Biotech Bytes: Conversations with Biotechnology / Pharmaceutical IT Leaders

The Future Of Biotech IT: AI, Cybersecurity & Low-Code Platforms | Steve Eichorn

• Steve Swan • Episode 31

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The Future Of Biotech IT: AI, Cybersecurity & Low-Code Platforms | Steve Eichorn #biotech #aiinbiotech #cybersecurity

How is AI transforming the future of biotech today, not just in labs but in IT departments too? Please visit our website to get more information: https://swangroup.net/

In this episode, I sit down with Steve Eichorn, CIO of Cytiva, to explore how artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and low-code platforms are reshaping biotech from the inside out. 

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:
✅ How AI is improving biotech operations and clinical processes
✅ The growing importance of cybersecurity in an AI-driven world
✅ Why low-code development is shaping the future of IT and business collaboration

Steve shares his unique journey from finance to leading global IT and explains how AI is accelerating drug development, why low-code tools are changing how teams build solutions, and how security is now a core part of innovation. 

We also talk about how tech leaders are breaking down data silos, building more collaborative cultures, and preparing for the digital future of healthcare.

If you’re in biotech, tech, or healthcare, this conversation is full of insights you won’t want to miss.

Links from this episode:
✅ Get to know more about Steven Swan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/swangroup 
✅ Get to know more about Steve Eichorn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-eichorn-he-his-him-68b8105

Steve Eichorn [00:00:00]:
Unstructured Data represents about 80% of a data in a typical organization like ours. That's a lot of data out there. And so yes, we should be looking to go after that data, get good controls around who owns it, who maintains it, and then put it into a structured format in a data warehouse or the like. We shouldn't stop that, but we should also recognize that as we're doing that, we have more and more technology that's capable of looking at unstructured data and going across the two. So the combination of the 2 is where AI plays its role. Role? The governance of how we use that data, how we ensure the integrity and the quality of that data.

Steve Swan [00:00:42]:
I'm Steve Swan. Join me for the next episode of Biotech Bytes with Steve Eichorn, VP of IT and CIO of sa. We discuss AI security and a low code environment. And Steve shares with us some of his favorite bands from the 90s. Join me. Thanks Steve. Real quick, at the beginning, at the top, I, I love to just ask folks, you know, tell me a little bit about you, meaning how did you get to where you are again?

Steve Eichorn [00:01:07]:
Thank you for having me, Steve. Pleasure to be here. So I, I began my career in finance, actually I, my dream was to work on Wall Street. I went to college for accounting, got a degree in accounting, moved to New York City and I went to work right away in the investment banking industry, working as an analyst. And I was fascinated with the industry, as I always was, and it was very interesting and very challenging, but I knew it wasn't where I wanted to stay long term, very, very quickly. And I think in hindsight I would say the individual nature of the work there versus a more team oriented collaboration environment was probably a driving force for moving me away from my original Wall street ambitions. After that I spent a few years working as a controller at a international furniture and textile company based in soho. And they had an international footprint in terms of manufacturing and commercial operations.

Steve Eichorn [00:02:05]:
In that role I started to gain an appreciation for complex supply chains, sales forecasting, pricing models and I got into developing mathematical models that helped me to improve business outcomes and that got me into developing some rudimentary automation applications and I got a taste for programming. That really got me into a little bit of appreciation for technology in general and realizing how the right IT infrastructure and critical is critical to those business success, those business outcomes. After that I spent a few years in management consulting and I did about seven years I spent at two companies there I cut my teeth on large scale ERP implementations. I worked across all the platforms, SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft was able to work on some engagements actually in the financial services industry. So that was actually very, very appealing to me. And after, as I said, about seven years, a lot of travel, a lot of moving around, I ended up accepting a role with ge and that role was really, they were in the beginning stages of a major ERP project at that point in time. I did go to ge, assuming that, you know, I'd be able to stop traveling a little bit. My wife and I had met and got married.

Steve Eichorn [00:03:25]:
We're trying to have a kid and so I really wasn't looking to stay there too long, but I wanted to at least settle down a little bit, to at least be able to have a kid and be able to start a little bit of a life there. Go back to consulting was where I was probably going to head. We didn't go live with that first project for a good five years. We were supposed to go live the year before. So it was a very, very big complicated. It was the biggest pay and benefits platform ever implemented at that point in time. And to be honest, I just kind of fell in love with where I was working in GE. So I spent 18 years with GE working in various roles, moved into different opportunities, growing and developing in various roles of increasing responsibility and leadership.

Steve Eichorn [00:04:10]:
And so it was a really pivotal move in my career. And then in 2020, when GE sold the BioPharma business, I went with the new company. Our new company is Sativa and I've been the Vice President of information technology and CIO since October of 2023. And this has been an amazing journey. So it's really, really thrilled to be working at a company like Sativa. This is a company with that really, really leads in the therapeutic space in the life sciences industry. And that's pretty much my story, how I got here today.

Steve Swan [00:04:47]:
So tell me real quick or for the folks that don't know, Sativa, total employee size and then your group within Saitiva.

