NEWS
Meet Your Chief Technology Officer Scott Michaels
- Company update
- 5 MIN READ
- June 03, 2025
Summary
In a digital transformation organization, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) must be focused on high-value conversations with clients and prospects about the technology and strategic perspectives they need to succeed — but that's not all. The CTO must also be able to see where the industry is headed, and have a vision of how to keep a company at the forefront of innovation in the years to come.
Today we're proud to introduce Apply Digital's CTO, Scott Michaels. With 30+ years experience in tech, including nine years as Apply Digital's Chief Product Officer, Scott brings a wealth of experience and deep technical knowledge to his new role. Scott's unmatched understanding of technology trends and how they impact businesses is key to how he will continue to deliver value both internally and for our clients.
We connected with Scott to find out what his new role will involve, how AI is transforming the digital services industry, and why being a product person at heart is a great asset.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Apply Digital:
As Chief Technology Officer, what does your new role entail?
Scott Michaels:
This is an external-facing role, so I'll be spending 85% of my time on business development and growth, with the other 15% focused internally and in the Lab, our tech innovation unit, where we develop fresh solutions for clients. I'll be the owner and the face of AI for Apply Digital. Our clients are trying to understand how AI can help them deliver great digital experiences, so I'll be working with our teams to rationalize AI for them and show how we can drive value for them, including steering them away from things that can't be done.
Our practical approach to AI separates us from some of our competitors, who often sell clients on completely fantastical ideas that aren't grounded in reality. We don't do that. Our work with Kraft Heinz is a good example of implementing multi-stage projects, proving value at each stage, and then delivering on that value.
In many ways, my becoming CTO is a formalization of what I was already doing, which is being the first point of contact with clients about all the things that Apply Digital can do and to answer questions around AI: how it's going to affect clients' business, how AI-enabled we are in the delivery of our services, and so on.
Apply Digital also does a lot of commerce, loyalty, customer experience, and strategy work, and that's not going to change. Gen AI has come to the forefront, and all organizations need to know how to get the most value from Gen AI in these areas. Ultimately, we don't sell technology: we operate as a strategy organization. We talk with the client to figure out what their challenges are, and then we apply the technology that fits their needs.
Apply Digital:
What is the outlook for the digital services industry? How is AI having an impact?
Scott Michaels:
A good way to sum up what's happening now — and I'm paraphrasing whoever said it first — is that AI is not going to take your job, but someone using AI will. I would say this is already the reality for many industries.
For a company like Apply Digital, having AI capability in servicing clients is now a given; you simply have to have it. Any service company that doesn't include AI in their core offering is going to fail, because they won't be able to be competitive going forward. In terms of driving client value with AI, the work has to be very prescriptive and realistic in order to get to that value. But the bottom line is that everyone's job is changing on the client side of Apply Digital, and the way jobs are done internally are changing as well.
If you look at the work we did for Kraft Heinz, our solutions made it easier for their internal teams to do their jobs, but the technology didn't change what a team's job is. In essence, the company used to go to outside agencies for creative work, and we were able to replace that process with AI, but the internal teams still need to make decisions about how to use what the AI produces.
At Apply Digital, we're using AI to free up our employees' time to do what they were really hired to do, which is to critically think about what we're doing for the client. It's all about answering the question: How do we provide value? And it's certainly not in doing the drudgery work that happens in traditional software development.
Apply Digital:
What will be the role of composable technology moving forward?
Scott Michaels:
The composable approach is very important to what we do. We have all experienced the pain of monolithic platforms. Composable tech helps break up large systems up into small, discrete components that you can then use to optimize for performance and flexibility. For example, in highly transactional services like eCommerce sites, you're going to need to process a queue really quickly. For a news product, that functionality doesn't matter; what matters much more is personalization. With composable technology — forgive me if I get a little technical here — we're able to overindex on one part of the tech stack to achieve the product goal. With a monolithic system, you can't do that. So I've always been a big advocate for the composable approach and being able to switch vendors when you need to, to better position companies to scale what works and drive impact.
When it comes to how we approach composable, we work very closely with our partners. Our deep commitment to them is demonstrated by the knowledge-sharing and training we collaborate on, and the success of our partnerships is shown by the number of Partner of the Year awards we've won since our founding.
Apply Digital:
What excites you most about being CTO for Apply Digital?
Scott Michaels:
I've been a huge proponent of AI within the company and I now have the opportunity to bring that passion to all of our clients, to help them achieve the gains that are there to be had. The other aspect of the role that inspires me is helping our company excel in the shift toward AI-first thinking.
For everyone who works at Apply Digital, this process is going to equip them with marketable skills, so they will be well-positioned to continue to succeed in the industry. In the very near future, telling a potential employer you don't know how to use AI will be like saying you don't know how to use Microsoft Word. It's become an essential skill. So part of my new role is making sure that our training and our enablement reflect the new reality.
I'm also excited about building great digital experiences. At the end of the day, I'm a technology lover, but I spent many years as Chief Product Officer — I'm a product-minded person, so my mindset with everything we do at Apply Digital is: this has to work for the end users. That's who we have to have in mind. And that's the mindset I've had for my whole career.
Interested in learning how Apply Digital can drive impact for your business? Contact our expert team today.
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