Bask Iyer is both chief information officer (CIO) and chief digital transformation officer for VMware. That means he’s responsible for how the company uses technology—including its own—both internally and across its ecosystem.

At VMware, Iyer has built a reputation for IT excellence. He’s known for his relentless focus on delivering streamlined IT experiences to VMware employees. In fact, he’s so focused on it that he calls it a “customer obsession.” And by emphasizing not only the technology but also the people, process, and culture, Iyer has created an IT organization with a unique culture that attracts top tech talent.

Iyer also knows what VMware customers want because he is a VMware customer. In addition to using the company’s own products internally, he was also a VMware customer for 15 years before joining the company. As a longtime end user of VMware’s products, his insights and feedback help VMware’s product development teams create new software that offers the flexibility customers want.

We sat down with Iyer to learn why it’s essential that IT organizations focus on the customer experience—and how, by doing so, IT can drive company growth.

You’re currently the CIO and chief digital transformation officer at VMware. Can you describe what you do in both those roles?

As CIO, I’m responsible for both the strategy and the implementation of all technology within VMware. That means I not only make sure all IT systems are implemented, but I also serve as the voice of the customer for our products, which we use at VMware.

On the digital transformation side, we are reimagining what we do and how we use tech to do it, both internally and externally. Over the last five years since I’ve joined VMware, we’ve grown by almost 50 percent, from 18,999 to more than 28,600 employees. That’s a lot of growth and a lot of change. Whenever we make a leap in growth, we must put processes and systems in place that give us the structure to scale. But the risk is that we can calcify around processes and systems over time. So we must continually reinvent ourselves and our processes and systems to support the next generation.

Internal colleagues—VMware employees—are very important to us. And our IT organization wants to understand how we can enhance our colleagues’ experiences so they have the best systems, processes, and tools to do their jobs. That’s another topic that a digital transformation officer must keep top of mind.

It’s also part of my job to listen to external customers and understand what’s working—and what’s not. My team works very closely with customers to resolve issues when they arise.

Internally and externally, we are “customer-obsessed” in the best way possible.

What are some of the biggest hurdles facing IT departments?

Our challenge is: How do you change the tires when the car is running? To be competitive, companies must quickly integrate and gain value from new technologies. But in doing so, they don’t want disruption. Disruption is not healthy for business. So we have to find a way to help customers integrate new technologies without disrupting operations. And that’s the beauty of VMware technology: Businesses can integrate it and accelerate business without disruption.

Take the digital transformation process of a startup. In a startup, everyone wears a lot of hats. The CEO is also the CFO. You multitask and run around to get it all done. And that’s fine when you’re a startup, but it’s not scalable. So as your company grows, you have to figure out what systems and processes allow you to scale. That means knowing where you should standardize your offerings and processes and where it’s valuable to customize.

What would you say is at stake for companies in terms of getting their IT right?

The first thing is that customers have a cycle of opportunity for digital transformation—about three to four years. And that’s a long time these days. My recommendation is to bet on multiple horses. VMware’s software enables you to have the flexibility not only to continue running whatever you’ve already invested in, but also to flexibly integrate innovations as they’re coming on the market.

The second thing is employee experience. At VMware our focus in IT has been “How can I delight the employee?” So when you come into work for your first day, you get your laptop and it works the right way. You can use any laptop, any phone, any device that you want, connect to any company device and service, work remotely, and get all the rich collaboration experience you expect from an office. So that’s another big area of focus we do internally and want to do for our customers: Enable great colleague experiences.

How do you get the relationship between people, process, and technology right?

You must create an environment and a vision that attracts people with a technical mind-set. If you create an environment that attracts, recognizes, and keeps competent technical professionals, you’ll also naturally stay on the cutting edge of technology. That’s because individuals with strong technical skills and knowledge bring good technology with them.

When it comes to process, prescribing technological practices is more important than selling a certain piece of software. For example, sometimes companies get bogged down in their own business operation processes. People don’t want to send email. They want to sit down with product teams and describe what they want and then go to the drawing board, sketch it out, and actually develop it. That’s how software products were originally developed. But along the way, processes like email started bogging down development. By thinking critically about how our customers can be better software companies, we help their business operations move at the speed of IT—which is key to business success.

What role does an IT department generally play in emerging technology?

When creating emerging technology, a company needs to know what use cases make sense. It’s not just about creating new technology, it’s whether the new technology can generate value. Who would know better how to create enterprise value with technology than an IT department?

At VMware our IT team asks, “Would this be something that people would want to use?” Applying this rule, we’ve experimented with several Internet of Things ideas that could generate value. For example, imagine a world where you don’t have to use badges to get into buildings. We tested this concept by putting a badge in a phone case and pretending that the phone had an app to unlock doors. People saw it and asked, “Hey, can I have that app?” Everyone thought it was really cool and convenient—the value was clearly there. So our IT team wrote an app for VMware colleagues to use to unlock doors with a phone. Then, customers saw us use it and asked, “Hey, can we have this?” That’s when we added it to VMware Workspace ONE, our widely used digital workspace product.

It’s a maxim these days that every company now is a software company. How does VMware help companies stay ahead of the game in a fast-changing environment?

Right now, a business’s speed is limited by the speed of humans. And I think humans are still spending a lot of time on mundane things. The role of technology and software is to make sure that things that can be easily performed by technology are done by technology. Technology can free people to spend more time on creative and thought-intensive work. And the companies who put this into practice faster are going to be more successful.

VMware remains committed to making sure our technology enables the most choice for our customers. Our goal is to help them connect any device to any cloud to run any application with end-to-end security.

We tell customers “We’ll help you get there.” You want to move from your data center to the public cloud? We can help you run your private cloud, run your hybrid cloud, run your public cloud–without locking yourself into one cloud or the other. That is the difference in our message. We don’t say “Blow up your infrastructure and come to us, and we’ll fix all the problems for you.” We build a path that moves you thoughtfully from where you are to where you want to be, protecting your investments while enabling you to benefit from the best and latest technologies.