Steve Eichorn [00:04:54]:
Yeah. So Sativa, we have about 14,000 associates operating across, I would say, I think it's about 41 countries. We have about 70, 78 sites across those 41 countries. We're a $7 billion business. My associate base, our RIT organization is 450, roughly 450 associates, and we're based very, very globally. I have a big presence in Poland where we have a lot of very, very strong technology talent that we tap into Asia, the United Kingdom and as well as Sweden and then several places in the United States where our various sites are Located.

Steve Swan [00:05:34]:
Very cool. Yeah. And what I've seen just as a sidebar over the years, folks that find their way into large organizations as a CIO like yourself either did come up the ERP route or the infrastructure route, you know what I mean? Because they span across, you know, the whole organization. So anyway, cool, that's good.

Steve Eichorn [00:05:56]:
ERP has always been a, it's been a great journey. I think it gets you into the, really into all tenants of the organization.

Steve Swan [00:06:02]:
It does, it does. And your centerpiece is going to be, which it usually is finance. Right. And then everything sort of tentacles out from there. Right. So anyway, so now based on where we are now.

Steve Eichorn [00:06:15]:
Right.

Steve Swan [00:06:15]:
So SA is, you know, large global organization doing great. What's been some of the, what would you say are some of the technologies or maybe even not some of the technologies, even some of the processes over the recent past, you know, since you spun out, right, you spun out in 2020. I mean, certain things have really been taken off recently. You know, if you've seen some of my podcasts, a lot of AI and such. But where would you say we are and, and what do you think we got to think about here as far as technologies that are, that are here or that are coming that are going to help us as a biotech industry?

Steve Eichorn [00:06:49]:
Sure. I think I'll say there are three key trends that come to mind. Obviously AI is out there. I'll also talk on security. I think that's something that is trending and trending in different directions, I think. And then the other one is, I think the low code application program. I think this is an area that I think is starting to expand. So I'll talk on AI first.

Steve Eichorn [00:07:17]:
So obviously artificial intelligence and machine learning are playing key roles in the life sciences industry as a whole. Drug developers grappling with escalating costs, complexities in clinical trials, navigating these challenges. You know, it requires a focus on improving efficiencies and optimization of the development process across all the trial operations, data analysis, regulatory compliance, clinical quality and safety. I think when I think of AI advancements in this space, the integration of advanced platforms, the proliferation of intelligent automation, and I would say the advancement of digital twins, enabling simulation modeling and really the ability to access real time data and analytics for better informed decision making in the cybersecurity space. You know, there's multiple tenets in here. You know, first off, malicious actors are using AI to accelerate the spread of disinformation. We know that obviously can cause significant damage to an organization, to its customers, to its associates. Enterprises, obviously we need to figure out, we need to use the right technologies to protect ourselves against disinformation and synthetic media.

Steve Eichorn [00:08:36]:
Quantum computing has a potential to break today's cryptography depending on where we see that, particularly that line happening and then identity in and of itself. ChatGPT experienced rapid acceptance because of its seemingly human interaction. It really blurred the lines between humans and machines and it often feels like a natural conversation, which is great. But the role of identity and authentication is going to become increasingly more and more important. I think we'll see obviously an increase in legal and regulatory actions around that as well. Identity protections, content moderation and privacy, all the things that we're experiencing. Well, just the third one is low code application programming. And I think of those, AKA citizen development, you know, democratizing IT work.

Steve Eichorn [00:09:35]:
Functions outside of IT are becoming more and more populated with business technologists. They have programming, they have architectural skills and with the right framework and guardrails in place, we can enable more deeper self service capabilities. And I think that enables us to tap into capacity beyond our own IT budgets. And that to me that's the composable business which I firmly believe the strategy will start to move away from large, complex monolithic systems to much more modular, flexible, self contained application building blocks and that actually represent those business capabilities. I think that's part of exploiting the application services and functionalities. So those are the three areas.

Steve Swan [00:10:21]:
So a decentralized, more federated model. Do you think we're going to that?

Steve Eichorn [00:10:24]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I do. I mean our ERPs that we put in and I, you know, coming from an ERP background, we really had one objective was to really keep unstructured data out and, and to be able to simplify how we get after our data. And you know, we, we, we live in a world now of very, very unstructured data. So some of those, some of those ERP platforms are, they're almost like lead pipes in an old house from a plumbing standpoint. And I think that's where we start to decouple the monolith.

Steve Swan [00:11:00]:
I haven't even thought about it from that angle. Boy, that's a, I don't even know where to go with that one. Boy, that's huge. No, cause that's so big. It's just, you know, so, and if.

Steve Eichorn [00:11:10]:
You think about the origin of it, Steve, I mean, you know, it started out, you know, SAP was very good in manufacturing, Oracle was very good in financials, PeopleSoft was very good in human capital capital. But the real value proposition was regardless of Their specialty. You put everything in one and it's all about one. And people ask me sometimes, is your strategy a 1 ERP strategy? And I always respond, 1 ERP is not a strategy, it's a tactic.

Steve Swan [00:11:43]:
So now, well, let me ask you a question then. I mean, like you said earlier, you referred, you know, you made a living off the, you know, the centralized model and you see it go in the other, you know, it is what it is, right. How have you, A, started to move there, B, started to get your organization ready for that, or is that not something you've started to do? You just see it going there?

