Oh I See (CIO Inverted)

Vendor lock-in

2012-01-30T18:42:00.000+05:30

Kids ask the most interesting questions;they make you scratch your head and think. I had this experience recently when interactingwith a gathering of B-school kids. The occasion was an event organized by the studentswith the industry exploring insights and networking. One such session wasaround the challenges and opportunities for the CIO. The CIOs presented wereheartened that the role is one of the aspirational careers.

The question thatstumped some of us went something like this. CIOs take decisions on IT strategyand architecture thereby setting the foundation of the technology that willenable the enterprise for a long time. So when selecting an ERP or similarsystem what are the criteria to select one over the other considering that oncea specific technology is chosen, it will stay for a really long time. It’s likea lock-in because no one changes ERP systems normally. How do you then managecost escalations and support ?

Now as I know thequestion is largely accurate portrayal of reality. Every enterprise whenselecting an ERP has painstakingly reviewed most options before assigning thefamily jewels to the solution. Such magnitude of projects is always launchedwith fanfare with senior management speeches and project naming ceremonies. Committeesare formed with best intent and sooner or later the project goes live. I am notgetting into success or challenge that typical projects face; that’s anotherstory.

Over the years with increasinglicenses and customizations, the sustenance cost starts to hurt; CIOs find waysto reduce support costs or squeeze licenses deployed to keep operating expenseslow. The thought of replacement is rarely tabled and considered impractical.How can such a change be ever executed ? Who will drive this ? Change will bedisruptive to the business. The cost of replacement will be extremely high andnot worth the effort.

I am sure that thesereasons have some echoes for every CIO. Change is indeed a herculean task whenit impacts almost everyone in the company; especially so when the change willhave the biggest impact on the IT organization. Apart from the change thatevery employee will have to go through, the IT teams will have to get out oftheir comfort zones and drive the change from the front while keeping thelights on and business chugging along as usual.

So is ERP replacementthe peak that no CIO wants to even attempt ? Or is it only for the few braveexpedition leaders akin to climbing the Mount Everest ? Yes the biggest peakhas been climbed a few times and so has ERP migrations done with sparsefrequency. Why this reluctance in proposing the change or embracing thechallenge to climb mountains ?

I believe that thevendor lock-in created around the difficulty of ERP change is to some extentpromulgated by the CIO. It is time to abandon this myth and start exploring newhorizons in the new world being created around us. We can be part of thecreators rather than accept status quo irrespective of whether we were part ofthe original decision or not. Every decision taken is based on facts that thattime and is largely a correct decision. Should we allow this to constrain thefuture ? After all if you keep climbing smaller mountains, no one rejoices withyou as much as if you did climb the Mount Everest !

Walk the Talk

2012-01-23T19:05:00.000+05:30

Almost all of my posts are based onpersonal experience or interactions with people from various walks of life. Fora change looking for new topics to write about, I started scanning a fewwebsites positioned at CIOs and aspiring CIOs. I also decided to look up a fewcelebrity bloggers and tech writers who have either been ex-CIOs or respectedconsultants and speakers in many CIO forums internationally.

I do receive and read more than 50 oddnewsletters every day across various subjects; industry specific from retail(my chosen industry for the last 5 years), Human Resources (for people tips andideas), ecommerce, social media, leadership, current affairs, regional news,politics, and many CIO focused sites. These are supplemented with some internetbrowsing, 5 newspapers and some IT magazines daily. The summaries and newsbriefs keep me updated with information which helps me understand trends andstay current with the world.

Coming back to my search of the sites, theidea was to look at what is the world taking about ? Can I pick up a fewinsights that could help me in creating the next week’s blog ? Are my postsstill relevant to the CIO or I am living in a world detached from reality. Whatnew innovation have I missed while running on the technology treadmill (seelast week’s post) and getting to be a retailer and a coach to start-up CEOs andfuture CIOs ?

Headlines on newproduct introductions (tablets, phones, servers) and some of the hyped upcomingtechnologies took up 70% of the landing page across all the sites. A few linksto notable blogs on the sites, vendor advertisements and videos made up another20%. Desperately I started scanning for CIO leadership, business challenges,innovation, people management, and customer engagement, anything that wasremoved from technology.

On one site I did findsome hidden behind a menu option; it was a CIO case study on how she overcame adifficult business situation with her expertise in business. On another site a menubutton offered expert advice but clicking a few links got me some technologyexperiments and vendor sponsored white papers. When every publication rues and makes a case for a business savvy CIO,why is the content not reflecting this ? Why are these sites still abouttechnology and are they really targeting the CIO ?

Take any ITpublication (physical or electronic), irrespective of the target audience (CIO,IT Managers, channel partners, broad-based audience), the editorial or one ofthe cover stories is always about what the CIO should be doing to stay relevantto the business. The underlying theme is always about business before IT. Butafter the preaching is done, back to business as usual, do you know about thenew 64 core server or the next crossover device with zillion pixel screen ?

They proclaim, CIOs shouldevolve, cite surveys from other CXOs, CIOs, vendors … and then publishtechnology trends, new servers, tablets, smartphone comparisons, stuff thatmatters to a technology professional and detached from a CIO who would dependon his/her team to advise him on therelevant tools required to achieve the defined business objective. Why can theynot walk their talk if their defined target audience is indeed the CIO or thesenior IT leader ?

I believe thatevolution is slower and selective than technology innovation.

The Technology Treadmill

2012-01-16T18:30:00.000+05:30

In any momentof decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thingis the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." – TheodoreRoosevelt

There have beenpredictions on hot technologies and trends to watch for across the board; fromvendors, IT consulting companies, media companies (not just IT), academiccircles, groups of various kinds and individuals, CIOs or otherwise. The listsshort and long, good and bad have caught the imagination of many CIOs as wellas others within the company who are asking how will it impact us within thecompany, and our customers.

It is certain that afew will create enough hype and threaten disruption. Be it personal devices orback end technologies or even consumer facing applications, every new tool ortechnology promises to change the way business is conducted or we engage withcustomers. Some are improvements over existing tools with the novelty factor fadingaway quickly with the response of the existing leaders; the rest fail to followup on the initial promises.

We occasionally findsome actually providing benefit to the enterprise, some measurable, the rest islargely a race against competition to deploy and look savvy. Our employees andcustomers expect the adoption of almost every new announcement the followingday. Thoughts about security or reworking or plain simple ROI are for the CIOto figure out. Vendors and consultants definitely benefit from this runningbehind the technology.

