Nikhil Narvekar on Driving Bottom-Line Value with AI at Graphic Packaging

0:00It's great if I have an AI that compiles my emails for the day and gives me a summary or tells me how I should write an email. That's great stuff. I'm not taking anything away from it. But if I can deliver directly to the bottom line and the top line of the company, that's where I see the benefit of AI.

0:17Peter High: Welcome to Technovation. I'm Peter High, President of Metastrategy. My guest today is Nikhil Narvekar. Nikhil is the Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President of Global Business Services of Graphic Packaging Holding Company, a designer and manufacturer of folding cartons, beverage multi-packs, paper cups, and microwave-safe food trays from major global brands in the food, drink, and household goods industries. The company earned roughly$8.6 billion in revenue in 2025. Nikhil took on his role in early 2026, though he's been with the company for 10 and a half years. In his current role, he leads enterprise technology strategy, digital transformation, global business services, and IT operations.

0:55Peter High: Throughout his tenure, he's guided the company's infrastructure, operations, and architecture functions, and previously served as the IT leader for Graphic Packaging's European Business Unit, strengthening the technology capabilities across that region. Today's episode is brought to you by Eleven Labs. Most enterprises trying to deploy AI agents hit the same wall. The agent itself is fine. The problem is that it sounds wrong. Robotic, flat, off-brand, and the moment a customer notices, the trust is gone. 11 Labs develops the AI voice and audio models that give agents a human level voice, the tone, the emotion, the rhythm of real speech, and wraps them in the full stack you need to actually deploy.

1:37Peter High: Knowledge integrations, workflow tooling, multilingual support, and enterprise-grade reliability. Build human-level conversational experiences into your products, services, and operations. Head to 11labs.io backslash technovation to get started for free. And now on to the interview. Nikhil, welcome to Technovation. It's great to speak with you today. Nice to be here. Thank you for having me, Peter. That's a great pleasure. I've been looking forward to our conversation, certainly. Well, let's begin with your business, graphic packaging holding company. For those who may be less familiar with it, certainly they will soon become aware of the fact that they've used your goods in their past.

2:18Peter High: But tell us a bit more about the business, if you would. Sure. So we are the largest producer of consumer packaging. So if you look at it from your coffee cup in the morning to your afternoon drive-thru snack, lunch, to even when you have a cold one in the evening at home, right? All of the packaging is more than likely made by us. In your pantry, probably 50 % of the packaging, right from the cereal boxes to the six packs, the Kraft mac and cheeses, a high likelihood it's made by us. We are a fully vertically integrated company. basically what that means is we make our own paper either from virgin fiber recycle board and then we consume it internally to make the consumer packaging and the third piece of the puzzle is the machinery itself so we also make the machinery where the likes of the big cpg players actually use it to package their goods with it so a fully ewertingly integrated company a good start i can give you which is quite interesting the first time i heard it was In any given 24-hour period, every person in this country touches a product at least once.

3:28So I think that's the best way to put it, as what graphic packaging does.

3:32Peter High: Extraordinary. Talk a bit about your role, if you would. An interesting combination of responsibilities as Chief Information Officer, but also Senior Vice President of Global Business Services. Talk about the two sides, the two hats that you wear as part of that, if you would. Absolutely. So I was stuck into this role as CIO earlier this year. and I have a CIO function, which as you know, pretty much the ERP standardization across the company. ERP is within my remit. Also infrastructure operations, as well as data, AI, the traditional CIO functions, right, so to speak. In addition to that, I also have global business services, as you mentioned, and we do have shared services that we use across the company.

4:15And one of the remits is to expand that out globally. It includes all your AP, AR, payroll, billing, credit collections, functions that go along with it.

4:28Peter High: And how is your team divided across what you've just described? You obviously span both sides, and within your responsibilities, as you mentioned, a lot of subcomponents to it as well. Is there a separate team for the IT function, the CIO function, separate from Global Business services? Absolutely. Yeah, two separate teams. We have the typical traditional IT functions, as you know, but within the global business services, my leader in that space also runs transformation. So there are transformation projects that are run, but from a people perspective, yes, they are separate people, separate folks who run shared services versus IT.