Steve Eichorn [00:12:06]:
Yeah, well, I think this really comes down to data. And, you know, organizations are constantly evolving, especially ours. If we have an acquisition, we have a new set of applications that we have to bring into our landscape and we have to start to lay out a technology roadmap to where we would move those applications. But there's always, I think everybody, and I've always had a roadmap that gets us to a more simpler state, a more isolated, okay, we're going to have everything here and we're going to be able to tap in. We're going to have a data model sitting in these types of data lakes and data structures. We never get there though, completely. We are always dealing with legacy platforms and different systems that we're integrating in various times based on risk, based on business priorities. So our ability to deliver more nimble, quick, very, very business differentiating, focus, application solutions.

Steve Eichorn [00:13:11]:
I think that's one of the things that I think AI is enabling us to go after and that starts to democratize the data and that the key is to get the data out of those silos in a way that we can use them for the right ways to use them and not be basically kept hostage to one set of pipes that we're operating to.

Steve Swan [00:13:35]:
Yeah, well, AI, I mean, you know, right. So AI, it relies on data. It's all about the data. If you don't have data to put, you know, I, you've seen some of my podcasts, you talk to some of these other, you hear some of these CIOs, and you know, if you don't have the data, you're, you know, you could build the shiniest, greatest, coolest, most awesome thing. You don't got data to put through that, you're, you're in trouble. And if you can't get it out of SAP or you can't move it from PeopleSoft or a green screen, JD Edwards or whatever it is, right. You're in trouble. It's, it's, it's not going anywhere.

Steve Swan [00:14:05]:
Yeah, that system still works, but you got to get that data. And, and all I hear about is data, data, data, data, data. And now I'm starting to hear from the portfolio companies, from private equity or, or private equity that they want to own the whole data chain. And they see it as, which I don't think is far off, they see it as like the, the, the petroleum of our generation. If, if you can, if you control the data, you're going to control the gasoline that's going through those pipes that you're talking about.

Steve Eichorn [00:14:34]:
You know, it is an absolute asset. And it's, you know, if I think about data, I think about usability, quality and integrity and our job in it ultimately is orchestrate the delivery of data from point A to point B without compromising its integrity. You know, we work hard to ensure that data is not created, altered or accessed by any person or any machine that's not authorized to do so. And that's where I say these ERP systems that we spent a lot of time building to keep unstructured data out, to keep things simple. Today data is becoming much more ubiquitous, accessible, usable in unstructured formats. It puts a lot of pressure on us ensuring the quality and integrity of the data in a new way than being able to simply rely on those big platforms. And our challenge is to keep up with that transformation of technology. Right.

Steve Swan [00:15:33]:
And they can't handle images, they can't do any of that stuff. Right. They're figuring it out. But you know, now why. So let me ask you a question and you may not know the answer to this. I don't know the answer, that's why I'm asking. You know, I talk to a lot of folks and I have certain folks and I'm talking three, four, five billion dollars organizations where, you know, they don't even have, you know, any sort of chain of command as far as who's responsible for our data. Right.

Steve Swan [00:15:57]:
So, you know, you, you talk to the, the DLP folks and you talk to the folks that are mid level and they, they're doing the security work and such, but they want to know who's up the chain and everybody turns around, I don't know, you know, so when they want to get something done or they need somebody's sign off, nobody's there to do it. Why, why hasn't that happened? That just seems a little nutty to me.

Steve Eichorn [00:16:22]:
It's a great question, Steven. I feel that it's something that All IT professionals are. I don't think you'll find a CIO that does not have a data governance objective in their plan. And where it gets a little bit interesting is where the ownership of that data lies, because data goes. And, you know, and again, as data becomes much more, or as we become recognizing the value of the unstructured data that's sitting out there and understanding that, putting the old ways of looking at data ownership, having a data steward, data ownership, product owner around unstructured data, very, very difficult because unstructured data is very dimensional. It changes as it goes through the processes. So I think the process owner becomes a little bit more important. And this is the growth in active metadata.

Steve Eichorn [00:17:24]:
It's evolving very, very rapidly, and it's used to connect a lot of different silos together. And we've got new technologies with inference engines that are getting better at discovering data sets and patterns and data across the enterprise. Unstructured Data represents about 80% of the data of the data in a typical organization like ours.

Steve Swan [00:17:46]:
I bet it's at least.

Steve Eichorn [00:17:49]:
Yeah. And so, you know, yes, we should be looking to go after that data, get good controls around who owns it, who maintains it, and then put it into a structured format in a data warehouse or the like. We shouldn't stop that, but we should also recognize that as we're doing that, we have more and more technology that's capable of looking at unstructured data and going across the two. So the combination of the 2 is where AI plays its role, the governance of how we use that data, how we ensure the integrity and the quality of that data, because they're two different words. And it. We can ensure the integrity of the data has not been accessed by somebody that shouldn't have accessed it or altered it. But we are not going to be the person that's going to be able to say, is the data right? Is it a 2 versus a 3? So ensuring that quality is where we have to build a data governance program that brings all of the business ownership to the table and then what their responsibility is. And it's a journey.

