Frank Palermo Podcast Transcript
Frank Palermo joins host Brian Thomas on The Digital Executive Podcast.
Brian Thomas: Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, Home of The Digital Executive Podcast.
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Welcome to The Digital Executive. Today’s guest is Frank Palermo. Frank Palermo is the Chief Operating Officer of New Rocket, where he helps guide the company’s growth strategy and strengthens its position as a leading advisor in digital workflows, AI and enterprise transformation.
He brings decades of experience building and scaling technology and consulting organizations with a career that spans software engineering, enterprise platforms, cloud data, and AI driven services. Frank is known for combining deep technical fluency with clear operational vision and for helping clients translate modern technologies into meaningful business outcomes.
Well, good afternoon, Frank. Welcome to the show.
Frank Palermo: Thank you, Brian. How are you today?
Brian Thomas: Awesome. I appreciate it. Appreciate you making the time. We’re traversing one time zone today. You’re in New York. I’m in Kansas City, so I appreciate that. Making the time. Frank and Frank, jumping into your first question, your background spans software engineering, enterprise platforms, cloud data and ai.
How does this technical range shape your approach as a chief operating officer, especially as AI becomes a cross-functional priority?
Frank Palermo: You know, it’s interesting, I kind of look at this as I’ve become bilingual in a way, in, in tech and business, so I think the advantage of this experience is you can really pressure test ideas, pressure test strategy against what’s actually, buildable what you can get in production.
I think most importantly it’s grounding these tech ideas in business value. I still view technology as an enabler of the business functions. So in the past, leading engineering teams for me has always been about channeling the enthusiasm of new tech things, even in the AI era, right? To really force them to think through business outcomes, to force them to think through value realization.
So when team shows me. A demo or pitches an AI idea. I really start to ask them to pivot, to think more about data quality, about latency, about performance, about operational support. It’s not just about the demo, it’s really about how does this now integrate into existing businesses. So leveraging your techno technology, understanding and your past, that really sharpens judgment around what actually can provide business value.
Thank you, and I appreciate
Brian Thomas: that. It’s not just looking at the, novelty of AI or a new emerging tech, you really want to make sure that it integrates into the business and it makes sense and supports the business goals. And I like what you said earlier, you’re grounding the technology into the business value.
I thought that was really interesting. Yeah, really important. Absolutely. Frank, many leaders struggle to connect emerging technologies like AI automation, workflow intelligence with business outcomes. Executives really care about what do you bridge that? How do you bridge that translation gap for clients?
Frank Palermo: Great question. And I have a running joke that executives don’t really buy AI, right? They buy faster revenue, lower cost, better experience, reduce risk, right? So, I always coach the teams to reframe this and think through this in more, these business terms. But yet there’s a lot of, experimentation.
There’s a lot of top down mandates that are coming. How do we use ai? But I really think it’s so critical to reorient the customer on business outcomes. And how do you apply that AI to really affect those, those business outcomes? So example of reframing, client came to us, Hey, hey, I need to have AI in customer service.
And we said, okay, well what does that mean? Let’s reframe that. Is it around, reducing mean time resolution? Is it boosting csat? Is it deflection? Is it reducing head count, lowering costs? And then once you have those, business value maps, you can now go back and say, Hey. Here’s where automation and AI assistance in that workflow can really move those needles significantly.
So, I, I like to think that the best AI solutions are when AI is invisible, right? So, if AI is invisible and it’s focusing more on, on the delivery of these business outcomes, I think that’s much more valuable of organizations.
Brian Thomas: Thank you and I do appreciate that what you said, executives don’t buy AI or emerging tech, but.
What they do focus on is that growing or protecting that revenue, may be regulation, business outcomes, that sort of thing. Where’s the value in that technology as far as aligning with the business? So again, I appreciate that. And Frank, at New Rocket, you’re shaping strategy around digital workflows and AI driven enterprise transformation.
