Lisa Morgan, Freelance WriterApril 22, 20257 Min ReadFirn via Alamy StockEffective technology leadership today prioritizes people as much as technology. Just ask Angelic Gibson, CIO at accounts payable software provider AvidXchange. Gibson began her career in 1999 as a software engineer and used her programming and people skills to consistently climb the corporate ladder, working for various companies including mattress company Sleepy’s and cosmetic company Estee Lauder. By the time she landed at Stony Brook University, she had worked her way up to technology strategist and senior software engineer/architect before becoming director, IT operations for American Tire distributors. By 2013, she was SVP, information technology for technology solutions provider TKXS and for the past seven years she’s been CIO at AvidXchange. “I moved from running large enterprise IT departments to SaaS companies, so building SaaS platforms and taking them to market while also running internal IT delivery is what I’ve been doing for the past 13 years. I love building world class technology that scales,” says Gibson. “It's exciting to me because technology is hard work and you’re always a plethora of problems, so you wake up every day, knowing you get to solve difficult, complex problems. Very few people handle complex transformations well, so getting to do complex transformations with really smart people is invigorating. It inspires me to come to work every day.” Related:Angelic GibsonOne thing Gibson and her peers realized is that AI is anything but static. Its capabilities continue to expand as it becomes more sophisticated, so human-machine partnerships necessarily evolve. Many organizations have experienced significant pushback from workers who think AI is an existential threat. Organizations downsizing through intelligent automation, and the resulting headlines, aren’t helping to ease AI-related fears. Bottom line, it’s a change management issue that needs to be addressed thoughtfully. “Technology has always been about increasing automation to ensure quality and increase speed to market, so to me, it's just another tool to do that,” says Gibson. “You’ve got to meet people where they're at, so we do a lot of talking about fears and constraints. Let’s put it on the table, let’s talk about it, and then let’s shift to the art of the possible. What if [AI] doesn't take your job? What could you be doing?” The point is to get employees to reimagine their roles. To facilitate this, Gibson identified people who could be AI champions, such as principal senior engineers who would love to automate lower level thinking so they can spend more time thinking critically. Related:“What we have found is we’ve met resistance from more senior level talent versus new talent, such as individuals working in business units who have learned AI to increasingly automate their roles,” says Gibson. “We have tons of use cases like that. Many employees have automated their traditional business operations role and now they're helping us increase automation throughout the enterprise.” Making AI Fun to Learn Today’s engineers are constantly learning to keep pace with technology changes. Gibson has gamified learning by showcasing who’s leveraging AI in interesting ways, which has increased productivity and quality while impacting AvidXchange customers in a positive way. “We gamify it through hackathons and showcase it to the whole company at an all-hands meeting, just taking a moment to recognize awesome work,” says Gibson. “And then there are the brass tacks: We’ve got to get work done and have real productivity gains that we're accountable for driving.” Over the last five years, Gibson has been creating a learning environment that curates the kinds of classes she wants every technologist to learn and understand, such as a prompt engineering certification course. Their progress is also tracked. Related:“We certify compliance and security annually. We do the same thing, with any new tech skill that we need our teammates to learn,” says Gibson. “We have them go through certification and compliance training on that skill set to show that they’re participating in the training. It doesn't matter if you’re a business analyst or an engineer, everyone's required to do it, because AI can have a positive impact in any role.” Establish a Strong Foundation for Learning Gibson has also established an AI Center of Excellence (CoE), made up of 22 internal AI thought leaders who are tasked with keeping up with all the trends. The group is responsible for bringing in different GenAI tools and deep learning technologies. They’re also responsible for running proofs of concept (POC). When the project is ready for production, the CoE ensures it has passed all AvidXchange cybersecurity requirements. “Any POC must prove that it's going to add value,” says Gibson. “We’re not just throwing a slew of technology out there for technology’s sake, so we need to make sure that it’s fit for purpose and that it works in our environment.” To help ensure the success of projects, Gibson has established a hub and spoke operating model, so every business unit has an AI champion that works in partnership with the CoE. In addition, AvidXchange made AI training mandatory as of January 2024, because AI is central to its account payables solution. In fact, the largest customer use cases have achieved 99% payment processing accuracy using AI to extract data from PDFs and do quality checks, though humans do a final review to ensure that level of accuracy.  “What we’ve done is to take our customer-facing tool sets or internal business operations and hook it up to that data model. It can answer questions like, ‘What’s the status of my payment?’ We are now turning the lights on for AI agents to be available to our internal and external customer bases.” Some employees working in different business units have transitioned to Gibson’s team specifically to work on AI. While they don’t have the STEM background traditional IT candidates have, they have deep domain expertise. AvidXchange upskills these employees on STEM so they can understand how AI works. “If you don't understand how an AI agent works, it’s hard for you to understand if it’s hallucinating or if you're going to have quality issues,” says Gibson. “So, we need to make sure the answers are sound and accurate by making the agents quote their sources, so it’s easier for people to validate outputs.” Focus on Optimization and Acceleration Instead of looking at AI as a human replacement, Gibson believes it’s wiser to harness an AI-assisted ways of working to increase productivity and efficiency across the board. For example, AvidXchange specifically tracks KPIs designed to drive improvement. In addition, its success targets are broken down from the year to quarters and months to ensure the KPIs are being met. If not, the status updates enable the company to course correct as necessary. “We have three core mindsets: Connected as people, growth-minded, and customer-obsessed. Meanwhile, we’re constantly thinking about how we can go faster and deliver higher quality for our customers and nurture positive relationships across the organization so we can achieve a culture of candor and care,” says Gibson. “We have the data so we can see who’s adopting tools and who isn’t, and for those who aren’t, we have a conversation about any fear they may have and how we can work through that together. We [also] want a good ecosystem of proven technologies that are easy to use. It’s also important that people know they can come to us because it’s a trusted partnership.” She also believes success is a matter of balance.  “Any time you make a sweeping change that feels urgent, the human component can get lost, so it’s important to bring people along,” says Gibson. “There’s this art right now of how fast you can go safely while not losing people in the process. You need to constantly look at that to make sure you’re in balance.” About the AuthorLisa MorganFreelance WriterLisa Morgan is a freelance writer who covers business and IT strategy and emerging technology for InformationWeek. She has contributed articles, reports, and other types of content to many technology, business, and mainstream publications and sites including tech pubs, The Washington Post and The Economist Intelligence Unit. Frequent areas of coverage include AI, analytics, cloud, cybersecurity, mobility, software development, and emerging cultural issues affecting the C-suite.See more from Lisa MorganReportsMore ReportsNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also Like