5:09Peter High: And talk a bit about transformation and how that's defined. I mean, you talked about some of the areas, AR, payroll, billing, credit collections, et cetera, that are areas of responsibility. But as Global Business Services runs transformation, as you just put it, define the term as it is relevant to an organization like yours. Absolutely. So transformation could mean multiples of things, multitude of things, right? So within the shared services functions, obviously, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit where we can get synergies by combining. We are a very diverse company. One thing I didn't mention, and I should have earlier on is we are pretty much operating in all continents across the world except Antarctica, right?

5:46So we have a presence everywhere else, everywhere in the globe. There's a very ripe opportunity for us to take those services and get the maximum benefit by consolidating some of them. And that's where the transformation piece comes in for the global business services side of things, but also within the traditional IT side of things where you look at transformation, right? Hey, I have, you know, just because of the way graphic has grown, we have had the just in the 10 years that I've been here, with 23 acquisitions and counting. So how do we consolidate all that? You know, how do we get to one ERP?

6:18Is one ERP really a solution? Or can I just keep them on different ERPs? But maybe use the powers of today with AI and analytics to get me the same functions that a typical traditional single ERP instance would get me. So I think that's where the transformation team plays a very key role in looking at the broader picture, not just within the GBS side of things, but also within the IT side of the house.

6:43Peter High: Very interesting indeed. And I want to talk a bit about data and artificial intelligence. You mentioned that as part of your CIO function. Talk a bit about how that has been built out and some of the areas that that team is focused on currently. Sure. So, you know, when, you know, AI became, you know, the buzzword a few years back, you may remember, Peter, we were very cautious not to jump head in. and a lot of other competitors in our space did otherwise. I don't want to speak for them, but we took a very cautious approach because technology was evolving at a very rapid pace, especially in the AI frontier.

7:20So we've taken a very cautious approach. We've looked at the low-hanging fruit mainly within our manufacturing areas, within supply chain, where we can benefit applying AI into those functions. And that's where we've seen the maximum benefit out of it. And again, going back to my earlier comment about having a multitude of ERPs across the company just because of the way we've grown, having a data lake, having a single data lake, running AI and tools on that data lake gets me a lot more benefit versus trying to spend millions of dollars trying to get to one ERP, which in this current day and age, IT budgets don't increase here over here.

8:05I have to do with what's allocated to us, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

8:11Peter High: Talk a bit about that cautious approach you mentioned a few times there. What have been the reasons for it and the advantages of it from your perspective? The advantage is that we did not chase hallucinations as much within the AI space. So a lot of initial use cases we looked at, if we had gone down this path, we would have probably spent a lot of money for very little return because the technology has evolved over time, because we have now specific use cases. We took our time identifying the use cases and getting tangible benefits. It's great if I have AI that compiles my emails for the day and gives me a summary or tells me how I should write an email.

8:54That's great stuff. I'm not taking anything away from it. But if I can deliver directly to the bottom line and the top line of the company, that's where I see the benefit of AI. And that's by taking this cautious approach, we've been able to fine tune our AI strategy for those particular use cases which have driven the maximum value and benefit for us.

9:15Peter High: Are there examples you can provide? Like I said, supply chain is prime example. You know, we rely a lot on logistics. We rely a lot on transferring freight. Our plans basically ship out pallets and thousands and thousands of pallets to customers every day. I'm using AI to actually look at how I can optimize my netcode, right? If I have a requirement for a pallet to be in Chicago, do I really need to produce it in California? Or can I produce it somewhere close to it where I can get the fastest shipping time at a lower cost? And like I said, everyone's happy at the end of it. So multiple use cases, mostly on the supply chain, side of the house, procurement, internal transfers.

10:03MROs make a lot of sense for AI. Yeah.

10:08Peter High: You mentioned how acquisitive the organization has been. And I wonder, talk a bit more, if you would, about your team's role in the post-merger integration and how you think about that. You mentioned before that you don't necessarily always seek the one ERP as the goal, but rather find ways to work around that in ways that will add to the flexibility of the organization, perhaps. Talk a bit about some of the philosophy you have around integrating companies into graphics packaging. So number one, you know, whenever we acquire a new company, we got to be secure ourselves. We got to make sure the new incoming company is secure as well.

