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Forget Being a CIO; Be an End-to-End Officer

2013-05-22T03:38:51Z

At a time when people - irrespective of the position they hold - are looking at doing multiple tasks, at the enterprise level, it is not about the will but all about the way you execute projects or realize ideas into fruition. In such times of transformation, this has become an era of playing the role of End-to-End officer now.

Very recently, I had the chance to meet up with one CIO who is truly the E2E Officer of tomorrow. Meet Stephen Benjamin from Cadence Systems. He is of course the IT Director of Cadence Design Systems and is doing a fabulous job in terms of implementing innovative and cost-effective ways to enhance productivity within the organization.

However, at the same time, when it comes to introducing initiatives and innovative projects he has gone beyond being merely the CIO and taken great pains to collate all the data in order to arrive at certain business decisions, understand the customer (employees of Cadence) behavior, predict how they are going to react, wait, it does not end here.

He went on to create the much needed marketing aura around his initiative and created a small brand positioning of its IT effort, so much so that the employees now follow certain processes almost upside down and in the way embrace big change that should not have been possible even with big marketing gurus.

He did all this, taking help from basic level data analysis of employee behavior, and then creating that all-friendly atmosphere which is ideal to create a small brand within the company.

So in order to achieve all this, he went on to select the right kind of color mix that his initiative will have, the right logo that will represent the IT initiative and of course with that a lot of detailing into making it more attractive and 'catchy' for the employees. It doesn't end here, as a cherry on top of the cake, he finally, did proper inauguration of his effort in order to make a final splash and announced the initiative in front of the employees of the company.

Quite a few of us might feel that some of the activities mentioned above doesn't come under the belt of a CIO, and my understanding is that, they never will be. But in order to achieve the final results, there are many times when you have to walk that extra mile. And most the time, it is that extra time that gets you to your destination.

Why the CIO Should Air the Dirty Laundry

2013-05-21T04:05:22Z

Trust. It's important. And a company typically instills a huge amount of trust in its IT department, particularly (as is often the case today) if that IT department is responsible for the operation of systems (such as web sites) that contribute significantly to the bottom line.

I've been at the helm of several IT departments that operated the product of the company: social networking or other web sites. And that's when I learned how vital it is to "air the dirty laundry" internally throughout the company about the stability of the key systems. Too often, I have seen IT staffs that were reluctant to announce that the system was down, in the hopes that it wouldn't be such a big deal if they could only get it fixed quickly. Of course, often a quick fix wasn't in the cards, and users started to a) notice the outage; and b) wonder if anyone in IT was even aware of it.

My response to this is to insist on the airing of dirty laundry. Less euphemistically: timely, comprehensive, broad-audience notification of all system outages and impairments. Specifically, emphasize the following:

- Point out to everyone that it is major public visibility of every blemish that most effectively leads to a dogged "no tolerance" attitude (on everyone's part) towards outages. Sometimes that visibility points out plain old human error, but more often, it points out areas where we've (collectively) underresourced or failed to plan appropriately.

- If few people are aware of the outages, we won't get as much understanding of the need for the "fix the root cause" action, which may involve money or opportunity cost.

- "Out of sight, out of mind," as the saying goes. Exposing the pain actually helps to get the pain fixed. Pretending it's not there, for whatever reasons, tends to allow the pain to continue.

- Asking the operations group to adhere closely to a strict outage notification template encourages that team not only to provide full information, but also to actively assess customer impact, root cause, and process improvement for each and every outage.

- Every outage is a huge opportunity to identify the root cause, fix it, and lower the likelihood of that outage occurring again.

- Recording outages is the first step to tracking outages, discerning patterns, and ultimately fixing things that might get lost in the shuffle.

But why, you may wonder, is there reluctance to do this? Aside from the sheer work pressure (yet one more thing to have to do while embroiled in a crisis), it's because no one really likes to announce one's own failures to a broad audience. IT personnel hear (and can even intellectually agree with) all of the above reasons for full disclosure on outages, yet they often persist in, well, sweeping them under the carpet. It's time for you, the IT leader, to be directive, and to put the following sort of written policy into effect:

Policy:

All unplanned outages must be reported immediately to the 'outages' email distribution list. The communication should provide the information listed below in this document. In the event not all the information required below is available at the time the outage message is sent, indicate that a follow up message, providing all of the required information, will be sent within 4 hours during normal business hours (M-F, 8-5). If an outage is not resolved within 30 minutes, a follow-up communication must be sent with an updated status. Such updates must continue every 30 minutes until the outage is resolved.

Unplanned Outage Communication Format:

- Issue/Action: what is (or will be) down (from a user perspective), when the outage began, and for how long, or an estimated restore time if the service is still down.

- Customer Impact: what was/will be noticed by the customer

- Internal Impact: what was/will be noticed by internal personnel

- Resolution: What was done to restore the service

- Root Cause: What was the true cause of the problem. This should be identified whenever possible, as soon as possible.

- Preventative Measures / Process Improvements: What steps are being taken to ensure this type of problem does not recur, or to allow quicker response if it does.

Once you put this policy into effect, expect to spend a fair amount of time fine-tuning the communications. The most common problem you'll see is difficulty in crafting the language to be business-oriented (e.g., don't do things like include traceback logs!), and in the drilldown to identifying the true root cause of the problem. Equally, expect at some point to hear the observation from your peers that "gee, the system seems to be down a lot more lately." Increased visibility of system problems can get interpreted as an increase in frequency. You'll need to stave this off from the start, by making sure that your business stakeholders are aware of what you're mandating and why.

