


“I felt like the company had this innate sense of knowing when I would get bored, They kept me.interested by giving me so many opportunities.” “If you are a business leader, you understand the tech enough to know what it can do, and if you are a tech leader you can see the business problems it will help solve,” he says.ĬBRE’s Dhandapani, who also spent almost 18 years at Capital One, was among those who benefited from working in many different areas, including auto finance and direct-to-consumer lending. Sam Deshpande, who spent almost 18 years at Capital One and is now at health insurer Humana, says his experience using analytics at scale at the financial-services company is shaping how he thinks about certain things in his current role, such as developing more expansive digital health records that make it easier for doctors to spot information that can improve treatment outcomes for patients.ĭeshpande notes that Capital One’s habit of rotating staff regularly between different parts of its operations has given its alumni a broad perspective on where technology can have an impact. It’s really because of the focus on the customer,” says Somer Hackley, the CEO of Distinguished Search, who has recruited executives for Capital One and also placed former employees into IT positions at other companies. “That helps them in positioning themselves …It’s not just about doing data science because everybody else is. ” What’s in your data?įormer employees also stand out because they’ve been trained by the company to think constantly about what’s best for customers based on insights derived from data.
CAPITAL ONE HOW TO
“They learn how to do it at Capital One and how hard it is. “I think folks are compelled by transformation,” says Alexander. This intense race has drawn more CIOs out of their traditional, keep-the-lights-and computers-on roles and morphed them into strategic leaders who wield huge budgets and significant influence in the C-suite-a dramatic change that’s been underlined by their recent heroic efforts to help companies weather the impact of the pandemic.Ĭapital One’s early start in the race and its deep commitment to code-driven change means its former executives’ experience is especially valuable. Plenty of other big companies are now rushing to digitize their own operations.
CAPITAL ONE SOFTWARE
“That meant developing our own software engineering talent and reimagining traditional IT operating models.” As part of that reimagination, Alexander, who also appears on the CIO Next list, has moved Capital One’s computing operations entirely into the public cloud and has rolled out automated methods for producing and deploying software. “Early in our digital transformation we made a commitment to invest like the very best technology companies do,” explains Rob Alexander, who has been the company’s CIO since May 2007. It has used this expertise to develop things such as Eno, a virtual assistant that helps protect customers against fraud, and Auto Navigator, a service that simplifies car buying and financing. It’s also in the vanguard of developing advanced tech such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, having received 500 worldwide AI patents and with applications for many more under consideration. Today, it’s a software powerhouse with a technology staff of almost 11,000 people, 85% of whom are software engineers.