Steve Swan [00:18:57]:
Oh, it certainly is. It's a huge journey. I'm not sure if you saw the podcast I did with Bob McGowan at Regeneron, but I asked him, I said, bob, you know, what would you tell me as a young, young spuddling kind of CIO coming into an organization that, you know, what do you. What do you know now that you didn't know then, Bob? And he said, he said, that's easy. Get Your data ready. He's saying the same thing you're saying. You know, he said, he said, you know, he didn't come out and say it, but, you know, kind of inferred, you know, 2015, 2016, we're good from that point forward. Anything before that, we got 30 years worth of data we got to get through.

Steve Swan [00:19:29]:
I said, really? He said, and it's, it's just, it's a huge, huge, huge task. And then, I don't know, naively, I said, what about buying the data? He said, we still got to go through that. We can't trust that. To your point, who's been through it? We don't know what, what that's all, what that's all about.

Steve Eichorn [00:19:41]:
So it's a ton that it's AI ready data. And I think the what, and this is the rep, the, the, the rapid changes that we're working through in our, in our industry is what was AI ready data six months or what is today was not AI ready data six months ago.

Steve Swan [00:20:01]:
Right.

Steve Eichorn [00:20:02]:
And that's without doing anything to the data. So that's how rapid I think the technology is getting to be able to draw inferences off of data sets. And that's where we as an IT have to stay very, very much in tune and ahead of that, because we can do more with data every day that goes by. We can do more with unstructured data based on technology.

Steve Swan [00:20:25]:
That's good. That's good. Yeah. One of the things that Raj Advani mentioned on our podcast was he talked about from a data perspective as a cio. He said he'd love to hear or see. He said he feels that we could get more juice out of more of our data. And I said, what data specifically? He said, EMR and EHR data. He said, I don't think as a, as a group we're doing much with that.

Steve Swan [00:20:49]:
You know, we could, we could draw, to your point, more inferences out of that. We, there's probably things hiding in there that we just don't know, you know, and to your point, if we are in fact, because I, I, I wasn't aware of that.

Steve Eichorn [00:21:01]:
Right.

Steve Swan [00:21:01]:
So if we are in fact getting to the ability of, of every day, increased ingestion of this data where we can actually utilize it, that's awesome. That's huge. That saves my, my daughter's graduating college data science major. She worked for a company for several years, but she was cleaning up data using her Python and her Java. You know, a million millions and millions of people's buying pattern she was selling it to folks that do the drop down ads on all your, on all your social media, you know. But yeah, no, no, no, you know, the need to do all that cleaning is like you said, fallen by the wayside, at least more and more every day, you know, and, and she, she always says, she's like, dad, I don't want to be a heads down programmer behind some closed door. I'm like, if you're a heads down programmer behind some closed door, you're going to be in another country that's not here. So to your point, you know, you're going to be interacting with the business, but you're going to know the technology.

Steve Swan [00:21:49]:
It seems like a lot of companies are getting to the point, my wife works for Bloomberg, where they're getting to the point where everybody's got to know Python, everybody's got to know this, everybody's got to know that, you know, that kind of thing to be hired.

Steve Eichorn [00:22:01]:
And that's my point on citizen development. I think putting the guardrails in place to enable that is a powerful thing that we have to embrace. You know, I also think sometimes we are, we look for data owners, the best experts that know the data very, very well. Sometimes that can take us off track though, because we may not know what data is important to us until we start working with it. So our ability to again, contextualize data out of the unstructured environment, sometimes there may be data out there that we don't realize has value behind it until we start to really pull it together and start to put some models in place. So sometimes a very, very structured data governance policy around data owners can keep us from seeing the things that we may be blinded to.

Steve Swan [00:22:56]:
And maybe that was part of what Raj's point was, is that, you know, we're not accessing this ea, EMR and EHR data. Maybe it had to do with, you know, the governance around that data. I don't know, maybe that's why we're not accessing that data. I have no idea. Yeah, because that's, that's a different kind of data and that's got a different level of, of whatever you want to call it, access, SL, security around it. Right? You know.

Steve Eichorn [00:23:19]:
Yeah, and, and you know, not to pontificate too much on governance, but unfortunately sometimes governance can go in places. We put controls in place and then we forget about why we put them in place and then we put all the governance around protecting that control and we forget this is why we, you know, obviously in regulation, regulatory environments, with especially With Sarbanes Oxley, I think every CIO runs into blocks on being able to do things because we say, well, this is a Sarbanes Oxy requirement. Well, no report is a Sarbanes oxy requirement. That report is a control and sometimes we forget why we put it in place. And that's where, that's where data ownership can start to. Real, real restrictive ownership can sound good from a governance standpoint, but it can also impede the ability to move forward.

Steve Swan [00:24:13]:
So as far as, as far as taking that unstructured data. Right. And making it useful for you and your team, I'm just about to ask what technologies are they developing? What's out there that's making this easier, better for all of us? I've never asked anybody at specific technology, but I'm super curious because I don't know, I just think that's so. I don't know why the whole data thing just lights me up for whatever reason. I have no clue.