It'll be potentially be a battle to recalibrate your team's mindset towards greater notification, but it'll be worth it in the long run. Remember what matters: focus everyone on the search for root cause and identification of process improvement on every outage.

Where's IT at Fault in KYC Norms?

2013-05-20T00:51:17Z

Knowing customers has been cited as a way to help banks to grow. In fact the former Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Dr Subir Gokarn in a press conference a few months earlier had said that if banks really know their customers, they will be able to grow with them. He also added that knowledge capital will enable banks to move from KYC to GYC or grow with your customer.

After the probe following the sting operation done by news portal Cobrapost.com in February, it does seem that many of the banks, (now under scrutiny from RBI) decided that growth is better than knowing the customer. The operation revealed officials from ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank selling investment products without paying heed to the mandatory KYC norms, and convert tax evaded money into legitimate money. All three banks also issued multiple IDs to the same customer, in violation of existing norms. It was later found that over 20 other banks were also involved in such activities.

These banks a few years ago spoke a lot of getting their KYC act right to provide better customer support, services and offerings, invest in Business Intelligence and anti-money laundering solutions, enterprise data management, MDM and what not.

It is said, and it is true that the banking sector has been ahead of the curve in terms IT deployment, acceptance and usage. So what were the IT governance policies, framework, alerts etc. doing when such acts were performed? Or is IT governance only about IT?

To quote from a RBI circular, "a consistent IT Governance policy provides institutions with tools which ensure that IT investment drives business to meet its goals. IT Governance depends strongly on corporate governance and the overall corporate strategy, which means that IT strategy and IT processes should be in consonance with business goals. In other words, it means that IT Governance provides tools to manage IT structures and processes in order to appropriately support business strategy."

An organization's investments in IT are most fruitful when they match technology strategy with business strategy, implement systems in a disciplined way, and balance value creation with increased IT capabilities.

With the current findings and revelations, the business and IT strategy for the banks seem to be in perfect sync.

The Essence of Innovation

2013-05-17T02:22:11Z

Innovation, may seem to be just a word, but trust me, it is not that simple to innovate in a highly competing environment. People and organizations go at length to establish innovations in ideas, technology and products but many a times, lack on the real essence of innovation.

There are larger questions like can innovation be bought? Or can it be acquired through learning? Or you just go with the flow and it will come like all hard work that is supposed to pay. The fabric of innovation has many contours whether it is designing a process or implementing a solution for an enterprise.

The first and foremost comes the space, innovation lies in finding the spaces between the spaces. In doing that special thing that is not done, or if it is done already, then doing it again but differently and in a manner that is ought to be appreciated.

In one of my recent interactions with a CIO, I was surprised to see the kind of "collaboration focused innovation" the IT leader has achieved, one that is not easily conceivable and even manageable. While one can spend years in finding the right innovation, it can be made simple if the IT leader has the foresight and will to think out of the box and beyond the horizon.

Being a CIO or an IT leader, innovation sits right in the heart of designing systems and process to achieve more with less. Innovation also lies in knowing that you will succeed. In relying upon credible data and knowing what the future will hold. Predicting how processes and solutions will draw change and bracing yourself to incorporate that change.

Then there is this thought that all innovation must lead to greater productivity, better sustainability, otherwise that innovation has very little economic value. Then there is self-sustaining innovation, which holds great potential to be adopted above many other ideas, simply because of little outside intention.

And yes, most importantly, there is innovation in utilising the existing resources to the full and not asking too much from the management. These are some of the ways that can ensure you innovate on a higher plane of productivity matrix.

True spirit of innovation requires great thinking and at times clever thinking that may, in the beginning seem shrewd to the outside world, but it all ads great value on the long run.

Document Management System: Now at Play in K Raheja Corp.

2013-05-15T12:23:31Z

K Raheja is busy corporate with interests in hospitality, real estate and retail. The busy nature of business is evident in the fact that while dealing with a large number of agencies and each with high dependability on documentation support and all three business units and 46 departments put together the business creates an average of 11,768 documents every month. Whopping!!! Isn't it?

At a corporate level, the users create multiple business documents across the businesses. This compels us to spend crucial man-hours sifting through those documents - electronic or physical, leave aside the consumption of precious office space. Despite the dedicated storage space, manual effort, and a classification structure, timely access to accurate information is impossible, effectively impeding vital business processes.

These were are sent to the business for approval, which takes around seven working days.

It results in a lack of visibility and integration, delayed approvals and long-drawn authorization processes, loss of opportunities to save on space, sourcing and procurement discounts and employee time, and massive costs related to regulatory compliance issues, specific to the construction and real estate industry (license renewals, lease agreements etc.).

The business is finding it very tedious to close each transaction comprising many agencies, stakeholders and above all the regulatory authorities. What should one do in such a case? How should one manage the growing number of documents? I felt the need for a solution that not only harmonizes the documentation but also help with robust workflow framework.

After a thorough discussion with the business and key stakeholders, the IT team obtained approval to go ahead with a document management system (DMS) implementation across the group.

We called the DMS implementation as project SAMHITA, a Sanskrit word which means compilation of knowledge. It may sound simple but wasn't so, if I can tell you. We were assisted by Capgemini as they had the product knowledge, and expertise in implementation and maintenance of project of this scale.