From the time of themainframes to the promise of the Internet, social media, and consumerizeddevices of today with apps and everything in between, technology has createdopportunities and challenges for the IT organization. The pace of change isincreased with ubiquitous technology; the accelerator is now on auto witheveryone running to stay in place. Can we afford to stay where we are and beobservers or slow adopters with a hope to survive the mad rush to nowhere ? Isthere likely respite from the ever increasing pace of changing expectations ?

The technologytreadmill will continue to move irrespective of whether we hop on board or not.It is extremely unlikely that we will be allowed to stay on the sidelines andadmire the speed at which the treadmill and its players are going. CIOs willhave to stay connected to the pulse and inspect every change from multipleangles. Some team members will have to keep jumping on and off the treadmill toensure that the ramifications are understood and communicated effectively toset realistic expectations.

In most cases, thecall on which ones to stay with or discard will remain with the ITorganization. Success or lack of it will however be decided by our internal andexternal customers and stakeholders. Can the CIO get off the technologytreadmill and stay relevant ? I believe that pragmatically the CIO and now eventhe other CXOs have no choice. They did not enroll into this madness but havebeen made party to simply by being there; exclusion is not even an option any more.

I am going back to thetreadmill with a quote that I leave behind after listening to some retiredCIOs. “Strangely enough this is the past that someonein the future is longing to go back to” – Ashleigh Brilliant.

The price of inaction

2012-01-09T19:36:00.000+05:30

The setting does notmatter, but whenever I meet someone unrelated to IT (with IT folks thediscussion is anyway about IT), the conversation always ends up talking abouthow they use technology. Maybe something to do with me, so when I met with aCFO of a large company, we predictably ended up discussing the health of theirIT systems.

The company had grownorganically to become a leader in its industry and now had global aspirations.Family run, it had over the years it had invested in IT to keep pace with thechange in technology. The owners indulged the new generation allowing them toembrace cutting edge while retaining the legacy for the comfort of thestalwarts who built the company. The diversity that thus coexisted was amazingto just admire the profoundness and marvel at how it all worked together.

Hundreds, no thousandsof almost disjointed small systems supported mission critical tasks acrossfunctions held together by the experienced hands that orchestrated thebusiness. The management had discussed and debated renewal for a decade toreplace the increasing inventory of applications with a contemporary ERP. Thedecision was always deferred with the fact that it has worked for us so far, soit should work in the future too. We have survived downturns, competition, andgrown.

They did not have anIT Head and had never thought of getting a CIO. What about cost of sustainingdiverse and antiquated technology ? The response was, my IT vendors take careof that. Were employees happy with the situation ? It works, so happiness isnot the consideration. Was productivity optimal ? Grudgingly he accepted thatit could be improved upon.

In the second decadeof the twenty first century a successful large enterprise working with noformal IT strategy nor a CIO; as I dug deeper it was evident that theunfettered IT had its advantages that there was agility in creation ofsolutions where required; business teams worked with multiple partners andsometimes even individuals to get processes or content enabled. Across variousoffices and functions this was the norm.

Integration andreporting was on another planet. Rarely anyone agreed to figures; sharing ofbest practices or synergies in process, unheard of. The local optima did notfavor global optima. The CFO was at the receiving end of most of the chaos, butdid not see ROI in large scale change. He lamented the fact that competitorswere beginning to catch up and technology may have a role in that. Thepromoters wanted to step back and handover reigns to the next generation andprofessionals.

Can total or strategicoutsourcing solve the problem ? We discussed and debated the merits andchallenges of this approach, the change management across the diverseenterprise and employees across locations. Giving away the problem will notnecessarily solve it. Someone internally will have to own the change, coax itstep by step and create lasting change. S/he will have to take everyone alongthe journey.

My humble suggestion to him was to get a CIO.

Proactively Resistive

2012-01-02T18:46:00.000+05:30

Uncertainty iscertain, that is the maxim of today and reality for all of us individually aswell as for enterprises. A repeat of the economic downturn of a few years backor worse, that is the question everyone is pondering over. When the sentimentis down, the first casualty is perceived risky innovative propositions. Peoplewithdraw into their anxieties and work to keep status quo. Any remotelydisruptive thought is beaten black and blue unless inaction threatensexistence.

So what does it do tothe IT budget and the CIO who is being challenged to do more with less and findresources to create efficiency ? How can operating expense be lowered when alarge chunk of the allocation is to paying license fees and annual charges forthe large systems ? Cloud may shift some capital expense but does not take awaythe payout for license and support. Can the business critical solutions beshifted to open source ?

Even if the shift toopen source was possible for some processes, the core ERP systems are the onesthat will be resisted by the users; be it HR or Finance, they do not want toshift away from already stable (take that with loads of salt considering thepatches that continue to make the system unstable) and comfortable systems. Thebig vendors know that such a shift is almost impossible and continue to hammer theproverbial nails into corporates with increases year on year. So what is theway out for the CIO ?

In a CIO forum I met oneof the thought leaders who has and would make it to every list globally. He rana discourse on change that IT brings about in an enterprise. He talked about someof the change projects being executed by many global enterprises pertained toreducing expenses across the board led by IT. Mandated or democratically agreedto, these were being resisted by layers across the enterprise. He preachedtop-down and bottom-up collaboration to “sell” the ideas along withexistentialist discussions. If we did not do this, then the sky would fall uponus.

It was nothing new asCIOs use this strategy quite well to garner buy-in for most projects. It isanother matter that measurement of the impact is rarely done a few years lateras the business context has changed, or we have moved to another crisis, or thepeople who made the case no longer exist in the company. Push ahead and yeshall be rewarded he expounded. Maybe I have become a cynic after trying thisso many times to believe that it would still work in the current businessenvironment.

I believe thatirrespective of support levels across the enterprise, the CIO should continueto engage with the stakeholders to have them share the pain before embarking onthe journey to create colossal change or transformation of the IT landscape.Finding business allies will be difficult, but the journey in solitude is asure way to achieve martyrdom. After all we all live under the same sun buthave different horizons. So lead the way, but make sure that there are othersalong with you, not following you.

The words that stayedwith me a long time were “the cultural response was resistive, sometimesproactively resistive”. Hasn’t the world always been the same for the CIO ?