Steve Eichorn [00:24:40]:
It's an interesting question. I think there's great technology for building machine learning ops capabilities. I think certain ones are very, very good at being more agnostic across where you're hosting your data from or where are you hosting your processing from. And I think that's important. So I think that there's. When I think of the big technology companies out there, it's easy to feel really good about Microsoft and feel really good about Oracle and what they're doing with oci and really good. But these technology companies are also competing with each other. And as they compete with each other, they're coming across spaces that we're operating in and that makes it difficult to really kind of lock in on single vendors.

Steve Eichorn [00:25:35]:
We do have to be a little bit more flexible. You look at CrowdStrike and you look at Microsoft, they're very, very complementary, but they're also very, very competitive in a lot of areas. You know, we've applied data solutions for protecting our data with by spending more money on certain technology vendors knowing farewell that some of the new E5 capabilities that Microsoft has introduced is probably going to eliminate that. But they're not there yet. So our vendor strategy also becomes much more fluid as we go through and how much we lock in there. But I think that's also where low code application development comes into play. So I consider us a multi hosting shop. We have aws, we have Azure, we have oci and we're very good at being able to move to each one, depending on cost, depending on need.

Steve Eichorn [00:26:43]:
And I want to be able to have that flexibility and not lock in.

Steve Swan [00:26:46]:
With one vendor sure makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Now, now you just brought up low code again. And when I hear low code. Right, because one of the things you brought up early on was security too. I see low code and security kind of that. I don't, I don't want to say working against each other, but they're definitely, you got to keep an eye on one. How do you, how do you balance that out?

Steve Eichorn [00:27:05]:
Yeah, and they do work, they do conflict with each other.

Steve Swan [00:27:11]:
Conflict. There you go.

Steve Eichorn [00:27:12]:
You have to have a strong governance structure in place in general for citizen development to really work, which allows you to push some of the activities out into the other business functions. That way you can concentrate on other areas. There's a fine line before it turns into shadow it, when it turns into shadow it, that's when you have the problems that obviously security, but it's cost, it's a lot of different things. It's technical debt. I think it's a matter of setting up the right framework and guardrails and also expectations for. If you're going to be a citizen developer, you're going to be a Python coder, even though you're sitting in a finance function. We need to set the guardrails and understand what are your capabilities there and how far can you go in terms of that. We're not going to just open up the shop there, but I think, you know, it really comes down to your.

Steve Swan [00:28:09]:
Governance model and so you have to keep, I don't know, you as a group, your group. You got to at least keep one eye on that to, to just. Yeah, okay, all right.

Steve Eichorn [00:28:17]:
Oh, we keep more than one eye.

Steve Swan [00:28:19]:
But you know what I'm saying. Yeah, you gotta, you gotta keep an eye on that because otherwise that could get crazy, you know, so. All right, so question for you. You know, one of the things I like asking folks tell me about, I'm going more soft. Soft now. Right, about your group. Right. So I'm applying for a role at, you know, to work for your group.

Steve Swan [00:28:43]:
Why do I want to work for you and why do I want to work for your group? What makes, what makes you, you, you folks, you know, guys and girls better than, you know, some of the other big shops that I may be thinking about.

Steve Eichorn [00:28:55]:
Sure. So I'll break it down to three things. You know, first, you know, working at Sativa, you know, you are at the forefront of providing solutions to transform human health. You know, our customers are undertaking life saving activities ranging from fundamental biological research to developing innovative vaccines. New medicines, cell and gene therapies. But secondly, our IT organization doesn't operate like a back with a back office mindset. There are two narratives that my leaders know I'll have a strong reaction to. The first one is when we refer to the business as something separate from it and we are just as much a part of the business as any other function.

Steve Eichorn [00:29:38]:
We don't think of our job as simply about applications, network, software development. It's about keeping sativa safe, compliant, competitive, so that our customers can develop therapeutics needed to transform human health. That's, that's our job. We focus on quality, customer satisfaction, delivering those products on time. The other term that I take exception to is the term user. I really don't like that word. And my folks know when they say this was a user error, I correct them. That was an associate error.

Steve Eichorn [00:30:14]:
And so the term user implies a single Persona based population. You know, if I think about how the healthcare industry is moving to more personalized medicine, I look at the associate experience as a very Persona based approach. You know, a finance professional. No matter how many dashboards we build for them and everything, they're going to take big chunks of data, bring it down into Excel and they're going to chunk through and everything. So they need a machine that has the firepower to be able to process that versus a service technician who needs light on the go, dependable equipment, reliable connectivity options. So I'm very, very associate focused on that. And then finally, our organization is made up of a lot of people who came from other business functions like myself. We're both an exporter and an importer of talent to all various functions in the business.

Steve Eichorn [00:31:06]:
If you want to be successful in sativa it, you need to be able to think, speak and act in ways that align to finance, legal, hi, hr, operations, sales. And we bring innovative tools to the table to solve those business problems in a partnership across the functions. And we're always looking for ways to improve and develop our own competencies around the business strategies.