When the rollout stage came, the challenges engulfed. The project had its own set of roadblocks pertaining to change management, buy in from the process owners, adherence to the systems, storing documents with multiple formats flowing from multiple agencies, and defining and standardizing formats for some processes. I was hell bent to deal with all the concerns coming in our way to deploy the DMS.

Finally, SAMHITA was implemented across the group comprising of Chalet Hotels, Inorbit Malls and Real Estate division. Chalet Hotels went live in the month of November last year, Inorbit Malls went live in Feb this year and the roll out for Real Estate business is still in progress, and should be over by this month. We covered around 1200 users across 29 locations through this implementation.

In my next blog, I will share the expected Return on Investment (RoI) that we expect through this project.

BYOD: Is It Reducing Cost and Complexity for CIO?

2013-05-14T14:40:47Z

I've written about the topic "Bring your own Device" (BYOD) in the past but I never really touched on the issue of what BYOD does for IT complexity.

Does having a BYOD policy that allows your employees to bring their own devices increase the workload and complexity for the IT staff?

My gut reaction to that question: Yes...it does add complexity. Building BYOD policies doesn't require more control and complexity - sometimes it can decrease complexity with the proper forethought and planning.

Notice, I said "with forethought and planning" there. Using best practices, common sense and see what others have done that has worked and what mistakes others have made in the BYOD realm, and you'll be fine.

First off, let's look at phones. Each person has their own preference for a phone. While a majority of people may prefer an iPhone or an Android phone, some prefer the new Windows Phone and some may even prefer (or require) a Blackberry. It is quite difficult for an IT group to support all of those phones...so in the past, they've standardized on one (or two). In the past, this standardization was it...if you had a company phone, you had one of the standard phones.

The problem arises when people have a preference for their own phone and/or a preference (or intense dislike) for an operating system. So the employee carry two phones: 1 for work, 1 for personal. Some are even able to talk the IT group into allowing their 'personal phones' on the network to access email. This becomes a burden for IT support as they now have to make note of these 'one-off' phones that are allowed on.

Rather than standardize on a phone and provide support for those phones, build a policy that allows individuals to add their personal phones to the network. This reduces complexity as it allows the IT group to focus less on phone standardization processes and focus more on security and mobility. By focusing on the security aspects, IT can implement products that help manage these new personal phones and the data that might reside on them. Additionally, this new focus allows IT to build consistent security across all mobile devices.

In addition to phones, tablets and laptops are another area that can be reviewed to provide additional service to employees while reducing complexity. Being 'mobile' is key for many employees these days, and adding BYOD policies that allow end-users to provide their own devices - along with the proper end-to-end enterprise security measures - makes sense. If your users are comfortable using their own tablet compared to your standard tablet, why not let them?

In addition to reducing complexity, BYOD can provide cost savings to the organization. Most employees have a smartphone, so why not allow them to use it for business calls and emails and save some money? Additionally, many today have tablets...if an employee can use their own tablet for business, that's an additional $500 savings that the organization will not have to spend to buy a tablet for that employee.

The cost savings debate is one that can be tricky. You don't want to take the approach that you are want to shift the burden of costs for mobile device to your employees. You don't want to not provide devices and force employees to purchase their own. That would be bad for morale. But, if you have employees who have their own devices that they want to use, you should have a policy in place to allow them to bring them into the workplace to assist with their work.

Selecting the right BYOD strategy and policies might be a lot of work for IT in the short term, in the long run it will reduce complexity, support hours and costs for the organization.

This blog is re-posted with permission from Eric D. Brown. To read Eric's blogs, you can visit: http://ericbrown.com.

This is a paid post in conjunction with IDG, Dell and Intel®.

Making Hybrid Clouds Work

2013-05-14T00:29:44Z

When the phenomenon called Cloud made appearance on the IT landscape, it promised to disrupt many existing paradigms. You don't need to buy any server hardware and storage, capacity is available on demand and you pay for what you use. Applications with licensing models that can adapt to business cycles, Everything-As-A-Service (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and many more), no capital investments, only operating expense. It was touted to be the silver bullet to solve all the budgeting challenges of the CIO including getting rid of the CIO.

Evolution brought competition and a hysterical wave that caught every Vendor, System Integrator, Research Analyst, and the CIO alike. New terms were coined to depict the key attributes that the cloud promised: agility, flexibility, resilience, scalability, and on-demand. Alliances of hardware, software and networking vendors vied for attention; everything was cloud-enabled or ready. When corporate data centers could not be classified, the term "Private Cloud" came to rescue.

It brought some comfort to the CIO that s/he was not seen as "not doing the in thing"; almost everyone now had a cloud, private or public. From there rose the challenge of making them work together. After all if some apps are on the public cloud while the transactional systems or other apps are still in the corporate data center they need to inter-operate Tools and technology solutions attempted to bridge the chasm; everyone had a variant that did something better than the other confusing the heck out of IT teams.

Someone christened the new reality of the coexistence as "Hybrid Cloud" and the term has stuck on. For simpler solutions, applications and processes like collaboration, sales force automation and the likes of Human Capital Management, the challenge was easily overcome by most. Pervasive challenges of security, data residue, service levels, interoperability between different clouds, or difficulty in migrating from one service provider to another, cut across every offering.

Evolution of the services and technology has not been uniform; a few still struggle to offer a consistent experience straddling between the data center and the public cloud. A CIO narrated a harrowing story of his journey towards making a hybrid cloud work to offer a consistent and uniform experience to his users. The vendor in question either due to ignorance or over-enthusiasm promised everything to be possible and the delivery team struggled to get even the basics working.