The Power-centric CIO

2011-12-26T17:43:00.000+05:30

My marketing team is wresting part of my budget of customer facing applications and social media; at the same time funding for the new budgeting application is with my finance team. The IT budget is now almost 50% of what it was last year. How do I recover back control of my budget ? Wailed a CIO in a panel discussion, which was discussing amongst other things trends that are likely to be reality in the upcoming year.

The panel sympathized with the protagonist CIO and a few from the audience attempted to offer solutions. The debate threw up a interesting thoughts on how the budgetary control could be retained with IT. Ranging from bureaucratic rigmaroles to bullying and many other similarly trending behaviors, the suggestions were analyzed and discarded as untenable for either being against core values or not implementable without inflicting self-damage.

The IT budget has been a discussion point for some time now. It predicted the investments made by companies on technology enabled solutions. The industry created benchmarks around the investments linking it to the topline graded by industry. The maturity of IT usage was linked to this figure and anyone spending below the benchmark was seen as a laggard or highly efficient.

Then came research reports on innovation versus business as usual; ranging from 70% - 90% of the IT budget being consumed on keeping the lights on, while the remaining pittance being allotted to new projects or innovation. Anyone with BAU numbers under 60% was envied and deemed better aligned to the business. Models were created to turn the ratio upside down and reduce the operational budgets to strategic initiatives.

Economic cycles threatened available monies and CIOs were put under the scanner on every penny (or cent or whatever currency you like) they spent. Do more with less was the mantra and that is now the new normal. Every disruptive technology was seen as the next silver bullet to help the CIO in improving the dialogue on keeping the IT budget to a respectable ratio to the revenue. Cloud will save money, move everything to Operating Expense; virtualization will save the enterprise IT …

In one of the companies I worked the IT organization was empowered with the operating expense budget and incremental innovation on existing technology stacks. There was a discretionary budget for exploration of new trends and technology. New projects and initiative budgets were discussed with the business and IT advised the funding requirements which rested in the business P&L. This ensured that the accountability for the projects was an equal responsibility shared between IT and the function. The success rate was high and everyone loved IT. Since then I have followed this practice successfully in every company.

I believe that keeping the number in the CIO spreadsheet or the business spreadsheet does not take away the control from either. Mature enterprises and CXOs work together to solve real business problems and not bicker over where the budget lies. When was it about control or the power of the budget, large or small ? If the CIO is partnering with other CXOs and is focused on the corporate agenda, then it is about getting things done irrespective of where the number lies.

Does this insecurity befit the CIO ?

Unraveling BYOD/T

2011-12-19T18:29:00.000+05:30

The one trend that everyone is talking about and which figures on every list (priorities, trends, technology, whatever) is Bring Your Own Device/Technology. It has had proponents and opponents from various quarters within and outside the enterprise. Opinions and views, recommendations and pitfalls, management tools and security concerns, the list is endless and continues to keep the CIO bewildered irrespective of whether s/he embraces BYOT or not.

From what I recollect, it all started with the iPhone and then extended to tablets, laptops, and what have you. Not that earlier personal devices did not connect to the corporate network; they did on the wire and then over the air, if you will remember devices with a technology called “activesync”. The early phones offered limited connectivity and as the network improved and so did the technology, browser based apps started appearing. The resident app followed soon enough.

I don’t remember all the devices that I used over the last decade and longer being provided by the company; which would imply that we did have a lenient policy even before the BYOT buzz appeared and started haunting every technology professional. The early PDA which eventually integrated the phone had limited use and was not widely prevalent due to unwieldy size and interface. Except for the early large form factor devices, it was not a statement to make.

Evolution of the device and the network created new possibilities and the scattered raindrops became a flood; apps for everything and power in the hands of the executive with no constraint on time. Business impatience became the hallmark of new technology deployment to swamp all available and unavailable time. The CIO built layers of infrastructure, applications and security to manage the demand. It did not matter who or how many used it; if it was possible, then it had to be available.

The democratization of information worried only the CIO until stories of compromise started spreading. Compromise not always by the external world, but bits of information scattered across slowly fading away with exits, ignorant employees losing devices or passing hands within the family. Enterprise liability driven by law and governance suddenly finds itself at loggerheads with BYOT.

Depending on the country of incorporation and most probably operation, the laws require stringent compliance. BYOT contravenes some with liability creation for not just the CIO but the CEO and even the global HQ. A cyber law expert thrust the fear of the law of the land to listening CIOs who cringed with every clause and interpretation of impact to the executives and the enterprise.

So what are the choices available ? Will the CEO not want the next new device on the block to be connected to the corporate infrastructure ? Does s/he not evaluate the ramifications to the enterprise ? Is ignorance a good excuse ? I believe that the CIO needs to raise the bar with heightened awareness starting with the Board and then cascading downwards. It takes only once incidence to create collective pain. CIOs can address the contingent liability with reasonable due diligence, control and documentation to dampen down the impact.

It is not going away, but what it means to you is up to you. BYOT = Bring Your Own Trouble, or BYOD = Bring Your Own Demise, or BYOD = Bring Your Own Destiny, or BYOT = Bring Your Own Tension, or BYOT = Bring Your Own Threat, or BYOD/T = ? You decide !

Finding alternatives

2011-12-12T18:52:00.000+05:30

The bewilderment was visible to everyone who even glanced at the face; not that too many people were in the room, but everyone could clearly see the expression on the face of the Chairman. The trigger was the suggestion that the big ERP that has worked well for almost a decade should be discarded in favor of another one. The animated voice and high throughput beyond the normal diction made it difficult to comprehend the entire story. So I slowed down my friend the CIO of a fast growing enterprise and asked him to begin from where else, but the beginning.

Over the last year or so there was a rumbling of discontent about the lack of adequate support and the rising cost of licenses and annual support. The problem was brought to the forefront when after a version upgrade necessitated by end of support announcement, the system started behaving abnormally with earlier functioning features now working differently. Stability took a long time to achieve.

On the other side another function was struggling to support the continuously increasing license and support costs. The thought of additional functionality and modules was abandoned upon hearing the new licensing norms. This indeed creates a difficult scenario for the CIO and the CXO to contemplate the future. As the company grows, how to ensure that the efficiencies gained thus far are not lost ? How to control the ever increasing burden of Business As Usual ? The ratios of BAU to new initiatives were in favor but slowly sliding.

So the CIO called his team and started exploring alternatives. Can the already good discounts from the vendor be improved upon ? Is it possible to move away from per user license to something better ? What if we exclude a section of employees from the technology solution ? Would the enterprise technology architecture become complex if multiple solutions were deployed ? Would the cloud make any difference to the outflow ?