10:51And we put our security wrapper around those companies. So that's the first step that we ever do when we go down in integration, M &A, acquisition of sorts. And that's important because in this world, even the slightest of lapses on the security front could be a world of hurt for pretty much the entire organization, which I cannot afford, none of us can afford. So security plays a very key role for us. Cyber security, ensuring those assets are protected, not just from the outside, but also internally. We got to make sure we sandbox them if we need to come up with a roadmap. Okay, how do I migrate my newly acquired teams who might be sitting in a different continent over to the same systems that we're using today?

11:42And that's where we've developed a playbook over the years. Like I said, because we've gone through so many acquisitions, 20-something plus, 23 plus, We have a playbook right now that we can easily refer to and start onboarding those acquisitions and making them feel part of GPI. A lot of times, the biggest challenges with an M &A is the acquired company feels as if they are beholden to the acquirer. by giving them autonomy, giving them the freedom and giving them access to our systems, it becomes a much easier sell for us from an IT perspective, selfishly, have happier customers.

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13:44Peter High: And now back to the interview. Across your 10 and a half years with the company, you've had a number of responsibilities. You ran infrastructure operations and security. You were the CTO and head of IT for EMEA and APAC. So you've had some global beyond the U.S. roles as well, before then coming back as the Global Chief Technology Officer. And now, of course, the role that we've been discussing as CIO and SVP of Global Business Services. Talk a bit about the experience you gained from the diverse array of roles that you took on prior to your current ones and how that's served you well in your current role.

14:26Yeah, very good question, David. Peter. So in the infrastructure role, as I, my background primarily had been in infrastructure. So getting the infrastructure, when I first came into the company, it was a very different company 10 years back. A lot of failing parts, a lot of aging equipment, establishing that roadmap, getting to understand the concerns of the sites when, you know, when something doesn't work the way it's supposed to work. It's, you know, getting that dieting level of service as I think about it, right now you know we don't have a phone anymore we don't carry the old desk phones anymore but think about it when you lift the phone up you expect to hear a dial tone when you don't hear a dial tone is when you start complaining so how do i get that dial tone level of service that was the initial focus in the years that i first came into gpi but as as i took on other roles uh went to europe to run europe it for a while i think the biggest uh the biggest The learnings for me have been mostly about, you know, culture and people, especially in a global environment.

15:29You know, we all work here in the US. We are kind of accustomed to how, you know, you expect people to react and behave. It's different in a global environment. And learning that and using those learnings, embedding those learnings into your day to day makes a whole lot of difference, not just for the team here, but even for the global team. So I think that probably was my biggest takeaway from all those roles.

15:53Peter High: And given the value that you derive from the diversity of those roles, Nikhil, I wonder how does it influence the way in which you think about developing the next round of leaders, the future leaders of the organization? Do you also think about sending your best people to secondments abroad to get that broader set of experiences in addition to various types of responsibility across the two functions you lead? Absolutely. No, I think it's very critical. You need to have bench strength. you need to have a strong pipeline. And the experience that I've got, you know, doing those stretch assignments does mold you into a person that you eventually become and gives you that, you know, 360 visibility that you don't pretty much have.

16:39You know, you might have a good visibility. You might be a good leader. Nonetheless, getting a global exposure changes your perspective a lot. So I do promote that within the team. That is something that I've been very careful about. Building the bench strength, ensuring that we have a strong pipeline and giving those statements to the key folks, the key pipeline talent, so to speak.

17:03Peter High: Yeah. Talk a bit about, given the description you had earlier of the business itself, very tactile in terms of what's produced, of course. Talk a bit about the role the technology plays in the products that you have and increased innovations that you and the team are working on to influence that to a greater degree. Yes, you know, I think the packaging industry has evolved quite a lot over the years. especially now, you know, technology can play a very key role in the kind of packaging we use in the future as well. How do you design packaging, which is, you know, today I can go into any of the AI tools and, you know, it asks me to build a package for me right off the bat within a few seconds, minutes, what have you.