Step by step through the early stages of making things work, they did not just lose time, the arduous journey had the IT team struggling to explain to the CIO why the project was running totally off target. Most were not technology challenges but oversell to the CIO on what would work and how it would. Straddling the physical and cloud world to offer a seamless and uniform experience to users did pose a few challenges. I guess all clouds are not created equal as competing solutions did offer to expectation.

The CIO called for a review and experts from all over the world joined in to rescue the situation. It was a one-sided affair with no real solution emerging to the problem at hand. The CIO concluded with the pilot being disbanded. The resultant credibility loss alienated the vendor in no small measure undoing a lot of the good work that they had delivered in the past. It was almost like the nursery rhyme in real world "All the king's horses and all the king's men could not put the vendor back on track again".

I guess when it comes to hybrid, cars work and have achieved a maturity level that brings consumer confidence; with clouds I guess there are still challenges to overcome and technology to reach stability and interoperability. Until then stay cautious and don't bet on everything to work the way it did in a pure cloud or in-house model. The user experience with hybrids can be a dampener on the enthusiasm that vendors and system integrators want you to feel while they experiment at your cost.

P.S. it would appear that the next wave promises Autonomic Computing, anyone game ?

Three CIOs - Three Challenges; No Solution?

2013-05-13T03:29:08Z

In last one month (may be six weeks) I met five CIOs separately and all five of them spoke about distinct challenges they're facing in their respective environments. These could be common problems but are seldom discussed in open. The most astonishing part is that none of these problems are related to IT/technology.

Keeping the identities undisclosed, I wanted to highlight each of the problems. My intent is not to make you feel vulnerable but to ask you two distinct questions:

(1) Are you also facing similar situations but feel helpless like others?

(2) You faced these problems but have overcome them with brevity and courage?

Challenge # 1: Change Management Hits a Roadblock in IT Organization Itself

Usage of technology is not just dependent on how IT implements it in the organization. There are so many other cultural dynamics involved. Solving those roadblocks is mostly a CIO's core role and is classified as "Change Management." But recently I met a very senior CIO from a large automobile company, who spoke about a typical challenge he faces within his IT organization. "It is easy to bring about change in your external environment, but very difficult to make it happen internally, within IT," he explicitly said.

Upon my asking he explained that the root cause of it is the legacy in which the large teams have been working for years. "They have been habitual of developing every small, mid-size or large application or process internally. Today, there are so many products available off the shelf, which can easily save 30-40 percent of an IT team's time thereby freeing them to look into business issues. But they aren't ready to look at those options. My biggest challenge is to make change management effective in the IT organization.

There could be many reasons for this. The IT team may not be aware of the underlying business need for change. The may be fearing lay-offs as part of the change. They were unsure if they had the needed skills for success in the future enterprise and so on...

But the question here is that the efforts made by the CIO to bring organization-wide change hits a roadblock in his own department, forget about others.

Question: Do you face the similar issue and how helpless you feel?

Challenge # 2: The Buck Stops at Procurement/VMO; CIO is a Mere Puppet

This case is of a large MNC CIO whom I met recently. He made many statements under distress. He unraveled many facts but the most startling one was about how procurement (or more sophisticatedly called Vendor Management Office) overrules the decisions made by the CIO and how dangerous it is expose the nexus. I am sure in many enterprises, the CIO has de facto responsibility for managing IT vendors, but the changing reality is that many of them are also tapping into corporate procurement and legal staff for some of the tactical contracts and pricing analysis... which indicates towards the tectonic shift in how technology was procured and how it is now.

"What can be easily negotiated at X/2, the procurement/VMO is happy to liberally award contract to vendors without much intervention. You are expected to stay away from that function. The technology head or CIO isn't more than just implementer of that technology," he mentioned.

I haven't seen a mention of this kind of issue previously. Indeed, matured organizations have processes on how they buy IT but the 'nexus' (if any) is unheard of. And most startling fact that the CIO has to keep himself away from the rubble is a bold, underlined revelation.

Question: Do you think this problem is omnipresent or there are different versions of truth?

Challenge # 3: Beyond a Point IT Doesn't Make a Cut

This was a statement (verbatim) made during one of my private meetings with a CIO who literally sits on the company's board and is an essential part of all management decisions. It means a lot when this kind of statement comes from an authority like him. In many ways, I don't look beyond him when I have to ascertain the role of a CIO.

Having said that, the statement has deep rooted connotations.

- Does it mean organizations still treat IT as an 'outside of boardroom' function?

- Does this mean the CIO is ineffective in marketing IT's value on the top?

- Does it mean IT is still a backroom function, perhaps a bit more glorified than before?

Question: Do you feel the same, or you have a counter to this argument?

None of the above mentioned challenges have been fictitiously created therefore there is some reality behind each one of them. It is now up to you how you openly accept that you face similar challenges and get on with them, or you give a strong counter argument and rubbish them all.

Are You a Revenue-generating CIO?

2013-05-10T03:52:12Z

I strongly believe in the fact that the role of the CIO has evolved in a remarkable manner in the past decade or so. And to everyone's guess, the changes in the role and the expectations from a CIO show no sign of stopping. Rather, they both show an upward trend. With my personal experience, today I want to discuss with my peers about one such expectation from the Company Board/Management - looking at the CIO to contribute directly to revenue generation for the organization.