That is how the recommendation came up that the current technology stack be replaced with a competing product which offered (at least on paper) better TCO. And the CIO decided to raise the question with the management which led to the scenario above. The CIO had done his homework by talking to the respective functions and gaining their grudging nods. But the scale of change scared everyone.

We all know that change is not something anyone likes despite whatever pains may be currently plaguing the process, function or enterprise. It takes a lot of effort to even get the idea to gain traction. We discussed the merits and pitfalls of the proposal and agreed that there is no easy way out. The change will be transformational also providing an opportunity to kill a few “this is the way it is done here” kinds of processes. The TCO over the next 5 years with the projected growth did indeed demonstrate more than 30% reduction.

Reinvigorated the CIO agreed to push ahead armed with confidence that he was on the right track and that the change agenda will indeed benefit the enterprise in the long run. Would you do the same if faced with this challenge ?

The list price conundrum

2011-12-05T18:57:00.001+05:30

With the economy tightening again and uncertainty across geographies, enterprise spending is once again under focus; this is giving rise to some interesting discussions. Driven by the CFO, CEO, and CIO who are exploring deferred investments or the usual doing more with less, the discussions translate into unrealistic (as griped by vendors) expectations from suppliers, vendors and partners to provide goods and services at higher discounts.

Result is rounds of moaning and groaning from either side citing their versions of reality and pushing the limit beyond the last transaction. The promise of future and making up the deficit in the long term does bend most; few who do not oblige sometimes are rewarded and more often it is an opportunity lost. The resultant business creates suspicion if earlier everyone was enjoying higher margins than they should.

In the IT world, I never heard of anyone paying list price on anything that they bought. In normal times discount levels used to range from the nominal 10% to in many cases as high as 70%. It was a rare one time transaction that enjoyed higher numbers. The list price was a marker to decide whose need was higher and who had more patience. Month end, quarter end and year ends provide opportunities offering higher levels of business and discounts. Again almost everyone recognizes this and plays the game.

In the last slowdown or recession depending on which part of the world or which industry you belonged to, a few companies breached 90%. There are anecdotes about free solutions being provided to a few marquee customers either as an entry price or to sustain business. Free is a paradigm shift though the way some vendors are hiking their annual maintenance charges, free does not seem too unreasonable considering that in 3-5 years you have paid as much as the initial acquisition cost.

So why do vendors continue to print a list price which has irrational numbers and then offer a discount ? Maybe to acquiesce human nature which revels on a deal ? Purchase managers and CIOs work on reducing prices every year. Volume typically adds to the discount but is not the only determinant. Benchmarking across the geographies I find that the level of discount rises from west to the east and then again slides with India and China being the trough. Despite this trend, I haven’t seen a gold rush to shift license contracts from other countries to take advantage.

The current uncertainty has once again brought budgets into focus. Slowdown in customer spending is already impacting retail consumption and thereby every industry. Going into budget sessions, the expectation is to once again lower expenses and investments. We still have inflationary trends is many countries and wages are going up for some, while cost of living continues to go up. But the question that haunts me is if there is indeed so much of buffer that every time the challenge is thrown, people find a way of adjusting to new baselines, then how did the same people allow higher expenses in easier times?

As goes the proverb, “Mother is the necessity of invention”, I believe that with every challenge new opportunities are explored and leveraged on operational efficiency. Technology evolution with new disruptions contributes to improvements; return ratios are however reducing and we are reaching a point where the stretch will reach a break point. We will achieve the pit bottoms sooner than later; the list price will then have to change. Whether it will go up or down is another debate.

Get on with IT

2011-11-29T13:52:00.001+05:30

The other day I was in a gathering of CIOs being addressed by an eminent editor of an IT publication who was unraveling research conducted by his publication. The research surveyed a large number of CIOs who provided their priorities, challenges, opportunities for the year ahead and some numbers (budgets, compensation, and longevity in a role). Based on their frame of reference the audience agreed and disagreed with the data points. This was followed by a discussion on some of the inferences and the qualitative feedback. Then all hell broke loose.

The discussion like always touched upon some favorites like Business IT Alignment, measurement of effectiveness of leaders and the most debated one, TCO/ROI. Everyone had an opinion on everything and rarely did opinions converge. Some felt that BITA is a non-issue while others still struggle with it; it was opined that the CIO by virtue of taking on additional business responsibilities and participation in business discussions has already demonstrated leadership, and TCO/ROI matter to almost everyone except when under the guise of “strategic projects” the issue is sidelined.

The role of the CIO and its evolution from technology to business was justified with the fact that technology evolution and usage patterns within the enterprise have driven newer expectations and thereby the change encountered by the CIO. Alignment need, lack or existence was challenged and treated IT on par with Finance and HR or Marketing. Contextually depending on the incumbent CIO and the industry, these are real trends.

Who justifies ROI and who should be tasked with the calculations ? Is Post Implementation Review still in vogue ? No one had done any and neither did any enterprise go back to review the expectations with the reality. Those who did create business cases with ROI agreed that ROI is now passé. Interestingly a few promulgated that they use the cost of not doing a project and losing on growth, customers or position in the industry. The learning from the discussions could be summed up as follows:

BITA is largely dead; it is not about alignment anymore but about working together and solving real business problems. Gap if any is perceptions that vendors and consultants want to fuel.
In the same spirit ROI or any financial metrics is co-created by the CIO along with the function or business impacted. The justifications focus on incremental revenue or cost savings and are shared between the CIO and the business head
Projects are also being sanctioned with strategic intent focusing on not just the new capability and its impact, but also on the potential disadvantage faced when the capability is missing
The discussion around the table is no longer on the technology, but the impact and outcomes which have to be enumerated using the positive or adverse impact to customers and employees
There will be enterprises that get it and some who don’t. CIOs will jump ship where they remain challenged for too long.

I wonder what is the need to continue berating the role in which we are, the CIO ? Can we stop talking about it and get on with IT ? Are we creating self-fulfilling prophecies propounding the need for alignment, or the evolution of the CIO role, or at the basic level pondering on how to justify budgets ?

Surviving layoffs

2011-11-22T15:59:00.001+05:30

We live in uncertain times with global economies tumbling randomly impacting everyone within as well as across borders. Citizens and corporates alike are living with FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) as the world watches the unfolding of one crisis after another. With survival at stake, individuals as well as enterprises are taking steps to tide over the current quagmire. In our connected world, the impact is felt even in otherwise stable or developing economies.

