I attended this session at LTT with a real vested interest and enjoyed what the panel had to say.  The panel was well moderated by Angel Investor Vasile Tiple and he was joined by two panelists in the form of Tom Slate (Director of Projects & Innovation, Shoosmiths) and Whitney Stefko (Director and Senior Counsel, Ford Motor Company).

To set the scene, Tom suggested that it was mind blowing looking at the marketplace and all of the tech companies and tools that are now out there.  As a result, Shoosmith are focusing on consolidation of the things they already have.

Whitney pointed to the fact that data is more important now than ever.  Firms have had secure filing cabinets in the past but now we can actually see what data we have and what we should be doing with it.  If your foundation is sand, everything else cripples.

Tom mirrored an earlier panel around the need to move fast and avoid inertia when it comes to trying platforms.  He did caveat this by suggesting that Shoosmiths are only looking at 12 month contracts to avoid being locked in.  

Whitney suggested that that taking data ownership back not only makes the business stronger but it also saves on cost as many legacy systems are charging for access to data and data migration.

With technology now the baseline and it being commoditised more than ever, human currency is now back in play and is extremely powerful.  Whitney suggested that we could stop evolution at any point if we want.

Tom moved the conversation on towards  choice technology when compared to must have.  A document management system must be used at a law firm but Gen AI is still a choice technology.  The confidence in using it also has to go up and there is a sustainability argument at play when the barriers to entry have been removed.

Whitney believes that the model will move back towards consumption based technology models instead of the subscription based model used for many years.  At Ford, they have looked at building things internally but the economics have to make sense and they have realised very quickly that it costs a lot!

Toms parting piece of advice was for firms to change the way they are buying technology and to be wary of the low barrier to market especially with AI.  

Whitney backed up her opening point around data suggesting that technilogy will come and go but you must focus on your data.