Tech Talks Daily

How much of your technology stack is being held together by people swiveling between screens, copying information, and quietly compensating for systems that cannot communicate?

In this episode, I speak with John Foreman, Chief Product Officer at Clio, about what he calls the "swivel chair problem." John previously served as Chief Product Officer at Mailchimp and Podium, and now helps guide product development at a company seeking to support the complete operation of a law firm.

We discuss why legal professionals have moved from understandable caution around AI toward increasingly sophisticated daily use. John explains...

Could Making Tax Digital improve the way small businesses manage their finances, or will it become another administrative burden competing for an already crowded evening?

In this episode, I speak with Caroline Duong, Head of Business Admin at ANNA Money, about Making Tax Digital, quarterly reporting, AI bookkeeping, and the reality of running a small business when one person is often responsible for almost everything.

ANNA Money stands for Absolutely No Nonsense Admin. It is an AI-powered, app-based business account and financial admin service designed for small businesses, startups, freelancers, and sole traders in the...

Who really controls your enterprise technology strategy: your organization or the vendors writing its software contracts?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Tomás O'Leary, founder and CEO of Origina, about enterprise software vendor lock in, forced upgrades, subscription contracts, and the financial consequences of surrendering control over mission-critical systems.

Tomás founded Origina in Dublin after working within the enterprise software supply chain and questioning the value customers received from traditional support contracts. He saw organizations paying substantial annual fees while experiencing poor response times, constant pressure to change versions, an...

Why are companies preparing for agent-to-agent customer service when many customers still cannot get a chatbot to answer a straightforward question?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Latané Conant, Chief Marketing Officer at Parloa, about the state of customer experience and what businesses must repair before agentic AI becomes another barrier between customers and support.

Parloa's State of Agentic CX report assessed 10,000 enterprise websites, 4,000 chat interactions, and 100 phone trees. According to the company's findings, fewer than 10% of the tested chat conversations achieved the customer's goal. Only 1% of enterprises demonstrated readiness for a...

What happens to tomorrow's leadership pipeline when employers automate the entry-level tasks through which beginners learn?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Gary Flowers, Chief Information Officer for Transformation and Technology Services at Year Up United, about AI fluency, human skills, economic mobility, skills-first hiring, and the future of entry-level work.

Year Up United prepares young adults without bachelor's degrees for meaningful careers while helping employers reach skilled, career-ready talent. Gary says the organization has over 35,000 alumni working across companies ranging from the Fortune 1000 to the Fortune 50.

Gary challenges...

Can an app approved by Apple or Google still expose your business to security, privacy, and governance risks?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Michael Covington, Vice President of Strategy at Jamf, for a conversation about the false confidence that can surround mobile security. Apple and Android provide strong protections, including app review processes, sandboxing, and device authenticity controls. However, Michael argues that a device being secure on day one does not mean it will remain secure throughout its working life.

One of the most interesting points from our conversation is...

How should finance leaders measure AI ROI when adoption has slowed and the cost of models, tokens and disconnected tools remains difficult to predict?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome Jeremy Ung, Chief Technology Officer at BlackLine, back to the podcast to discuss how businesses can move from finance AI experimentation to operational deployment.

Figures supplied for the interview show AI adoption in finance rising from 37% in 2023 to 58% in 2024, before moving only slightly to 59% in 2025. Jeremy argues that this apparent plateau reflects several pressures, including uncertainty around cost, regulatory requirements, auditability and...

What happens when an autonomous AI agent can complete thousands of actions before a traditional access review has even identified that something has gone wrong?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Alex Bovee, CEO and co-founder of C1, about identity security, runtime governance, shadow AI, and the controls companies need as humans and agents begin working together.

Alex has spent much of his career in identity and security. He and his co-founder previously worked at Okta on zero trust products before creating C1 as an access control platform capable of operating...

What evidence would convince you that an AI agent is ready to make decisions involving employment, money, healthcare, or legal rights?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Vin Sharma, founder and CEO of Vijil, about the trust gap preventing many enterprise AI agents from progressing beyond proof of concept.

Vin has spent approximately 30 years building software across security, operating systems, open source, cloud computing, machine learning, and AI. His previous work includes leading engineering at Amazon SageMaker and helping develop 11 AWS AI services.

He argues that AI agents differ...

What if employees could access sensitive business applications from personal phones without storing company data on those devices?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Jared Shepard, CEO of Hypori, about virtual mobile infrastructure, BYOD security, employee privacy, zero trust, and the growing mobile threat created by AI.

Jared's personal story deserves attention in its own right. He describes himself as a former homeless high school dropout who joined the Army, discovered an aptitude for IT, and applied what he learned to difficult technology problems in Iraq and Afghanistan. That experience gave...

Could your company be paying suppliers earlier than its competitors and unintentionally financing their advantage?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Oliver Belin, co-founder and CEO of Calculum. Our previous conversation took place around ten years ago when Oliver was working with the Marco Polo Network and blockchain was attracting attention across trade finance. His latest venture concentrates on working capital, payment terms, and the role of AI in supplier negotiations.

Oliver explains why working capital has moved higher on the agenda for procurement, treasury, and finance leaders. Companies can generate...

What if the chemistry created by neurological disease could help activate medicine precisely where it is needed?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Sara Isbell, neuroscientist and co-founder of Enabled Therapeutics, about a proposed approach to one of medicine's most stubborn problems: delivering effective drugs to diseased brain tissue without exposing healthy areas to the same activity.

Sara explains how the blood-brain barrier prevents many promising compounds from reaching the brain. When drugs do enter, they may spread across healthy and diseased regions alike, creating a difficult balance between therapeutic benefit...

Could the real reason enterprise AI projects remain stuck in pilot mode be hidden inside the company's unstructured data?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Oded Nagel, CEO of CTERA. We discuss why enterprise AI success depends on the condition, location, permissions, and business value of the data sitting underneath models and agents.

Oded defines AI-ready data as information that is searchable, classified, and permission-aware. Many enterprises have petabytes of files distributed across offices, edge locations, legacy network-attached storage, and cloud platforms. Before introducing AI, leaders need to know what information...

What happens to the value of human judgment when AI makes execution faster, cheaper, and available to almost everyone?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Eric Wang, Vice President of Product and AI at QuillBot. Eric has worked in artificial intelligence since 2006, with previous leadership roles at Turnitin and Chegg. He now works on AI products used by millions of people to develop ideas, improve their writing, conduct research, and create new forms of content.

Eric argues that AI's workplace impact extends far beyond automation. These tools are changing how people...

Has enterprise AI finally reached the point where impressive demonstrations are no longer enough?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Bruce McMahon, Chief Product Officer at CallMiner, about what he describes as the industrialization of AI: the move from experimentation and excitement toward repeatable processes, measurable ROI, better customer experiences, and technology that can operate reliably at enterprise scale.

Bruce explains why business leaders are increasingly asking a much simpler question about AI: how is this going to create value?

Drawing on CallMiner's experience analyzing hundreds of thousands of...

What happens when an AI agent is compromised, manipulated, or simply does something nobody expected, but already has permission to access your most sensitive systems?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Geoffrey Mattson, CEO of SecureAuth, about why securing enterprise AI requires businesses to think beyond protecting models and start paying much closer attention to identity, authorization, access control, and what AI agents are actually allowed to do.

Geoffrey argues that AI agents present a different security challenge from traditional software. Conventional applications can be tested against relatively predictable behavior. AI...

Companies are spending billions on GPUs, data centers, foundation models, and AI infrastructure. But what happens when the network connecting all of it cannot keep up?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Avi Freedman, co-founder and CEO of Kentik, five years after our previous conversation. Avi has been operating large-scale networks since the 1990s, including more than a decade at Akamai, and brings a rare combination of founder experience and hands-on knowledge of how the internet actually works.

We discuss why network performance is becoming an important factor in determining the...

Is AI really causing widespread job losses, or are a small number of announcements creating a much larger narrative?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Marvin Pohl, chief data scientist and cofounder of Clarecast, about AI layoffs, quiet restructuring, predictive workforce intelligence, and the responsibility that comes with forecasting company growth.

Marvin's career began in physics and physical chemistry. After completing his PhD in Germany, he worked at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley before moving into data science at BASF. He describes how his role changed as generative AI entered the...

What happens when an AI agent is authorized to make a payment, but nobody can verify the wider agreement behind it?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Zor Gorelov of Blue Language Labs about the infrastructure businesses may need as AI agents move from answering questions to negotiating, approving, purchasing, coordinating, and settling commercial activity.

Many current business processes depend on human coordination. People reconcile spreadsheets, chase signatures, confirm deliveries, review exceptions, and resolve disagreements between systems. This work often remains invisible because employees absorb the ambiguity through emails, calls, and...

What separates an embedded finance partnership that changes customer behavior from an integration nobody would miss?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Rory Herriman, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operations Officer for Zip's US business. Rory works across product, technology, operations, and business strategy, giving him a broad view of what happens after the API connection is complete and real customers begin using the service.

Rory challenges a common understanding of embedded finance as placing one financial product inside another company's experience. Customers rarely wake up wanting embedded finance. They want...

