‘Next year’s big opportunity is around immersive customer experience’ – Gege Gatt

2023 will be a year of opportunities, and for EBO CEO Gege Gatt, one of the main ones will be “immersive customer experience.”

Speaking to MaltaCEOs.mt he affirmed that “businesses have a unique opportunity to re-engineer customer journeys to make them more memorable and effective.” He stressed the importance of technology to “enable this transformation through scalable and resilient tools which become a foundational element of the business’s operations.”

Dr Gatt, a digital entrepreneur, an IT-Law specialist, and an experienced Director serving on a number of company boards who is passionate about digital ethics, transformation, culture and strategy, has big plans for the coming year. As a business leader, he wants to “inspire ever-greater speed and agility in [his] team spread over 11 countries, as well as instil a culture of curiosity, collaboration and innovation.” He added that “such dynamism is critical to embrace the opportunities and challenges of an uncertain future, and to do so, every company must reshape behaviours and interactions within its teams.” The company he heads, EBO.AI, is an Artificial Intelligence enterprise which enables the automation and personalisation of engagement.

In relation to the challenges that businesses are likely to face next year, the CEO warned that “CEOs in Malta know that the battle for talent will intensify next year” adding that “they know that to build a resilient team in the face of a likely economic slowdown, they need to bet on accelerated digital transformation.”

“This means that AI takes centre stage,” he affirmed, suggesting that in order to face this challenge “CEOs must become digital transformation champions and ensure their staff are equipped to work in a hybrid environment alongside capable and intelligent machines.”

Addressing business leaders and entrepreneurs who may be feeling overwhelmed by all the challenges they are currently facing, Dr Gatt suggested that “in the face of tumultuous economic factors, it is critical to re-focus on the basics: cash, growth-oriented outcomes, and talent retention. This allows a CEO to balance caution with pragmatism and a fair dose of optimism about the future.”

While many businesses and business leaders might indeed be looking towards the coming year with more positivity when compared to the past two years that have been shackled by the COVID-19 pandemic, things are not bright for everyone in the world.

Commenting on the ongoing war in Ukraine, which began in February of this year and has raged on ever since Dr Gatt spares a thought “for the millions of displaced persons and refugees who suffered due to the aggression of the Kremlin.”

“My heart goes out to them,” he says.

“For the first time Ukrainians will celebrate Christmas on 25th December (as opposed to the traditional 7th January festivity of the Julian calendar) as an act which moves it away from Russia and towards the west,” he said.

“May we all repel regimes or systems that are totalitarian, oppressive, and inhumane,” the CEO concluded, ostensibly referring to Russia’s political leadership.