From IT backbone to growth engine: how the CIO role is changing

by Heidi Byskata | October 27, 2025

Global logistics runs on data — and digital leadership now defines who grows and who stalls. CEVA Logistics is turning IT from an operational cost into a growth engine by unifying its digital backbone and building a culture of continuous learning.

Growth needs more than technology

At Professio’s CIO Nordic 2025, Susanne Schustin, Global CIO of CEVA Logistics, described how her organisation is reshaping its technology and culture to support scale, integration, and agility across more than 1 300 locations worldwide.

CEVA has expanded rapidly through acquisitions, moving into new verticals from automotive to healthcare. Each deal brought its own systems, data models, and ways of working — and with them, fragmentation.

Schustin’s task: turn that sprawl into a coherent foundation for growth.

“Technology integration is not only about connecting systems; it’s about connecting people and processes,” she said. The goal is a single digital backbone that enables faster decision-making, real-time visibility, and consistent service quality across markets.

Building a unified digital backbone

The new architecture rests on three pillars:

Digitised core processes replacing local variations with global standards.

A connected data platform enabling end-to-end visibility from supplier to customer.

Enterprise-wide connectivity linking partners, systems, and customers through APIs and shared data models.

The result is more than standardisation — it is speed. “When data flows, decisions move at the speed of the customer,” Schustin noted.

Culture and capability as growth multipliers

Technology alone cannot deliver transformation at scale. CEVA treats learning and collaboration as strategic assets, investing heavily in digital literacy, leadership training, and cross-functional teamwork.

The CIO office works with HR and operations to embed digital thinking into everyday decision-making. The aim is to evolve IT from a reactive support function into a proactive growth enabler — what Schustin calls “from maintaining systems to enabling strategy.”

The CIO as Chief Growth Enabler

The modern CIO role now stretches far beyond infrastructure. Schustin’s remit includes M&A integration, data governance, cybersecurity, and sustainability — all under one transformation agenda. Her team acts as an internal accelerator, ensuring every new acquisition or platform upgrade contributes directly to business outcomes.

“In logistics, speed and reliability define competitiveness,” she said. “Our job is to make both scale seamlessly.”

Watch the full keynote here: