VIDEO | Molex, CDO: Legacy Infrastructure Inhibits Business Capabilities

(US and Canada) Mike Giresi, Chief Digital Officer, Molex, speaks with Derek Strauss, Chairman, Gavroshe, about technology drivers influencing the digital transformation route at Molex, product lifecycle management, his professional background, technology drivers’ challenges, and strategies for rewarding outcomes.

Giresi states that Molex is a leader in the electronic componentry and connector business. He says the organization’s ability to engage with customers in their valued areas underpins the company’s digital transformation.

He asserts that Molex follows a business-operating, model-based transformation focused on the customers’ expectations. The customers’ needs are addressed through product life cycle management and creating innovative solutions and meaningful implications to end-customers.

Giresi points out that in B2B, everyone is an end-customer. An organization turns strategic in its data use when products are delivered faster to the market. This also helps the stakeholders to learn customers’ whereabouts while designing products to be brought to market.

Product development and product life cycle management are critical in Molex’s digital transformation route. Molex brings value to the marketplace through engineering capability and innovative skills, enabling the company to provide better solutions than its competitors, Giresi adds.

Giresi shares that he has been fortunate to work in technology throughout his professional career. He worked for companies with outstanding leadership that valued the customer engagement and experience model. He says it boils down to data and its availability to fulfill the organizational promise.

Giresi discusses the organizational challenges faced by key technology drivers. He says legacy infrastructure was an inhibitor while driving capabilities needed on the business front. ERP was at the heart of technological strategy versus following a data-centric approach.

The strategies to overcome these challenges start with enabling product life cycle management and supply chain areas. To achieve that, he says, people need to work collectively to understand how their inputs implicate processes downstream or upstream. 

Giresi adds that since ERP is not configurable, they laid out strategies around data to connect people to the real asset of data. He aims to take the global leadership team through a design thinking exercise, to focus on data-driven outcomes and Molex’s portrayal in the market. In the course, he highlights a vision — One Molex — that puts the customer at the organization's center while giving equal importance to employees.

In conclusion, Giresi states that everything is about data. The goal is to exhibit and emphasize using data differently so that people can witness its implications and outcomes.