Steve Swan [00:31:28]:
Yeah, so like I said earlier, that's great. I have a daughter that's just graduating college, right. Getting into it. And when she tells me I don't want to be a coder sitting behind the door, I'm like, no, no, no. The folks that are the strongest are the ones that they get the technology. You got to learn the technology. You know, you got to learn how to do the math before you use the calculator. Right.

Steve Swan [00:31:49]:
And then you got to learn the business. The folks that do the best are 50, 50 match. They don't talk technology when they're in front of the business because they don't want to hear that you got to talk business in front of them. She goes, yeah, I want to solve business problems. We'll see. You know, she's actually in the process of interviewing with Viva, I think right now, somebody like that.

Steve Eichorn [00:32:06]:
That's awesome. You know, it's interesting. My daughter is also graduating college as well, and she's a cell and molecular biology major and she's going into the pharmaceutical industry and the research and development out here in, in, in Cambridge very, very soon. She grew up under an it, Dad. I was always trying to encourage her to get into programming. I said, you'll always, It'll. It'll help you regardless of where you go. And she always pushed back on me.

Steve Eichorn [00:32:32]:
Well, she did an internship a couple years ago at a major pharmaceutical company and she told me that the first day she was supposed to go into the labs, they weren't able to get her in there because they hadn't gotten the training in place yet. So they gave her a Python book and they said, you should learn a little bit about Python. And now she's become a Python programmer and she uses in her work. Yeah, every day. So it wasn't going to come from me, but. No.

Steve Swan [00:33:05]:
Well, if it came from you, she would have never picked it up.

Steve Eichorn [00:33:07]:
No, no, exactly.

Steve Swan [00:33:09]:
We don't know anything, remember?

Steve Eichorn [00:33:12]:
Yeah, exactly.

Steve Swan [00:33:13]:
Yeah. I had to beg, borrow, and steal 10th grade to get her to start that first Java class. I mean, I can't tell you what I went through. I just knew. I just knew, you know, because in eighth grade we're sitting there watching the some election and she's looking at all this data on the screen. She keeps turning to me, she's like, dad, with all that data, if I had the right tools, I could figure out who's going to vote for who, where, their ages, all this stuff. I go, honey, you're talking data science. She looks at me, she goes, I don't know what you just said, but anyway, I could figure this out, you know, so that's when I knew I did, you know, and it was a lot.

Steve Swan [00:33:42]:
But yeah, now she does her Python and stuff. Like I mentioned earlier, my wife works at Bloomberg and every employee that they hire is, knows Python, like, regardless of what you're going to be doing. So that's where we're going, you know, that's what we got.

Steve Eichorn [00:33:55]:
Yeah, absolutely.

Steve Swan [00:33:56]:
Anyway, Cool. That's cool. That's fun. Yeah, it's. It's it's neat to pass it along, you know, to, to the kids and see where they're going. Right. So how about you as a leader? You know, so you talked about your organization, how you built it out. I mean, obviously your group reflects you right, as a leader, you know, but if, if there's anything you want to add in there about how you feel you manage uniquely compared to others, that's great.

Steve Swan [00:34:20]:
But there's nothing you want to add that's. That's fine, too.

Steve Eichorn [00:34:23]:
My team, I think, understands when, you know, there's a couple of things that I don't negotiate on. Integrity is number one, and honesty. And, you know, I, I expect, and I always operate with, with a very, very, you know, focus on that. And I expect it from others. It's just a given. But I also, you know, I, I recognize the importance in, you know, we have to be able to make mistakes in order to learn and develop and growth. I've actually been known to give objectives to some people for development needs. I want you to make a mistake this year, not an integrity mistake.

Steve Eichorn [00:34:58]:
I'll never have tolerance for that, and I don't have a very, very high tolerance for a second repeated mistake. But if you don't make a mistake, you're not going to learn. And so I usually try to flush that out fairly quickly and try to give an environment where we celebrate mistakes that lead to new developments and new discoveries. So if I, you know, if I, if I would say, I think, you know, making sure that I'm pretty clear on the things that I don't compromise on, and I do open up and allow for. What I try to do is allow for a lot more creativity. Because I think we're in an industry that has. Ultimately, we have to transform ourselves constantly, otherwise we end up in the back office. And the back office really shouldn't be in a company.

Steve Eichorn [00:35:48]:
That's not our key. A back office should go to the technology companies. So that constant evolution, you really gotta be prepared for that if you're in it. So I'll continue to drive that curiosity and challenge.

Steve Swan [00:36:02]:
Yeah, well, so the integrity thing, I mean, you know, I pay a lot of attention to Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Right?

Steve Eichorn [00:36:09]:
Yep.

Steve Swan [00:36:10]:
I've been to the shareholder meetings and, you know, Warren talks about that all the time. You can make mistakes. Don't cost me a shred of integrity. You know, that's, that's a problem. That's a huge problem for me. But other than that, you know, if you make an honest mistake, let's talk about it, let's figure it out what went wrong, you know, and then, you know, to dovetail off what you said about, you know, failure. Right? Failure is, it's part of it. And you don't learn.

Steve Swan [00:36:31]:
You know, I always told my kids, you, you're not going to learn. You know, when you're, when you're playing a sport, you're not going to learn by playing the crappy teams and, and beating every team, 12 nothing all the way through the season. You're going to learn by losing, you're going to learn by making mistakes. You're going to learn by, by what happens there. And you know, I think that athletes in today's world, you know, they have learned that and I think they're, they're great folks to look at when, when we're hiring, you know, because they're used away from maybe the football and basketball players because they're always used to winning, you know, it seems to me. But you know, you know, the, the, the, whether it's the, you know, the softball players, the baseball players, the whatever, the wrestlers, I don't know. You know.

Steve Eichorn [00:37:09]:
Well, I, you know, the other, I think the other thing that I, you know, I would say that I am very, very focused on is that collaboration too. You know, going back to my thinking about that individual version. I'm, you know, I, when I see a silo forming, I will disrupt it very, very quickly. I will move people around between teams just to disrupt those silos, to bring the, some level of silo and the ability, silos and the ability to get things done, I get, But I have very, very little tolerance for silos that prevent people from really communicating and collaborating across each other.

Steve Swan [00:37:44]:
Right, agreed. You know, and again, I'm going to stick with my sports analogy right there. Right. The athlete learns about collaboration. They learn about good teammates and good co workers, bad bosses and bad coaches. Right. You know that, all that stuff and, and they learn that quick and they learn that early if, if as a parent you don't get in the way, which I never did. I let them.

Steve Swan [00:38:05]:
You did. We would role play. They want to talk to a teammate or a coach, but that was it. The coach from 12 years on didn't. 12 years old, didn't even know me, you know, and it's, it's, it's. I think it's good training for them. They got to do it, all that stuff. So anyway, I could talk about that all day long too, so.

Steve Swan [00:38:19]:
Well, that's, I mean, that's pretty much all I Got. Is there anything else that you think we should cover before I have one last question that I like asking my guests, but before I get to that, anything more that you want to cover before we get to the more I guess I could call a personal fun question.

Steve Eichorn [00:38:34]:
Yeah, I mean, I'll just, you know, kind of, you know, Todd, a little bit about what we're doing. A little bit more insightiva in this. You know, we've been, you know, and we're excited about this. You know, we've introduced, you know, chatbots and virtual assistants now on multiple functions and these things are, you know, are starting to help us to show, to access information and speed up response times. Our software engineers, you know, are all leveraging copilots to accelerate coding and improve software development. And that's obviously a big, a big deal. In hr, we're exploring AI powered service agents to provide HR anytime, anywhere, type SC support. And in marketing, we use generative AI extensibility to make content creators more efficient, respond to customer inquiries.

Steve Eichorn [00:39:22]:
And these are some of this, the initiatives we're just starting on to get in. But it's, you know, I would say that's, that's one thing at Citiva we are really starting and I'm not just saying in it, we are really starting to embrace and look at AI and the opportunities there. And I think our associates are getting very, very excited about it as well.

Steve Swan [00:39:41]:
Yeah, there's a lot, there's so much there, you know, and if you've seen some of my podcasts, you know, it kind of runs the range, Steve, you know, where some folks, they're locking it down. Other folks are saying, well, if I lock it down, they're going to do this over here. You know, some folks are saying let's make it wide open. Some are saying it's not my decision. Some are saying, you know, create, create an HR model around your AI and your chatbots because it's got to be treated like an employee. It's got to be put through the same checks and balances, you know, quality checks, as if it were an employee. You'd fire an employee for saying some of the things some of these chatbots are saying. So, you know, there's so much, there's so much going on there.

Steve Swan [00:40:21]:
It's, it's, we're still in the wild west. I think we're harnessing it a little bit, but we're definitely still in the wild west, right?

Steve Eichorn [00:40:27]:
We are. And I think we're going to continue for, for a while. Honestly, Steve, for my Same analogy on big systems. We want that one solution that solves it all. We always want that. We're not going to find it. We're going to have to be more again, Persona based, unique, personalized in terms of, you know, we shouldn't go overboard on that. We should keep things standard where they should be standard, where we're not going to really differentiate our competitive advantage of other businesses.

Steve Eichorn [00:40:54]:
We're not going to. Having a unique general ledger is not going to put us ahead of our competitors. However, there are differentiators in our business that do and we should focus on those and we should be able to deploy solutions there without having to, you know, to bring everybody on board for it. So I think that, I think that's going to continue and that pace of change.

Steve Swan [00:41:17]:
Well, so not long ago somebody was, I'm sorry, now I'm rewinding here. Not long ago somebody was talking to me about, you know, on the research side from an AI perspective, each organization almost having their own algorithm that they would start the process with. And, and I said, because first I said to this guy, I said well if we start using AI as we get closer to humans, right, the FDA is going to have to get involved so we're going to have to validate these things. He said, I don't know. He said, then he says to me, well maybe each group or each company has its own given algorithm that's already validated. I said well then I don't know, does that make sense? I don't know if that makes sense. Now you're trusting now the government's going to have to get involved with AI. So is, are we even, is that a thing? I don't know.