Are there learning from past economic events that have left many economies struggling. Recession and slowdown driven new normal had everyone focusing on cost and then incremental growth. Successive events have taken away much of the impact once again driving enterprises and individuals up the wall. Once again there is talk of deep cost cutting which now chips at the bones with no flesh remaining.

Not too long ago interacting with such a CIO who was asked to find alternative opportunities, I learnt about the trials and tribulations of such a situation, especially when there is a gap between two jobs. The person was a great performer and excelled in creating new technology solutions. In recessionary times discretionary spending was cut, no new projects and thus the pink slip.

In good times every enterprise leader will cite the often repeated cliché “people are our best assets”. In difficult times after everything else has been tried, companies lay off assets that can no longer be deemed useful. Normalization has a way of sometimes impacting productive assets too with resultant attrition hitting operating efficiencies. Layoffs are reality and so is the adverse impact it creates.

The ecosystem of friends, peers and close family can help overcome the negative sentiment. Seek a coach or mentor who can keep the sanity levels normalized. Even if you are lucky it takes time to find what works for you and the new company wanting to hire your services. A non-CIO friend took almost 2 years to get his rightful position while his kids and family supported him emotionally. The CIO was lucky to find a fresh beginning within 6 months.

What could I have done to prevent this from happening ? The mind tries to justify and find causes related to personal behavior, performance or shortfall that created the situation. It refuses to recognize external forces instead attempting to rationalize self-existence. It takes a while for reality to sink in and start afresh. The self-denial phase can last from a few hours to years. This self-pity mode becomes the most unproductive time. It is important to leave behind the baggage and move on with a fresh start.

What does this mean ? Be prepared as Black Swans are becoming more prevalent than NNT (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) postulated. Do not feel disheartened when someone close gets impacted. Support the person any way that you can. When I faced this situation a long time back, my friends and the IT industry leaders provided adequate cushioning to sustain self-pride. I was fortunate to maintain continuity in my transition and thankfully overcame emotional distress quickly. That’s when I realized the importance of networking and reputation.

We live in uncertain times.

Becoming an Entrepreneur

2011-11-14T18:19:00.001+05:30

Recent times have been interesting to say the least; according to industry news angel investors, venture capital and seed funding has been relatively easy to get by. Every business magazine and newspaper is talking about the young generation choosing the path less trodden. New business ideas appear out of nowhere and once executed makes one wonder, it was so obvious, why did I not think about it ? These are however the ones that succeed which I am sure are statistically very small compared to the ones that died prematurely.

The spirit of entrepreneurship seems to be in the air. Faced with mid-life crisis on unmet aspirations or growth, many are pursuing their dreams of being their own boss. So I decided to track down a few CIOs who ventured to find out what triggered their steps towards being an entrepreneur. Some ventured in related industries to where they were employed, while a few were totally unrelated to their past employers domain or for that matter IT. What came out was an interesting set of revelations.

A CIO with many years in the pharmaceutical industry decided to venture into healthcare, and so did another who was in the banking industry. For the former it was leveraging his business knowledge of the lacunae in the marketplace while the latter saw an unmet need to address based on his personal experience.

Both were driven by different stimulus, the common theme was however to get off the rat race. Both were good IT professionals and one would have assumed a journey from mid-sized company to larger enterprises was logical progression. So when a CIO approached me for advice on when to get started on an entrepreneurial journey, it was an interesting discussion.

We started with his current position, industry and economic impact, personal growth; all appeared positively stacked in his favor. Then we reviewed his quandary. His role had grown as a CIO, he was respected within his company, and everyone acknowledged his expertise. He knew it would be a difficult task to rise beyond IT even though he knew the business well. He dreamed of being a CEO and starting up on his own seemed to be an easy way to get there.

Risks were the economic uncertainty, funding required, and the financial safety that the family needed. Key requirements of an entrepreneur namely the vision, management skills, financial acumen, and marketing abilities were all present. The doubt was about timing, now or later. My advice to him was to take the plunge. There is never a good time like now, analysis will lead to paralysis.

Even in a job, every new venture has a risk element to it. Sometimes we embrace it and sometimes we dither. We call it change management. So why is change difficult ? Because we are the cause and the effect; we are responsible for the journey and the outcome. We compete with ourselves and have no other benchmark.

I guess it requires thinking in a different mindset to get off the ground. The chains of comfort will always hold back. The debate about when is the need for internal self-reflection and the answer is now. Do you want to be an entrepreneur ? As Charles Kettering the famous inventor said “I have never heard of anyone stumbling over anything while he was sitting down”.

Predictions for 2012

2011-11-09T10:07:00.000+05:30

Like the sun goes down in the west every day, the earth goes round the sun, people make New Year resolutions and the IT industry makes predictions for the coming year. These lists offer hot technologies, CIO priorities, business priorities, technologies that will not last the year, ad infinitum. So what kind of list am I going to create?

Every CIO already knows his/her current priorities, for the next year, and over the next 3 years (broadly) that fits in somewhere in the organization long-term strategy. These are dependent on many factors, some are (though not limited to) industry, size of the organization, geopolitical situation, global market dynamics, consumer sentiment, organization dynamics, profitability of the company … The broad collation of priorities through research conducted is generic enough to statistically fit over 80% of the CIOs globally and is available free or paid depending on whose list it is. So I will not pursue this line.

Different matrixes once again based on widespread research and opinions will tout waves, quadrants, hype curves, scatter charts, bubble charts and so on about disruptive technologies that would matter in the future. Stay with the bleeding edge or lose competitive advantage is the mantra. Some remain emerging technologies for decades like a solution searching for a problem to solve, while many remain niche or never get out of the lab to be adopted in mainstream business. I do not believe I understand enough about these esoteric technologies to offer predictions.

Having been a CIO or equivalent for more than decade and half across 7 different industries, I think I do understand the CIO travails and tribulations. To me every industry brought new opportunities for learning as well as new paradigms on how existing or new technology can be used. Every slowdown or black swan provided a platform to introspect on successes and lack of some. The next decade and half will bring disruptions unimaginable today. So here is my list for 2012 and beyond; can’t predict that all of these will be applicable to everyone, but statistically over the year you will find some connect.