You will agree that saving costs and improving productivity is no longer sufficient for organizations to get a strategic advantage; generating revenue and offering innovative solutions to the business do. And it is a fact that we (most of us as CIOs) have been insulated from the core of every business that asks for generating revenue and profit, and also satisfying customers. If data is to be believed, only 20-25% CIOs will be found in the bracket of revenue creators. That means rest 75% of us isn't helping our respective organizations in its top line.

Many analyst firms have already predicted that CIOs, in the near future, will be evaluated and rewarded only based on their ability to make money for the business.

We have already seen many IT organizations selling/outsourcing their internal systems to outside entities as a means of recovering investment, and in return helping IT pay for itself. And these organizations did not have any business pressure. The business valued IT all along. It was the CIO leadership in these companies who took a call to generate external revenue through offering their IT as a service to others.

Early this year, Accenture's 2013 CIO Mobility Survey revealed that 79 % of CIOs and other C-suite IT leaders surveyed around the world cited mobility as a revenue generator. Eighty-four percent of the respondents said it would significantly improve customer interactions and 83 percent responded it would significantly affect their business.

Many CIOs today are getting a seat at the executive table, and for them balancing the service provider role versus the revenue generator will prove to be quite challenging. However, they need to be mentally attuned to the changes in mindset and also require the necessary leadership to participate in both the roles.

From being a cost-center in the past, to an enabler; IT departments are now an intrinsic part of the business. Moving ahead more and more organizations will look at IT to increase the top line.

Is CIO Merely an IT Support?

2013-05-09T03:53:40Z

This is my first blog after joining DynamicCIO.com nearly a couple of weeks ago. From here on, I'll be writing regularly and would require your support and feedback.

We all should understand that in many organizations, and I emphasize on the 'many' part, an IT manager's or a CIO's job is considered as only a support arm of the organization - providing support to the IT needs of the users of that organization. But CIOs and IT managers are more than just a mere support system. In today's increasingly IT dependent world, they hold the golden key to long-term success of an enterprise.

And yes, It is their out-of-the-box thinking that can transform a rigid and stale system into something that is most appropriate and tailor made to drive positive business change within an enterprise.

"Nothing is impossible in the world of IT", amazing quote, isn't it. This is what the innovative spirit is all about. And it is about being in your elements, to not only become agent of change, but most importantly to manage that change as well. Hence, become agent of management for the organization.

When business needs agility, transformation, return on investments and a true next generation ready vision, Virtualization, Cloud, Big Data, Ethernet, WiFi, etc are the palette support an IT decision maker needs to boldly move on and increase the envelope of business management taking all the help from IT.

And once a CIO completely believes in the IT systems and process, amazing things are in store. I have a great example of a CIO in India who by his sheer innovative spirit managed and drove IT to deliver great results on an erstwhile mundane process which was happening manually. As a result of this IT led automation, that project is now being rolled out on global scale and dimensions.

When profitability is the language of business, then ease of use and RoI is the language of IT. Ideally placed in the middle of IT and management of IT, a CIO should be able to become fluent in business support.

This is what enabling an efficient business support is all about. Business support which, understands what needs to be done to make the end customer happy, and carry that everlasting impression of coming back again and again.

The story of a CIO surely starts with IT, systems, processes but it can very well lead towards business support and management on the long run.

Communicating Business Value of IT

2013-05-08T03:25:10Z

Last month I wrote about a unique initiative at Hero MotoCorp IT Pledge and how it helps the organization inculcate the traits of accountability towards the sensitivity of information, data and digital assets of the entire ecosystem.

Today, I want to talk about yet another key initiative that Hero MotoCorp took sometime ago. This initiative is helping us a lot in marketing IT internally and creating a perception that IT is not a side job, it is one of the top jobs in creating value for business.

Annual IT Report Card

A question always comes - We are investing so much in IT - what is the return? Are we really getting a good ROI - We all have been answering (or shall I say trying to answer) such questions for many many years. Couple of years back - we thought that we should have a structured process to respond to this question.

In order to present to the management the value that Information Technology (IT) has generated for the business during a financial year, we started preparing an IT report card in the year 2011. To my knowledge, we were the first company in India to prepare an official IT report card and till date the only one to do so. The IT Report Card is an endeavor towards bringing all IT achievements and value generated to a single point in a form, which was understandable by the management and other stakeholders including external parties.

The report card has been well received by the management and has helped IT portray its value to the business; information technology teams, which are generally treated as cost centers by most organizations need to clearly portray their contribution to the business in order to move from the status of being support function to being business partners.

Since the inception of the IT report card, the culture of capturing the value generated by any initiative has become an integral part of the culture and thus helps us reflect on the efforts and the corresponding returns generated.

Where is IT Busy?

2013-05-06T03:30:00Z

In the technology domain the most trending debate making rounds is about which department of an organization consumes most of IT's time and budget?

There is a storm brewing in business. Marketing sees IT as full of propeller-heads. This can mean anything and is very dependent of an interpretation but the situation is that marketing today uses lots of IT, including systems such as CRM and data warehouses (now seemingly popular Big Data) and needs IT to act like a rocket. The IT department has been good at providing large-scale projects to support marketing activities, but is unable to keep pace with the relentless speed of change required by the marketing.

In India there's a lot of haze and we weren't sure whether this is a true statement to make that the future of IT would depend on marketing. DynamicCIO.com ran a short survey among its patrons asking the following three objective and one subjective questions:

- In today's time which one of the corporate functions consumes IT's maximum time?

- Which department today sponsors the maximum IT Projects in value (INR)?

- Keeping the current IT spending and consumption trends in mind, do you think Marketing will be the heaviest spender on IT?

