Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
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IMAGE CREDIT GOES HERE 38 S C T / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 sponsorship, marketing, operations and IT divisions, and we meet because we all have to be in lockstep and rolling in the same direction." Given the evolution of the roles of chief information and chief technology officers, it is perhaps unsurprising that many companies are consolidating their tech leadership functions under a single dedicated executive. "It definitely helps having a single leader in charge of the technology area as far as the execution of it, but at the same time, if you don't have that strategic partnership with other key leaders in the organization you're doomed to fail," said Jim McCarthy, chief information officer of VEREIT. Many information officers say the next big thing in tech is "intelligent automation," also called "machine learning" by some. "In cybersecurity, we're using artificial intelligence to determine what's normal on our network," said McCarthy. "Anything that is anomalous, we can … segregate so that it doesn't negatively impact the rest of the company." VEREIT is conducting an intelligent-automation pilot program that en- ables computerized extraction of data from traditional retail leases. "For the next 10 years, intelligent automation is going to be bigger than the Internet," said McCarthy. Keeping up with advances will remain a challenge for in- formation officers, given the amount of new venture capital piling into commercial real estate, says Sayward. "There are hundreds of tech startups, and in some regards, I'm actually somewhat competing with them in getting the mind share of our agents — they see some sexy new thing from a startup and run off to do it, but it isn't necessarily going to scale across the entire enterprise." Still, the challenges are proving to be surmountable as chief information officers gain influence in the C-suite. "When I am in conversations with our executives, I'm not going to tell them that we're moving a data center to Pitts- burgh — they don't care," said VanPatten. "They want to know how we are driving the business forward." n For the next 10 years, intelligent automation is going to be bigger than the Internet