CIOs globally will continue to be challenged on operating budgets. Capital investments will become relatively easier; operating expenses will need to be controlled very tightly.
BITA (Business IT Alignment) will fall off the priority list for many as it will no longer be an issue. Business will acknowledge IT contribution and will work with IT to plan business goals. There will be no separate IT goals.
Attrition will not be the problem, retention will be; with economic and political uncertainty, staff will hang on to their respective jobs. CIOs will have to take some hard decisions.
Clouds will be the first choice for deploying apps for the mobile workforce. The rest will continue to access applications behind the firewall. Hybrid clouds will remain experimental as CIOs figure out that it really does not save money. CIOs will no longer build data centers.
Lead by Consumerization, mobile devices will be out of IT control (for good) and the personal device will find a way to get inside; resisting CIOs will have to provide equivalent additional device, which eventually the Business will turn down. Managing multiple screens will become a pain for the Executive who will challenge IT to make it simpler. The phone as a corporate device will thus be replaced by the tablet over the next 2 years.
CIOs will or be forced to challenge the cost of sustaining big ERP (licenses, support, etc.) as it keeps growing; alternate support vendors will gain market share. Usage will shift out from the office to using marketplace supplied micro-apps thereby challenging the existence of big ERP in 5 years.
Social media fatigue will set in and even marketing teams will be asked to create ROI for expenses and investments on such initiatives. CIOs will need to manage expectations around social analytics while Consultants will thrive with maturity models and make loads of money.
The CIO will continue to be tasked with managing information security with the CISO reporting into him/her. A few cloud bursts (cloud security breaches) will make matters worse before things settle down over 2013 and beyond.
Big Data will remain high on hype with vendors pushing and CIOs scratching their heads if it really gives the benefits promised.
Custom development of solutions will wane with ocean of micro-apps promising to enable business processes as effectively. At the same time appliances will replace generic hardware.
Many CIOs and research analysts will not agree many with the above points.

I could have gone on and on but will stop now. I thought 11 is good for now; why 11 and not 10 ? According to Hindu scriptures it is an auspicious number and if you don’t believe in such things, then I would ask why 10 ? I know Moses had something to do with it !

Resetting Expectations

2011-10-31T18:44:00.000+05:30

I met a CIO who was wondering what’s going wrong after having spent many successful years in his current position, working with the management team, implementing various award winning solutions, helping the IT team come out of the technology mindset to thinking business, and last but not the least making IT a business partner. He sought to unravel the mystery and find clues on what could be done to overcome the situation.

As the drinks continued to flow, I quizzed him on if he had made any behavioral changes ? Negative, he replied; everything was going smooth until recently and he had not made any changes to his modus operandi. So I dug deeper; where there any changes in the business scenario, industry, market position, anything that could have triggered the change ? He stayed silent for a while and then mentioned yes, the company had appointed a new CEO and thereby he had a new boss.

Every organization is dynamic and so is the team that makes the enterprise. Attrition is accepted as normal which brings fresh talent and leadership; in most cases new ideas and styles of management bring forward the strategic agenda of the company. When the new inductee is the CEO, there are always a lot of expectations by the stakeholders. The internal team(s) specifically the management team downwards has to make adjustments to new style, expectations and way forward. Few in discord decide to move on to greener pastures elsewhere.

However, there have been some exceptions where the company under new leadership has suddenly finds the management team not agreeing to the new direction. Most give the new agenda a try and work towards alignment. It is also possible that the CXOs may decide to move on citing working or cultural differences with the new leader. Rare instances also exist where the company floundered until the Board of Directors made corrections (we recently saw that for a large IT company).

As these thoughts ran through my mind, I realized that my friends’ company had seen good results in the last few quarters, which would imply that the new CEO was continuing the growth agenda. So I prodded the issue further; had his relationship with his peers changed since the new CEO took over reins ? Not really he quipped, they continued to work with him like before; his new boss seemed to have some strong relationships with some of his peers and transactional with others.

Opening up, he stated that he was being challenged on some of his decisions more rigorously than before; had to present a lot more justifications on any project, and was asked to review the IT strategy and its applicability going forward. The strategy was discussed and approved only a year back, so why the review again ? The CIO wanted to start polishing his resume again.

So I had to hit him hard with reality. If the new manager wanted additional details on initiatives, it would indicate that he wanted to update himself and validate assumptions. If he has to justify every project, why is he worried if due diligence has been done fairly and equitably with business participation. Every strategy including business strategy requires periodic review, so where was the problem ?

I believe that a dialogue is the means to build the relationship rather than see it as threatening credibility. No two people think alike; so to assume that past way of working will continue to yield dividends is foolhardy. It does not matter where you are in the corporate hierarchy, change is inevitable, and we have to learn to live in the rain.

(Why) Should CIOs be interested in LAN cabling or UPS batteries

2011-10-25T10:00:00.000+05:30

I attended a CIO gathering which had an UPS battery manufacturer as one of the key sponsors. The presentation discussed the merits of one battery technology over the other; they offered a promise of higher reliability that matters to any CIO. So I started asking the half a dozen CIOs on my table if they knew which batteries their UPS in the data center or office premises used. Only one knew the answer.

A few days back a senior editor of a respected publication that also conducts small gatherings of CIOs asked me if I would be interested in attending a dinner sponsored by a structured cable vendor. He spoke in jest and wondered if he would be able to gather an audience numbering double digits. I kind of concurred with him as cabling was the last thing on my mind. I don’t remember when was the last time I reviewed cabling standards or attended a meeting with a cabling vendor.

I must have written many times on the new age CIO and the transformation over the last decade. I think that petabytes of information exists on this subject which any search engine will throw up. No event is complete without a discussion on what are or should be the CIO role or priorities. Everyone agrees that the IT leader is a business leader first and technology expert later. As a leader, s/he is expected to demonstrate behaviors no different from the CEO, CFO or any other CXO.

The CIO through his/her team gathers expertise on various technologies and related domains. These teams typically along with principal vendors, external service providers, and system integrators form an ecosystem that provides the basic and advanced solutions that enable and empower any enterprise. In every enterprise the deputies who form the IT Management and Operations team ensure that every day billing happens, manufacturing plants hum, goods leave the warehouse, call centers receive customers, sales people sell, finance teams collate figures, external partners get information due; in a nutshell, the world continues to move on despite random failures that occur at all levels.