Steve Eichorn [00:42:01]:
Yeah. And, and, and again I go back to my, my point on government and regulation a lot of times creates layers of non value added things that you have to work through. And by non value added they may not be even applicable to the control that was put in place originally. They kind of, sometimes they build up like a bees nest over time. You see an old 200 year old farmhouse that's become unstable because of a bees nest that's layer and layer and layer has grown. That's what a lot of the regulatory areas. And you know, that just takes basic good requirement definition to go in and kind of, you know, pull back and say well this is the control that we're actually trying to, to put in place here. Does this actually do it? Is this a way to do it a little bit quicker? Can we use AI and different automation techniques to do it quicker and still get the authenticity around how we ensure that that control is being met.

Steve Eichorn [00:42:56]:
So I think that AI will also help us move through those quickly. But we have. That's the old things that we still have to stay to is we've got to challenge a requirement. Why is it there fundamentals.

Steve Swan [00:43:08]:
We don't want to fall into a process just for process sake. We want to fall into it because we're accomplishing what we need to accomplish, whatever that is. Let's keep rechecking that and make sure we're getting there. Yeah. Because otherwise you're doing a process just to do a process. And that's not fun for anybody. So. Well, thank you very much.

Steve Swan [00:43:24]:
That was great. Awesome. So one final question I ask all my guests. I'm a music guy, love music. My wife and I empty nesters now with the one graduating. And so we, we drive around, fly around, whatever. We go and see live shows and live bands and such. It's just one of the things we like to do.

Steve Swan [00:43:43]:
So my question to all my guests is, you know, their favorite live. If and if you haven't seen anything, that's fine. But favorite live band or act that you've seen at any point in in your life that you can think back on that you would say, you know, that was the best live band I've seen. Or maybe it's your favorite band and you've seen them several times and you just love seeing them, you know, or. Or maybe you don't have one. So I just like throwing that out there. It's a little personal, fun thing, gets folks to understand a little bit about you and who you are.

Steve Eichorn [00:44:10]:
So I. And I've been to a lot of concerts of a lot of different genres and I would have to say the one that always sticks out in my mind the most. I lived in the city when I was in consulting in the 90s. It was the Tibetan Freedom Concert on Randall's Island. And I'll never forget because we had the Beastie Boys, we had Radiohead, we had U2. It was an incredible lineup. And I just managed because he had two stages and I just managed to time it perfectly. You didn't know which band was going to come on at which stage or anything.

Steve Eichorn [00:44:49]:
But I was up against the stage for U2. I was up against the stage for Beastie Boys. It was just, you know, the best of best, best day concert day of what I would say that would be the one that I was also at Woodstock 99 too. But.

Steve Swan [00:45:04]:
But I heard that Was great.

Steve Eichorn [00:45:06]:
Freedom Concert came out, I think, a little bit better.

Steve Swan [00:45:09]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the. The Freedom Concert, I think was. What's the word? I wanted more oiled.

Steve Eichorn [00:45:14]:
Right.

Steve Swan [00:45:14]:
It was a better machine. I think the 99. Woodstock got a little crazy, right?

Steve Eichorn [00:45:18]:
It did. I was out of there before the. The. The craziness started, but that's a whole other experience.

Steve Swan [00:45:24]:
Yeah, that's what I heard. It got nuts. That's fun. That's great. Yeah, some of those. Some of those big concerts can be good and bad, you know, so. But that's awesome. I was at.

Steve Swan [00:45:32]:
We did see here now last year. Not last year, the year before. Down in Asbury with. When the Foo Fighters were there and Greta Van Fleet and Cheryl Crow and, you know, a whole bunch of them were there. It was good stuff. And I was at. In 85. I was at Live Aid in Philadelphia.

Steve Eichorn [00:45:50]:
Oh, wow.

Steve Swan [00:45:51]:
I was a. I was a junior in high school. And. Yeah, my parents. I don't even know if they knew I was there. I don't think they did.

Steve Eichorn [00:45:57]:
Yeah, you know, it's. I'm a. I'm a. I'm a product of the 80s too, but I. When it comes to music, it's the 90s. I love the 90s.

Steve Swan [00:46:05]:
Yeah. I'm with you. 100. So. Just giving you an idea. So I told you we go and see bands. Seen Pro Jam a bunch of times recently. I'm really upset that I never saw Nirvana.

Steve Eichorn [00:46:14]:
Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:46:16]:
Great cover bands that float around doing Nirvana tunes. I saw Soundgarden once at Irving Plaza in. In New York City in 2016. 15. But yeah. No, 90s are. I gotta.

Steve Eichorn [00:46:27]:
I was disappointed to see CBGB's closed. It's been many times watching some bands in there. Pretty cool.

Steve Swan [00:46:34]:
My daughter lived a half block. She was right around the corner. She was on first and street and second Ave. Oh, she was a half block from there. Yeah. Yeah, that's.

Steve Eichorn [00:46:40]:
What a great. What a great place.

Steve Swan [00:46:42]:
Yeah, it's a good spot. It's a real good spot. So you spent a lot of time in the city seeing the Allman Brothers and things like that. So that was. Anyway, well, Steve, thank you very much. That was great.

Steve Eichorn [00:46:52]:
Great. Thank you, Steve. Pleasure being.