We got a little over 110 responses in quick time and the results did give us some understanding that the momentum of IT-marketing bonhomie is building up and is growing strong. The results of today may point out that IT is still dominantly consumed by traditional functions but the writing is on the wall that marketing is a growing dragon. In this survey 52% of respondents say IT is most consumed by Finance and Supply Chain & Logistics while sales consumes 8%. The feature that is astonishing is marketing consumes 15% (See Graph 1 below) of total IT's time, which indicates towards the fact that IT is increasingly working more closely with marketing and breaking down silos due to the rise of multiple customer channels to win the world of consumerization.

The important fact to notice is that when we asked the CIOs that keeping the current IT trends in mind, do they think marketing will be the heaviest spender on IT in the future, the percentage grew more than what we assumed. 26% CIOs said that Yes, marketing will be the heaviest spender although 32% still said No (See Graph 2 below). This will further mean that future innovations in the business will come from a solid partnership between the CIO and CMO who will not only share goals and metrics but also speak a common language, and forge deep collaboration.

Another point that proves the growing influence and clout of marketing on IT is the maximum sponsorship of IT in rupee terms. In a very fractured mandate, 17% respondents say that marketing is that department though production, finance and supply chain & logistics put together take the biggest slice of the cake.

There were some interesting comments being made by a lot of CIOs and IT leaders on why they think the IT-marketing story is brewing. We shall be bringing that to your consumption in the next blog.

Is Tech Transformation Forcing You to Retire Early?

2013-05-03T00:56:24Z

Technology evolution has created many opportunities and challenges for IT departments. The pace of change in recent times has been going up exponentially with obsolescence setting in faster than the adoption curve maturity. Each new flavor trend and hype creates a flurry of activity which forces the CIO to react. Despite claims of various consultants, there is shallowness of expertise to get some real stuff done. Today it may be difficult to find COBOL programmers; it is equally difficult to find UX or Big Data experts.

Every company and function wants to retain talent and leverage the years of experience and expertise rather than losing them. This is more so if the person is really good at what s/he does; which is why we have retention plans, fast-tracked development, high potential identification and many other financial and non-financial incentives. We also face the challenge of managing a few members who have failed to change with the times and are unable or unwilling to adapt to the new world.

The technology treadmill keeps some of us running to explore and evaluate how and what could be potential uses that will create a differentiation. We embrace the technologies when something works and soon you find the trend becoming mainstream with everyone following. Consultants, vendors and tech media keep the hype high with new buzzwords and technology-lead disruptions. The already scarce resources end up stretching to explore the opportunities over and above their operational activities if any.

Operations are necessary and critical to ensure that business as usual continues while the new stuff keeps the excitement going. Most enterprises have teams that either built the systems a few decades back or were part of the teams that conceptualized the implementation. If you are lucky they have been able to re-skill and stay current while managing the legacy. It is also possible that some have not been adept. Many organizations outsource the legacy sustenance and thereby the BAU operations.

The challenge that many face is to find productive use for the team members that failed to stay current with technology or business. These old-timers built the legacy that did well for the business contextual to the need at that time. With evolution, their inability to adapt makes them dead weight in the current hyper-competitive business environment. The quandary for the CIO is to find useful work for them or find a humane way for their easing into other functions or out of the company.

One of my CEOs in the past had remarked of this phenomenon "We offer employment to qualified people on merit, we do not guarantee employment." With profitability pressures and economic uncertainties this is true even for the better ones with work not just shifting to lower cost but also adding on to existing staff. Do more with less is here to stay and the bar keeps rising every year. Discussing this with a CIO, when she asked me "What is your ERP strategy ?" I was stumped!

ERP is presumably the new term for Early Retirement Plan, effectively created and deployed with HR. Her company had moved off the legacy technologies that had survived more than two decades and through the planning process she had attempted to re-skill the old workforce offering those positions that would have created a graceful exit over a period of time. Most took the opportunity clutching straws and made the grade. A few who did not had to be offered the new ERP!

In some companies old tech still stays, so do people; the pressures of current technology enabled disruptions will require them to sooner or later transition to newer and contemporary solutions. Recent times have seen many transitions from custom legacies to COTS systems to compete in the new normal. The eventual will arrive; CIOs need to hasten their people strategies to ensure that they are not left with a situation where they are pushed to a wall to take a decision.

All ERPs require planning, so why wait ?

The Changing Role of CIO

2013-05-02T04:06:41Z

I've been writing for months (years?) about the changes coming to IT and the role of the CIO. My "New CIO" topic is littered with posts about the changes being seen today and those changes that are coming down the road.

Many others have been writing about it too. Joel Dobbs talks about topic (and his previous musings on the topic) over on the Enterprise CIO Forum in a post titled The times, they are a changin'--Fast!. There are many many others out there writing about the topic too. At last count, there were 976K results in Google on the "changing role of the CIO".

So...obviously there are a lot of people thinking about the topic and writing about the topic.

I just wonder...who's doing anything about the changing role of the CIO?

Is the CIO and/or IT group taking the reigns in hand and driving their future? Or...are we in IT allowing others to plot our course for us?

Reading some of the articles/posts out there... I see many instances where the organizational leadership is directing the changes being seen by CIO's and IT professional. Take for instance, the description of the creation of the "Chief Digital Officer" by Starbucks. This doesn't appear to be a CIO or IT driven change. Also...take a look at the recent hiring of a Chief Technology Officer at JC Penney's. Again...doesn't appear to be a CIO/IT driven change. But...both changes will lead to a dramatic effect on IT and the CIO role.