In today’s world where most technology components (be it hardware, software, or connectivity) find it difficult to differentiate approaching commoditization, choices are influenced by existing long-term relationships between enterprises or people, or a significant price difference. Quality of Service is the only other determinant factor. New disruptive paradigms in the last few decades have kept every CIO on his/her toes to keep the enterprise competitive and current. But then there are some who haven’t.

So coming back to our battery vendor and the cable manufacturer, are these critical and high on the list of priorities of the CIO to demand his/her attention ? Should s/he undertake strategic meetings with the Management or Board on kind of cabling is being laid or the merits of one battery technology over the other ? What would happen if the battery bank failed and servers went down or storage disconnected due to a loose patch cord ?

I believe that the IT Infrastructure Head and his/her team under the CIO are tasked and are or should be empowered to deal with this. The ball however always stops with the CIO being answerable. But then every CXO depends on their teams to deliver and does not necessarily get down to micro-management. On an analogous note, is the CMO in trouble if lights on an outdoor hoarding go off ?

Judging CIOs and being judged by them

2011-10-17T18:20:00.000+05:30

As a recipient of the award myself a few years back, I had the privilege of being invited as a jury member for the Global CIO awards organized by a global industry publication. It was a big responsibility to shoulder when almost all the nominated CIOs were friends who shared a drink or a joke in the past. I felt unsettled about it wondering about the impact it may create on the relationships shared. At the same time I was excited about it with the honor being conferred to be considered for this big task.

This was not the first time I have been on any jury; there have been many instances where along with industry veterans, global luminaries and celebrities, and academia I contributed to the selection of award winners. In most cases the nominees were upcoming leaders; in a few cases where the subject was the CIO or a CEO, other jury members by virtue of their seniority carried the process well without pressuring the junior members. Many of these awards recognized companies and not individuals thus making it easy. This was the first time that I had this wonderful opportunity and I was nervous.

The process was fairly well laid out with well-structured data and defined evaluation criteria. Each jury member selected from different backgrounds and was provided the same information to analyze and independently create the list of winners. The common list with validations would be then declared as the final winners. So far so good !

Listening dispassionately to each pitch without clouding influence from past interactions is difficult. Spread over a fortnight the discussions left me richer with new insights that I could imbibe, a benefit rarely possible with otherwise guarded conversations on challenges and tactics used to overcome them. My respect multiplied for most of the contestants with the learning gained; my achievements suddenly looked insignificant in comparison. On the designated evening as they collected the awards, the new bond shared with the winners created warmth to be cherished for a long time.

Recently, I too was subjected to peer judgment in another open list being compiled by an industry association which sought to recognize “Most Respected CIOs” in India. Self-nominations were not allowed and neither was CIOs reporting into the individual in case of group responsibilities; it was a selection by peer CIOs who were asked to nominate others. With open ended questions and selection based purely on votes, the contest was wide open to anyone.

I believe that peer recognition especially from high performers is difficult to achieve when the starting benchmark is own performance for the person judging. People observe behaviors and form opinions that are difficult to change. The foremost element that matters is Trust which in turn over a period of time builds Respect. It does not happen overnight but can be lost in a moment. It was gratifying to be voted to the list and staying there as the voting progressed.

Investments in sharing, learning, coaching, and mentoring pay rich long-term dividends; it is important to give as much as it is to receive.

Metrics that matter

2011-10-11T10:29:00.000+05:30

I bumped into an angel investor in a social gathering organized by a company funded by him. Discussing a range of subjects, he was interested in understanding how customers of his funded company used technology and traction with the Management across different sectors. Acknowledging the fact that all his invested companies used IT as a competitive differentiator, he queried the metrics used by CIOs in India. In the discussion group were CIOs from Banking, Insurance, Manufacturing and Retail.

Starting with IT budgets, the range observed was 1.5% upwards all the way to over 10% for a Bank. I am referring to percentage of revenue, one of the metrics everyone uses and is portrayed as a reflection of the seriousness of IT investments globally. Angelically he disagreed with this norm as Capital and Operating budgets should not be clubbed into one IT budget. Echoing the thought a few CIOs stated that they separated the capital investments moving them to the business units since new initiatives have to be what business needs and wants.

Investors have a way of getting their viewpoints; he asked if separating the capital investment and operating expenses helped. The answer to that was a vehement yes. The CIO actively controls how the existing IT setup is managed and thereby can optimize capacity and support. Investments are always linked to new business initiatives and outcomes. A great system or the best technology does not create a recipe for success if business fails to utilize it effectively. When the investment impacts P&L of the business, the ownership and contribution equals the effort put in by the business and IT.

The discussion veered to CIO dashboards and what were CIOs monitoring daily, weekly or monthly. The responses varied from health of systems to active budget tracking and key projects that IT was involved in. Only two mentioned that there dashboard was no different from the other CXO dashboards but included a few IT metrics too. Considering that the CIO is in most cases an equal partner in the business, why should the dashboard be different ?

Active projects with large investments require monitoring and communication to provide visibility across the enterprise. Success is measured not just by on budget or timeline, but effective use and business value that may have been spelt prior to the project. Like the CMO would monitor marketing campaign effectiveness or the CFO tracks treasury, the CIO has his/her business IT projects.

Lastly the IT Strategy and long-term plan tracking is the most critical one. As the owner, the CIO must track and report periodically progress made, issues and challenges, new opportunities and finally business impact delivered. It is a living plan and not something to be created, approved and locked up. What gets measured normally gets done.

The investor benevolently nodded to the maturity of the CIOs and their success in managing perceptions and that they get it.

Engaging the Board (of Directors)

2011-10-03T16:57:00.000+05:30

If you want to get a seat on the Board of Directors, then you have to think like them; understand what drives them and how they take decisions. BoD is not interested in the micro details of various initiatives or specifics of the technology solution. The discussion is about how IT furthers the strategic direction and helps the company achieve its long-term goals and objectives. Does it improve revenue or bottom line such that it creates shareholder value ?

So went the discussion to which I had the privilege of being invited that was debating the need, process, and models to engage the Board of Directors by the CIO. The panellists comprised a consultant, a CEO, and a couple of CIOs. The audience of CIOs were keen to learn from the experience of the panel, tips, insights, any pearls of wisdom that would help them forge ahead. So what does the CIO need to do to get the attention or when s/he needs to present a new initiative, how to make a case compelling enough to attain approval quickly ? Do BoD really get into the detail ?