What happens to creator loyalty when somebody delivers the work, attracts an audience, and then waits weeks to be paid?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Rob Israch, President at Tipalti, about the payment infrastructure supporting the creator economy. Platforms may be able to add thousands of creators quickly, but the systems behind onboarding, tax collection, approvals, global payouts, communication, and reconciliation often struggle to keep pace.

Rob cites research suggesting 87 percent of creators have experienced late payments. For a creator, payment is a direct test of whether a platform values...

What happens when an enterprise AI agent can retrieve thousands of data points but cannot understand the customer, decision, or business moment in front of it?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Boris Bialek, Vice President of Industries and Global Field CTO at MongoDB. We examine why the enterprise AI conversation has become more professional as organizations move beyond demonstrations and begin putting agentic systems into production.

Boris argues that many companies do not have a shortage of data. Their problem is turning scattered data into information and then into usable...

What happens when a warehouse management system believes stock is present, but nobody can find it on the warehouse floor?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Oana Jinga, co-founder of Dexory, who oversees the company's commercial strategy and product roadmap. Dexory has developed autonomous mobile robots capable of scanning inventory at heights of up to 18 meters while creating a continuously updated digital view of warehouse operations.

The company says its robots have scanned one billion locations across 12 countries. Its customers include Maersk, DHL, Samsung, GE Appliances, Stellantis, GXO Logistics, and C...

What can Formula One and football teach businesses about building customer relationships that continue long after a single event?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Ben Lewis, Vice President of Marketing at Infobip, about the company's work with AI-powered sports companions and what those experiences can teach customer experience leaders in every industry.

Ben explains how Infobip worked with TGR Haas F1 Team to create RaceMate, an AI companion available through WhatsApp and Apple Messages for Business. Fans can access team information, driver histories, race schedules, trivia, personalized content and interactive...

Late payments have become so common that many businesses simply accept them as part of commercial life. But should they?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Pat Bermingham, founder and CEO of Adflex, about why late payments continue to cost the UK economy an estimated £11 billion every year, why thousands of businesses fail because of cash flow pressures, and how technology could help change payment behavior rather than simply respond to it.

Pat argues that late payments are rarely an administrative accident. In many industries they have become an informal financing m...

Most AI conversations begin with productivity. Joanna Pachnik thinks that's the wrong place to start.

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Joanna Pachnik, founder of Blueclip, about why AI is changing far more than the speed of work. It's changing how businesses create value, what customers are willing to pay for, and what competitive advantage will look like over the next decade.

Drawing on her experience leading global supply chain transformation projects at Ernst & Young and Mars before founding Blueclip, Joanna argues that knowledge is becoming increasingly accessible through AI. Research...

What happens behind the scenes when you dial 911, and is the infrastructure ready for AI, satellite messaging, video, and precise location data?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I'm joined by John Snapp, VP of Technology at Intrado. John has spent around 23 years working with cellular, location, and 911 technologies. He explains how a mobile emergency call is located, routed through a dedicated network, and directed to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point.

We discuss where AI can provide practical support inside emergency communications. Translation can help telecommunicators understand callers without waiting for an interpreter...

When organizations review their cybersecurity posture, printers are rarely the first systems that come to mind. Yet they often account for around 20% of network endpoints while receiving, storing, processing, and transmitting sensitive business information every day.

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I welcome back Jim LaRoe, CEO of Symphion, to discuss why printers and other connected IoT devices have become one of the most overlooked areas of enterprise cybersecurity and why AI-powered attacks are raising the stakes for organizations that continue to ignore them.

Jim explains how many businesses continue to treat printers...

What happens to digital asset ownership when the cryptography proving that ownership can no longer be trusted?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Yoon Auh, cofounder of BOLTS Technologies, about quantum computing, blockchain security, and the need for crypto agility. Yoon brings an unusual perspective to the subject. Before moving into applied cryptography, he spent years building and operating high performance trading systems at firms including Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Geode Capital, and Magnetar Capital.

Yoon explains that blockchain ownership ultimately depends on digital signatures and public keys. Most major blockchain...

What prevents a successful AI experiment from becoming a dependable production system that delivers measurable business value?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Ed Macosky, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Boomi, about AI pilot purgatory, integration, governance, model selection, token costs, and the technical skills businesses may need as adoption grows.

Ed leads Boomi's product and engineering teams while also using AI tools inside his own organization. That gives him a view from both sides: creating technology for enterprise customers and applying it within active product development workflows.

...