These organizational driven changes are happening for a reason. For too long, the CIO has been focused on 'keeping the lights on'. They've been plumbers and electricians doing what they are asked by the larger organization...and charging an hourly rate to do it.

Now...every organization needs someone to keep the lights on. We need IT operations...a much aligned and overlooked aspect to IT. But...IT operations is becoming a commodity (or has become a commodity). Do we need a CIO focused on operations...or do we need a CIO focused on strategic initiatives and how the organization can use technology, information and knowledge to grow and be more competitive?

The answer...at least for me...is the latter. In fact, I wrote a post last year titled Splitting IT - Operations and Innovation where I touch on this very topic where I wrote:

I see organization talking about, and moving to, a split between Operational IT and Strategic IT. Most organizations have already done this to a point...but i see this split happening much more broadly in the near future. Operational IT contains much of what we see today with IT operations. Security, servers, infrastructure, Support and all those things that help 'keep the lights on' for organizations. Strategic IT contains the enterprise architects, business analysts and business technologists. This is the team that drives innovation. This is the team where you hire extremely creative people and point them at the business problems and ask them to solve those problems. Maybe the name of this team/group changes from Strategic IT to something more along the lines of Business Technology...because that's what they need to focus on.

A lot of the changes I'm seeing today in organizations are following this same type of thinking. The old IT guard are being relinquished to the "operational IT" group while the more progressive and forward thinking of those in IT are being asked to help drive technology from a strategic standpoint. These people are being moved into other groups in the organization and given "non-IT" roles...which is sad...because they could just as easily have done their role within the IT group...if the CIO & IT group would have had the foresight / ability to drive real change and value.

CIO's and IT Pro's - what do you want to be in 2 years....the person/team that keeps the lights on...or the person/team that gets to play with all the new technology? I prefer to be a part of the teams that get to play with the new stuff and I'm helping my clients move in that direction.

What about you...are you driving your change and complaining about others forcing change upon you?

This blog is re-posted with permission from Eric D. Brown. To read Eric's blogs, you can visit: http://ericbrown.com.

CDO: The Chief Déjà Vu Officer

2013-05-01T03:41:09Z

Whac-a-mole. It's my favorite of all metaphors, at least when it comes to applicability to IT. For those who don't know the background: Whac-a-mole is a commonly seen arcade game, where plastic moles pop up at random through holes in the game panel. The job of the player, of course, is to pound them down again with a mallet, accumulating points with each kinetic, mind-clearing, vigorous whack. And, of course, the game keeps speeding up. The moles never stop coming.

Any readers who don't instantly get the clear analogy to IT are probably reading the wrong blog.

A career spent in IT feels like a constant bout of Whac-a-mole. But here, again, is one key recurring "mole" that I find especially irritating: the proliferation, against all logic, of articles and tweets about the demise of IT, the death of the CIO, and how technology is now so easy, so omnipresent, that experts are no longer required.

I wrote about this ever-repeated meme a year ago in a post titled "IT consumerization, the cloud, and the alleged death of the CIO". I railed against the meme, pointing out that "this frequent linking of cloud and IT consumerization to the looming demise of the CIO and IT is not just misguided, but actually gets it completely backwards. In fact, I argue that IT consumerization and the cloud will actually elevate the importance of IT within a company, as both a service and a strategic focus."

But IT moribundity is a meme that somehow refuses to, uh, die.

Why? Everyone is a technology guru now, it seems, eager to dismiss the need for real experts now that we all have iPads. And a great way to garner attention is to publish posts or deliver talks with extraordinarily baitful titles like Peter Hinssen's recent article, "IT Departments have become completely useless", or Matt Hooper's TFT12 presentation, "Bye Bye IT, We'll Miss You".

The line above about the iPads sounds like a dramatic exaggeration, but it's not. Hinssen dismisses IT departments as now useless, in part for this reason: "since everyone and their dog started carrying around iPads, the IT department really lost their advantage on the 'frontier of technology'." Hinssen is an industry veteran and should understand that IT's purview is far broader than what can be rendered obsolete just by the advent of the latest gadget, yet his whole post wallows in such overstated stereotypes.

Moreover, his post exhibits what amounts to the same kind of underlying scorn for IT people ("dead weight"; "hopelessly out of date", etc.) that I've called out elsewhere, such as when one industry pundit wrote of the need to "turn the tables on those bastards in IT." Hinssen delights in telling us that the successful Chief Digital Officer comes "from anywhere but IT, actually," in an echo of Gartner analyst Mark McDonald's similarly dismissive claim several years ago that "the real determinant [of a "rich" CIO] is that many of [the "rich" CIOs] come straight out of business."

To the rescue: the Chief Digital Officer

For Hinssen and many others, their disregard for IT now comes coupled with an easy solution, though: the new trend of Chief Digital Officer appointments, often cited with much accompanying glee as compelling indication of the "death of the CIO". But in truth, this new position and title is (in many if not most cases) just the latest warmed-over and foolhardy attempt to separate strategy from execution as some kind of magic way to get more done without having to deal with all that killjoy fastidiousness that IT always brings to the party.

Déjà vu, anyone? Those of us who remember the advent of PCs in a corporate environment have heard many of these same arguments before. It's my personal computer now; I won't need to be dependent on "those guys" over in IT. Many departmental folks in the 80s insisted on jury-rigging PC-based systems so that they could have independence from the perceived tyranny of IT. I mean, how hard could building a few systems really be, right? Sooner or later, of course, those systems often proved brittle, ill-constructed, unable to be integrated, lacking vital security functions, subject to single point of failure, etc.

