In the often-siloed world of legacy manufacturing, the technology department has traditionally been relegated to a back-office support function, a cost center focused on keeping the lights on rather than steering the ship. Videojet Technologies, a global leader in coding and marking solutions, fundamentally challenged this paradigm by orchestrating a deliberate and methodical transformation of its technology function into a core driver of business strategy and competitive differentiation. This journey began at a pivotal moment, as Videojet transitioned to become a key business within the $5 billion technology leader Veralto, shifting from a peripheral entity to a significant contributor. This newfound accountability provided the catalyst for Chief Information Officer Aroon Sehgal to redefine technology’s role, moving it from a reactive service provider to a proactive engine for achieving the company’s most critical objectives. It is a compelling case study in how strategic vision and organizational redesign can unlock the latent potential of technology within an established industrial giant.
From Support Function to Strategic Imperative
A definitive signal of this strategic realignment came with the appointment of the company’s technology leader to spearhead one of its most crucial enterprise-wide initiatives: commercial excellence. This decision was unprecedented in Videojet’s history, as such a vital strategic program had always been the domain of product or operations executives. The move symbolized a profound shift in the organizational mindset, formally acknowledging that technology was no longer just a tool for execution but a fundamental driver of growth and market leadership. To cement this new identity and purpose, the first official act was to rebrand the conventional “IT” department to “Digital and Technology Solutions (DTS).” This was far more than a cosmetic change; it was a clear declaration of a new mission. The rebranding was designed to broadcast an intentional move out of the operational background and into active, strategic alignment with the company’s three primary pillars: accelerating growth, expanding margins, and boosting overall productivity across every facet of the business.
This new mandate required a technology function that could not only respond to business needs but anticipate them, deeply integrating its strategy with the commercial heart of the company. The selection of a technology executive for a role centered on commercial excellence shattered long-standing silos, forcing a cross-functional collaboration that was previously unimaginable. It positioned DTS as a central partner in shaping go-to-market strategies, optimizing customer engagement, and driving revenue. This strategic positioning ensured that technology initiatives were no longer isolated projects but were intrinsically linked to tangible business outcomes. By placing technology at the forefront of its commercial ambitions, Videojet effectively communicated to the entire organization that digital innovation was not an optional add-on but an essential component of its future success, creating a powerful precedent for how technology and business units should collaborate to achieve shared goals.
Redesigning the Organization for Impact
To translate this new vision into practical reality, a significant organizational restructuring was implemented to foster deeper, more meaningful integration with the business units. A key innovation was the creation of geography-based business engagement leads. These leaders were not firewalled within the DTS function; instead, they were embedded directly into regional leadership teams. This structural change eliminated layers of communication and ensured that the technology organization received direct, unfiltered input on local business needs, market dynamics, and strategic priorities. By having a seat at the regional strategy table, these leads could participate in decision-making from the very outset, transforming the DTS role from a reactive order-taker receiving second or third-hand information into a proactive partner co-creating solutions. This model fostered a culture of shared ownership and ensured that technology investments were precisely targeted to address the most pressing challenges and opportunities in each market.
Further reinforcing this strategic shift, new centers of excellence were established and helmed by elevated leaders tasked with cultivating deep expertise in Videojet’s most critical capabilities. These dedicated teams focused on foundational and future-oriented technologies, including data and AI, e-commerce and web technologies, and a complete ERP transformation. This structure was designed to move beyond a generalist approach to technology, instead fostering world-class specialization in areas that would provide a sustainable competitive advantage. By concentrating talent and resources in these high-impact domains, the company could accelerate innovation and ensure that its core digital platforms were robust, scalable, and aligned with long-term strategic goals. The centers of excellence became hubs of innovation, responsible for not only implementing current projects but also for scanning the horizon for emerging technologies and charting a course for Videojet’s digital future, ensuring the organization remained at the cutting edge.
Laying the Groundwork for an Autonomous Future
The overarching technology strategy is firmly predicated on building a solid and reliable foundation before pursuing more advanced, speculative applications. A central tenet of this approach is an unwavering focus on data strategy and governance. The leadership team operates on the principle that the immense long-term value of artificial intelligence and automation cannot be fully realized without a clean, well-managed, and accessible data ecosystem. This foundational work is not merely about data cleanup; it is about architecting a data infrastructure that can support what is termed a “multi-agentic future”—an environment where workflows become increasingly intelligent and autonomous. This philosophy prioritizes the painstaking, often unglamorous, work of establishing data integrity and streamlined data pipelines as a non-negotiable prerequisite for innovation, ensuring that future AI and ML models are built on a bedrock of trust and accuracy rather than on flawed or incomplete information.
This forward-looking, foundational approach is already yielding tangible results through a series of carefully selected pilot programs across the enterprise. In operations, machine learning models are being deployed to optimize complex production scheduling and significantly enhance inventory forecasting, with the ultimate goal of digitizing the entire sales and operations planning process using a single, unified data set. On the commercial front, the company has implemented AI-powered translation tools to scale its marketing content efficiently across global markets and is collaborating with an innovative startup to develop an AI-first ERP system designed to fully automate the historically manual order intake process. To boost internal productivity, tools like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT Enterprise are being deployed widely, with the DTS team providing the essential data access and governance guardrails that enable teams in R&D and operations to experiment safely and effectively, fostering a culture of grassroots innovation within a secure framework.
Translating Technology into Business Value
A cornerstone of the transformation’s success lies in the ability to communicate the value of technology in a language that the rest of the business—from the C-suite to the factory floor—can understand and appreciate. There is a strict insistence that technology leaders avoid speaking in terms of “APIs and architectures” during leadership meetings. Instead, the focus is squarely on articulating how technology initiatives directly contribute to top-line growth and bottom-line profitability. Every single project undertaken by the DTS function is rigorously evaluated through a commercial lens, ensuring there is clear visibility into its potential impact on the customer experience and its direct alignment with the company’s overarching strategic and financial goals. This discipline transforms technology discussions from abstract technical debates into concrete business conversations centered on value creation, making it easier to gain consensus and prioritize investments that will deliver the greatest return.
To take this a step further and build unshakeable credibility, the technology team actively forecasts how its programs will translate into tangible financial metrics, most notably earnings per share (EPS). This practice provides senior leadership and stakeholders with a concrete, quantifiable measure of technology’s contribution to enterprise value. By tying technology initiatives directly to the financial metrics that matter most to investors and the board, the DTS function moves beyond being a cost center and positions itself as a critical driver of shareholder value. This level of financial accountability is crucial for securing buy-in for ambitious, long-term projects and for building a deep-seated trust between the technology organization and the rest of the business. It demonstrates a shared commitment to the company’s financial health and proves that technology investments are not just expenses but strategic levers for achieving profitable growth.
Forging a New Legacy of Innovation
The journey undertaken at Videojet provided a powerful blueprint for technology leaders aiming to drive similar change within legacy industries. The initial step was a disciplined process of identifying the most significant business pain points—whether they were rooted in labor intensity, asset dependency, or supply chain complexity—and then pinpointing where technology could deliver the greatest and most immediate impact. This approach ensured that early efforts were focused on solving real-world problems, which was essential for building credibility. From the outset, the technology function was positioned as a strategic peer rather than a service provider, a status earned by staying ahead of technological breakthroughs and proactively bringing innovative solutions to the table. Ultimately, this transformation was driven by a willingness to take calculated risks and demonstrate profound ownership. The leadership team put “skin in the game,” taking on challenging, high-visibility initiatives, owning their outcomes, and consistently delivering measurable results. This ethos blended the company’s deep-rooted legacy of operational rigor with a forward-looking ambition, creating a new culture grounded in the language of business and aimed squarely at driving customer growth and lasting innovation.