What must happen before a business can trust AI agents to detect and resolve operational problems without waiting for human intervention?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Josh Clay, Regional Vice President of Solution Engineering for Dynatrace in the UK, about autonomous operations, AI observability, fragmented telemetry, business outcomes, and the growing pressure to control token and data costs.

Josh has spent much of his 11 years at Dynatrace discussing the road toward autonomous operations. The earliest version involved reducing the time organizations spent inside IT war rooms. He remembers calls with 30...

How can businesses secure AI agents that read sensitive information, update systems and communicate with other agents on behalf of employees?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Sachin Nayyar, founder and CEO of Saviynt, about AI agent identity security and the controls businesses need before autonomous systems enter production.

Saviynt manages over 100 million identities for over 700 customers. Sachin explains how enterprise identity has expanded beyond employees to include partners, applications, machines and autonomous AI agents.

An AI agent creates a different access problem because it is both an identity...

What becomes possible when enterprise computer vision no longer depends on expensive GPU infrastructure?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Glenn Jocher, founder and CEO of Ultralytics, about YOLO26, CPU inference, edge AI, open vocabulary vision, deployment economics, and the practical work required to move computer vision from a promising pilot into production.

Glenn's route into AI began inside the U.S. intelligence community. He worked with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency on particle physics applications, attempting to detect and track antineutrinos.

Antineutrinos are extraordinarily...

What can private companies learn from government caseworkers about adopting automation and using data more effectively?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with David Turner, General Manager and Senior Vice President of Government Services at Equifax Workforce Solutions, about public sector automation, data modernization, and the people responsible for delivering social services.

The conversation begins with a surprising finding from an Equifax Government Services study of over 500 U.S. government employees. Every respondent expected efficiency to improve during the following year, while 95% believed automation would free time for higher value, human centered...

What happens when an AI experiment becomes a production service that your employees, customers, and daily operations depend upon?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Brian Klingbeil, Chief Strategy Officer at Ensono, about AI infrastructure resilience, operational dependency, FinOps, legacy modernization, and the growing pressure to prove that enterprise AI investments are producing meaningful returns.

Brian has been speaking with major enterprises through Ensono's Executive Advisory Council. Three years ago, many participants were experimenting with proofs of concept. Today, they are being asked to present AI projects that are already in...

What happens when an autonomous AI agent makes a financial decision using inaccurate, outdated, or poorly synchronized data?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Marcin Kaźmierczak, cofounder of RedStone Oracles and Credora Ratings, about why verifiable data is becoming so important to financial AI agents. RedStone originally developed its oracle infrastructure to supply smart contracts with reliable information from hundreds of sources. The same principles are now being applied as AI agents begin analyzing markets, recommending allocations, processing payments, and executing trades.

Marcin explains what a blockchain oracle does and w...

What if a restaurant could identify a margin problem while the ingredients were still being unloaded, rather than discovering it several weeks later?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with David Cantu, CEO of Craftable, about AI restaurant back-office technology, margin intelligence, inventory management, purchasing, invoice automation, and the continuing importance of human hospitality.

David has spent decades working in restaurants and technology. He describes an industry dealing with staffing difficulties, rising leases, food inflation, lower traffic, and relentless margin pressure. David cites a National Restaurant Association study indicating that 40% of restaurateurs...

Why do so many enterprise AI initiatives begin with impressive demonstrations but struggle to produce measurable business value?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Dom Selvon, CTO and value partner at Valiance, about enterprise AI ROI, outcome-based consulting, build versus buy decisions, proprietary data, ontologies, and governance.

Valiance is an AI-native consultancy that charges against client outcomes rather than hours worked. Dom explains why his "value partner" title is deliberate. The company begins by identifying the financial or operational result a client wants and connects its own compensation with achieving that...

What does a modern contact center need to deliver when the person reaching out may already feel anxious, embarrassed, and unsure where to turn?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Chris Lovell, service delivery lead for StepChange Debt Charity's contact center and product owner for its Genesys Cloud platform.

StepChange supports hundreds of thousands of people facing financial hardship each year. Chris explains that approximately 40% of its clients receive Universal Credit, over 60% rent their homes, and many are dealing with an additional vulnerability alongside debt.

That context makes the...

What does it really take to build an AI-ready enterprise when your data is fragmented, teams operate in silos, and years of technology decisions have created complexity that no large language model can magically fix?

In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Raymon Ohmori, Senior Principal Software Engineer at Valiantys, and Jiecheng Dong, Senior Software Engineer at Valiantys, about the work that goes into enterprise AI adoption and why successful AI transformation begins long before companies deploy agents, copilots, or autonomous workflows.

Using Valiantys' work with Mercedes as a case study, Raymon...