Innovate away, but don't abandon fundamentals

People also justify their dismissal of the importance of execution and experience by pointing out that many IT systems have become mere commodities, no longer deserving of a top executive's leadership. Yet, real competitive differentiation in business actually comes from the non-commodity systems and from the innovative applications of technology that you and your staff can dream up (and implement) successfully.

So yes, you innovate: you latch onto new ways to get that much-needed competitive differentiation. But you'd better not abandon the lessons of the past just because they seem boring or unpleasant or way too detail-oriented, compared to the heady macho whirl of strategy. Unfortunately, business systems tend to be complicated, especially the new and innovative ones that we so desperately want. What often fall by the wayside, by people giddy that everyone now has iPads, are the execution fundamentals needed to address that complexity. We will always need some adults in the room when designing and implementing complex systems, and by "adult", I mean people who know, by dint of experience, when and how to take a mature, sober, suitably rigorous approach.

A real-world case in point

Let's talk about one recent, highly visible, textbook example that illustrates keenly the still-vital importance of solid IT leadership to mission-critical endeavors (This example shows, most notably, innovation coupled with fundamental execution). In the presidential election of 2012, a major differentiating factor, by all reports, was the IT team put together by the Obama campaign. Aside from sheer strength of numbers (for example, Obama's data team had 50 people; Romney's only four), the degree of basic IT rigor exercised by the two candidates' teams was significantly different, and telling.

For example, Obama's team is reported as having run countless "what if" scenarios to accommodate multiple application failure scenarios. Romney's team, in contrast, gearing up to launch a much vaunted "Orca" application designed to help get their candidate's voters to the polls, apparently brushed off questions related to stress testing, security, etc.

On Election Day, the Romney campaign's Orca system infamously crashed and burned, because of a "failure to follow basic best practices for IT projects." Not so with the Obama campaign's systems. "We knew what to do," explained the Obama team lead, no matter what the scenario was. "We had a runbook that said if this happens, you do this, this, and this. They did not do that with Orca."

Contrast that kind of rigorous, blocking-and-tackling approach to the attitude of a marketing guy I worked with a while back, who dismissed the need to stress-test one complex function of a new custom application by shrugging, "well, we tried out that function three times already, and it works; it's not like it's going to just stop working." It never does on his iPad, no doubt. How many freshly minted Chief Digital Officers out of various corners of the business, never themselves having grappled wtih IT-related tradeoffs, are likely to cut corners in exactly that kind of nonchalant way?

Let's not mince words: it's reckless and irresponsible to push out strategic initiatives without equally focusing on rigorous execution and implementation. That's why it's rankling to see such recklessness joined (and enabled), inexplicably, by a number of industry pundits hopping on the baitful bandwagon and declaring that IT is no longer necessary. Rather, I believe that a critical role of the seasoned IT professional is to help the business balance innovation with the need for well-honed, pitfall-cognizant execution. To be, in short, that adult in the room.

Really: how much déjà vu can we take?

It's a mistake to consider strategy and execution as a divisible, either/or proposition. They're inseparable, intertwined, co-dependent. It generally works really badly when the operational side of IT functions independently from strategy concerns, and equally badly when the strategy side is out there dreaming stuff up without either accountability or often even much involvement in actually making it work over time. Separating the roles into two different individuals at an executive level apparently sounds to a lot of folks like a great idea, but it actually creates a fertile breeding ground for left-hand/right-hand disconnects.

So for companies or CEOs that have grown weary of IT being, well, messy, anointing a Chief Digital Officer may sound like a great "all the benefit! None of the pain!" kind of answer. But if we take a careful look at history, the odds are great that the high-aimed strategies designed and implemented by the inexperienced executive will founder, sooner or later, under inadequate planning and poor execution. Just as Orca did.

It shouldn't need constant restating, in other words: even the best of strategies usually means nothing without well-planned, methodical, rigorous execution. And deep experience actually matters in execution, especially as the stakes get ever higher and the game increasingly more complex.

So there you have it. I hate repeating myself on these matters, but hey... the moles just keep on coming. WHACK.

Lagniappe:

Peter Hinssen, "IT Departments Have Become Completely Useless", March 16, 2013.
Matthew Hooper, "Bye Bye IT, We'll Miss You!", December 5, 2012.
Eric D. Brown, "The Changing role of the CIO", April 12, 2012.
Sean Gallagher, "Inside Team Romney's whale of an IT meltdown", November 9, 2012.
John Peterson, "Report: Internal analytics gave Obama campaign edge over Romney campaign", January 3, 2013.
Alexis C. Madrigal, "When the Nerds Go Marching In", November 16, 2012.
Shane Schick, "The CIO will outlast all this 'CDO' stupidity", March 11, 2013.
Mark McDonald, "Can the CIO be the Chief Digital Officer? Crafting the Right Role", April 10, 2013.
Mark McDonald, "Can the CIO be the Chief Digital Officer? Yes if they make the role their own", April 12, 2013.
Ian Cox, "The CIO can be the CDO", March 12, 2013.
Scott Brinker, "A CMO, a CIO, and a chief digital officer walk into a bar...", March 24, 2013.

This blog is reposted with permission from Peter Kretzman. To read Peter's Blog, you can visit: http://www.peterkretzman.com/