she owns the entire IT budget and the annual planning process. Victoria is also responsible for IT procurement and vendor management and managing the QA testing.

What are some of the most pressing issues and developments you have noticed in the Managed IT space, and what efforts are you taking to address them?

At Cadillac Fairview, we believe in harnessing our knowledge, skills, and understanding of technical trends to assist the company's growth and competitive advantage. We offer assistance with process and tool enhancements, as well as industry best practices,powerful technological solutions, and a focus on lowering business risks. First and foremost, one of the big challenges I have noticed is the rise in cybersecurity threats. Thus, it's crucial that IT concentrates on assisting in the development and planning of a roadmap to mature the company's cybersecurity infrastructure.

We have a robust cybersecurity program and emergency response procedures in-house. We engage in tabletop exercises while collaborating with our national operations team. The next issue or development that I've seen is automation. As a result, we must minimize unnecessary and repetitive tasks and improve our efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Our IT team at Cadillac Fairview has built a hub-and-spoke model for robotic process automation, or RPA, across all business areas. Additionally, we have established a center of excellence for RPA.

Data is another hotly debated topic on everyone's minds right now. Hence, real-time data must be made available so that teams may develop and put into practice the appropriate strategies to maximize communication and engagement with their consumers, regardless of whether it is being used in data warehouses, data lakes, or data mining. We need to be more proactive than reactive and employ the appropriate data, analytical tools, and dashboards to make wise decisions. Last but not least, the launch of ChatGPT has made this a popular topic. We must ascertain the role that technology will play in this area and decide whether developments in artificial intelligence and machine learning are something we are prepared to implement or should simply be on the lookout for. We also need to be more aware of and proactive about the effects that these developments in AI and machine learning will have on our companies.

  ​We offer assistance with process and tool enhancements, as well as industry best practices, powerful technological solutions to focus on lowering business risks   

Overall, there are a lot of obstacles ahead, but we are moving towards a chance where we can overcome them thanks to full openness, trust, and shared responsibility of risks with our business partners. At Cadillac Fairview, we follow our corporate principles as a strategy to assist us to stay competitive and up to date with contemporary trends.

How do you see the evolution of Managed IT Services a few years from now with regard to potential disruptions and transformations?

When engaging with our leadership team, we place a lot of emphasis on working in conjunction with our business partners to understand their challenges and potential, while making an effort to cut out red tape whenever possible. We genuinely want to concentrate on proving the worth of offering strategic leadership and being the go-to partner for implementing digital solutions. Therefore, there is a focus on avoiding working in silos and on cross-functional interdependencies and outcomes. To stay ahead of these worries, we also keep up with trends and share industry challenges with the Cadillac Fairview executive team. We are aware of what our rivals are doing and, ultimately, what our clients want. Hence, we are shifting away from a transactional orientation to a more relational one by prioritizing end-user experiences and focusing on trust, shared results, and risks. We are moving away from being cost-driven to being more value-driven. Reduced friction points lead to faster time to market; hence self-service and automation make up a large portion of the solutions we offer. Finally, we need to understand how AI and machine learning might help our organization and what potential risks these cutting-edge transformational technologies may face.

What technological and process elements have you been leveraging to make the project successful?

We focus more on governance and process improvement. What I've discovered is that change management is a crucial component of any solution we adopt, whether it involves changes to processes or technology. First and foremost, it involves concentrating on the customer journey, understanding the current process, where we want to go, and how to deliver that delta. It also entails collaborating with change management champions to help people understand the need for the change, drive their desire for the change, and then demonstrate how to adopt it. To gradually convert and implement the change, it is necessary to first understand the needs and pain points of the client.

What would be your single piece of advice to upcoming professionals?

I recently returned from vacation, during which I trekked Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. I consider that to be a significant lesson acquired. I felt as though it would be impossible to ascend the mountain because it is so big and steep. It truly is just a matter of taking it carefully, concentrating on each step, and knowing where your next step will be. After a while, you will have scaled the mountain. So don't allow your aspirations for the future or the state of technology to intimidate you. It is a large transformational undertaking, but if we take things one step at a time, it is not insurmountable.