Where are you seeing the biggest gaps between what companies think they need and what they actually need to modernize effectively?
Frank Palermo: It’s funny, there’s still, they’re still very much in a platform and tools mindset. So, we frequently meet organizations and they’ve, bought all, they’re involved in all the AI platforms and but they haven’t really thought through their basic foundational issues like our fragmented processes or inconsistent data.
No clear, product owners within the organizations. And so a lot of times they just think, oh, I need a new tech platform, and they want to, pivot to the next model or so I think it’s really about getting back to thinking about these platforms and the technology as enablers. And, really the first thing we think about is where’s the real value?
Unlock and what we find is this is typically embedded in how the organization is working. So, we really get into the context of those workflows. We really understand what’s behind the business intent. And you really need to do, I think, persona and journey mapping and really understand what those day in the life journeys are to identify those efficiencies.
And then think about how does data really become the enabler of these workflows. And then after all of that is done, now you can get to this point of, now where do I apply? AI, it’s really hard for AI to be successful if it’s amplifying, a broken or inefficient process or it’s amplifying, poor data quality.
So, one, one example just, in the HR context, we were brought in, Glenn said, Hey, we need to migrate off our current HR, platform. We said, okay let’s understand that some more. You know, we went in, we ma mapped their employee journey. We realized that they could get most of the value, the business value just by standardizing some of the requests on the existing platform.
And then in layering in ai, intelligent routing and knowledge management on top. So, to me, modernization is less about buying the tools and more about aligning workflows, the data and the people around, these, these, these journeys a very important part of the, uh, solution space.
Brian Thomas: Thank you, appreciate that.
Customers do like, oh gosh, I need that new tech because it’s gonna, they think maybe it’s gonna improve their, uh, metric or their business or something, but I love how you help them reframe and look at what really is the business intent here and, and where are you gonna provide most value in that example with that HRIS system that you looked at.
That’s absolutely just spot on. I think, when you have someone with a different set of eyes looking at something, you might be able to look at some alternatives, so I appreciate that. Great. And Frank, the last question of the day, looking ahead, how do you envision AI and digital workflows reshaping the modern enterprise?
What capabilities will define the high performing organizations of the future?
Frank Palermo: I believe high performing enterprises will feel really orchestrated, right? Where workflows to the right per person or even AI agent automatically, and really every one of these steps is, is assisted by AI. It’s going back to HR.
Imagine an employee onboarding request where the request approvals, access training, all flow automatically assisted by ai and that whole kind of onboarding and new hire experiences is best in class. Again, that’s a. Great example of invisible ai, but yet orchestrating a really, complicated set of, set of processes around that.
So, I think our solution approach, again, centers around three core capabilities, right? Really understanding these native workflows and how to embed ai. How leverage the operational data, right? For real time insights that guides those processes. And then lastly is more culturally where, we believe that employees that, co-create along and work alongside AI to really amplify their productivity.
I think there’s a lot of misinformation around AI as the replacement for the human worker. And really in my mind, it’s all about amplification and it’s kind of. Coworking model. So I think that the winners enterprise winners will, will move fast but responsibly, and that means governing data and the AI use, but investing in skills and continuously learning on these workflows rather than just treating this as a one-time transformation project. I think this is a new ongoing way of, way of working.
Brian Thomas: Thank you. I really appreciate you highlighting some of those things. High performing enterprises I believe will be well orchestrated as you stated. They do move quickly but prudently and a couple things I wanna highlight. You talked about really these high performing organizations having, native workflows, embedding that AI in there, but.
The human and machine co-creation I think was really important. That’s what I took away for that better output. There is a lot of, misconceptions about how AI is coming out to take everybody’s job. So I really appreciate that and Frank, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
Frank Palermo: Yeah, Brian, thank you for having me.
Brian Thomas: Bye for now.
Frank Palermo Podcast Transcript. Listen to the audio on the guest’s Podcast Page.