17:46You get, you know, multitude of designs to choose from. How do you embed all that into your current innovation, your current design process where you can help our internal teams to be more responsive to the customer demands. I think that's where IT is helping a lot. You know, it's about, this is something that I've been very passionate about is democratizing AI across the spectrum. So it's not just an IT thing that IT uses in a corner, but, you know, use it with fusion teams, right? Work with the business with fusion teams to deliver AI. or even then make it autonomous with the end users. Give them the tools so that they can run on their own and come up with their own answers and combinations and designs, what have you.

18:35So keeping this three-tiered approach, right, where IT does its AI, sure, fusion teams, and then autonomous AI is the true value of democratizing AI across the spectrum.

18:46Peter High: And AI really is a team sport, as you are noting, that it needs to have everyone involved in order to derive maximum value. Fusion teams themselves also forge partnerships in unusual ways. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about your instantiation of fusion teams, how that's evolved, and the value you're deriving from having those as a philosophical point for the organization as well. Yeah, I think to get those fusion teams to work together, you obviously need a top-down alignment. So you work with your, you know, I work regularly with my peers on the business side. We bring those use cases to bear and that's where we need those fusion teams.

19:30So people need to leave the business, so to speak, and come together in this cohort, so to speak, where they're working with IT in these fusion team environment, where they're all working for the end result to get, right? It's not just IT doing something. The traditional SDLC, IT does something, sends it over to the business. Business does testing, comes back to IT and changes. That model just doesn't work right now. You need to have a cohesive team working together in tandem so that we can deliver the results. And that's what we've done with these fusion teams where the business has been working directly with IT together to drive some of the savings that I talked about earlier about the supply chain AI use cases that we've done.

20:15This is where actually the business has worked directly with us in tandem to deliver those results.

20:24Peter High: Fascinating to hear more about that. I wanted to have you talk a little bit further about other trends that excite you as you look to the future, Nikhil. What else has you excited as you think about the possibilities?

20:43You know, I think once AI matures, it's still going for its maturity. It's nowhere close to being mature. But I truly believe that the future will look radically different than what it does today with everything that's going on. But that doesn't mean that we don't need people anymore. It's not just an AI working on its own, trying to get results out. It's going to be in combination there. is going to be human intervention needed to validate, to prevent hallucinations, to ensure that the domain knowledge is something that only a human can intervene and select. At some point, maybe that domain knowledge will get completely transferred over.

21:29But at least for the near short term, I expect that domain knowledge to still sit with humans. But I think in the long run, yes, AI will be center stage. And there will be pockets of people working around AI to augment the AI output that comes out of it. Interesting.

21:49Peter High: And you describe democratizing artificial intelligence. Talk a bit more about what sort of training have you suggested or delivered to your non-technical resources to elevate their understanding and use of artificial intelligence. You mentioned that earlier as well, the necessity for the entire organization to be involved. Talk about your methods there, if you would. Yeah, so we do a lot of prompt engineering coaching and classroom training for the non-IP folks because the tool is only as good as the prompts you give into it. And that's where prompt engineering really comes into play. So we have regular training that we have set up across the landscape.

22:34we do this on a regular basis, on a quarterly basis too, where our users get trained on to use prompts, right? Because you could ask one question five different ways, you'll get five different answers. So which one is the right one? And that's where, you know, that's where the prompt engineering comes into play.

22:54Peter High: Very interesting. Can I also ask you before I let you go, anything that you read or listen to that you'd recommend to others? What are the, talk a bit about what has been influential on you that you might suggest that others partake of? In particular to anything specific or just general? Generally speaking. Yeah. How do you stay current in a role that requires that you stay current and abreast of the state of the arts? What are the methods you use in order to do so? I get a lot of feeds from very different news sources. You know, they could be technical fees, non-technical fees. But I think the Wall Street Journal has very good articles when it comes to, you know, just technology in general.

23:42Financial Times, which is another area where I look to a lot. Just use a lot of fees from there to augment my learning.

23:53Peter High: Yeah, great suggestion, certainly. Well, Nikhil, thank you so much for taking time with me today. It's been fascinating to learn more about what you and your team are doing, and I appreciate the thoughtful conversation. Thank you, Peter. It was great being here. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to Technovation. If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe and leave a rating. It helps more leaders find our podcast. Thank you and I look forward to seeing you next time.

24:24Thank you.