Over the last decade or so I have observed that they do balance the strategic and the operational. Depending on the context, they have a tendency to drill down all the way to the transaction or root cause; the next discussion could be about the next 5 year growth or an acquisition. The latitude of debate varies; the composition of most Boards is normally diverse with complementary skills to cater to such swings. So is there a checklist that helps in getting an audience to begin with and then a permanent invite ? Is there a timeline that can be cast ?

Few insights that did come across were that in new age high technology companies the CIO is indeed included by design. Younger CEOs are more likely to invite the CIO to the table considering their familiarity and usage of technology. Conventional and old age industries with a legacy or history are less likely (there are exceptions though). Despite constraints that may be cultural, evolutionary, or due to lineage, there are steps the CIO can take which are listed with some input of my own.

If you report to the CEO and s/he is not tech challenged, then take his/her help to get exposure with the Board
Engage with other CXOs who are already working with the BoD
Cultivate relationships with one or more Board members who are sympathetic to IT
Create an IT Annual Report that is also circulated to the Board
And the obvious one, talk about business and not technology even if you are the CIO of an IT company

Despite this it is likely that your Board may be bored or uninterested in what IT is doing or how you the CIO plans to transform the business. You are walking the talk, you could keep pushing hoping that the message will get through or you convince your CEO make the pitch. But if none of this is happening, start looking where the grass is greener or be satisfied with what you have, you can always make lemonade out of it.

Squeezing the last drop

2011-09-26T19:10:00.000+05:30

One of my CIO friends narrated an interesting anecdote about his meeting with a CEO of a mid-sized IT services company. They were talking about the extension of a contract that had run through 3 successful years. The CEO was relatively new to the company and not party to the original contract. He was berating the fact that they were losing money on the current deal and needed to turn around the business and the fact that the global HQ was fast losing patience.

The contract was signed in times when growth was good and business expectations were stratospheric across industries. The then CEO was exploring local expansion as well as captive services for global operations that would have given Indian entity a firm standing. The downturn took everything away including the CEO. Business growth did not revert despite the economy stabilizing. The pressure to turn around the business thus became paramount for this IT Company.

As the negotiations stretched over a few days, the CEO began demonstrating discomfort. In an open book costing he was justified in his pricing but unable to acknowledge that the company had built up higher running cost which could do with pruning. As the customer, my CIO friend was unwilling to pay a substantial increase to accommodate. The choice to the vendor was to cut costs in a hurry and acquire new customers, and to the CIO it was about continuity or moving to another vendor.

Companies set up specialist functions to negotiate deals, sometimes within Finance and at times as an independent charge or within the function equipped with experts who justify their existence with great sounding deals. Some of these may be win-win, but many end up with bickering over legal contract terms or lose-lose unless you are an 800 pound gorilla who nobody can ignore. So how does one define the limit for negotiation ? How do we know that the deal is great for both of us and not a win-lose or lose-win ?

Conventional way is to negotiate hard, drive a bargain that is best value for the customer. It does not matter if the supplier makes money or not; they can always recoup their margin in the next deal or with other customers. This belief has survived and done well for many. Suppliers recognize it and so do customers who play the game. The industry has adjusted prices accordingly so that nothing sells for full price anymore. Everything has percentage off going all the way to 90%. Can we get it free ?

There is a need to change some of these paradigms to bring the dance of the discount to a stop or at least reduce it to realistic levels may be linked to volume of business. CIOs too need to set fair expectations internally and externally to create win-win scenarios and work upon long-term relationship building. Rarely any deal now is tactical. It is also important to remember that people churn across companies. The spurned, scorned or bitter salesperson may turn up a few years later in another company which is critical to your business operations.

People buy from people, so don’t squeeze the lemon too hard, you may end up with a bitter taste.

P.S. my CIO friend concluded the contract with the vendor who did reduce his overhead costs.

Learning never ends, neither does work

2011-09-19T17:53:00.000+05:30

Over the weekend while I sat reading some emails and my commitment towards writing Oh I See, a 4-year old walked by and curiously observed my activities, uninterested she moved on. An hour later, once again she found me transfixed at the same spot. This time she queried the nature of my busyness. I replied that I was working. “What are you working on ? Do you have homework ? If you did not do your homework, your teacher will punish you ?”

What is the incentive for any CXO to invest his/her spare time towards anything related to work ? Do organizations really expect 24 X 7 attention ? The portable computer was just the beginning, the tablet is not the end; increased connectivity driven by technology advances in telecom coupled with mobile enabled work processes as well as applications leave few areas unexplored. But these are optional to some extent and do not impact everyone in the same way. Reality is that work expands to fill all the time like traffic expands to take up available bandwidth in a network. Are you doing what matters ?

So is there a way out ? Different strategies work for different people. Some take the discretionary route to carefully deciding what occupies their precious time. It could be reading newsletters, industry research, business magazines or management books, or just the general newspapers; fiction and other categories like travel also find their place. It is the discipline that keeps them going. The time thus spent is invested in gaining perspectives or insights that could help in various walks of life. The remaining choose to stay away from such mundane activities.

While I make a general observation from my limited span of friends, colleagues and acquaintances I have interacted with, the fact is that reading as a habit or investment is waning. Most IT professionals slog to acquire various degrees and certifications, but stop short of expanding horizons. This is despite the fact that it is a lot easier to find information in all forms, print or digital. Reasons and excuses revolve around paucity of time, to work pressures to just plain inertia.

I have been asked the question “How do you find time to read so much, write a blog, respond to so many IT reporters ?”. I don’t know, but I do find it. Without sounding condescending I would say that to begin with it is the prioritization of critical versus important. Focus on what matters towards where you want to be. Second is the determination to learn. It does not matter what you start with as long as you do. Slowly curiosity rises and it becomes a habit that generates long term benefits.

I find that every interaction provides a new perspective, a new question, a new way of thinking; the opportunity is too tempting to leave. This is especially true when I interact with students in B-Schools. They challenge you with the sole motive being to learn from your experience. So I spend nights, weekends, traveling time, and spare hours at work, whatever sliver of time I can find. Like the proverbial drops, they do fill the ocean. After all, any time is better than no time.

I believe that learning is not a destination to reach. Learning ends when we complete the journey of life.

The Elastic CIO

2011-09-12T17:15:00.000+05:30

Last week I happened to be in a panel discussion with some CIOs who were expected to debate on “Improving Enterprise Efficiency”. The sponsor management personnel on the table listened attentively and sometimes also asked intelligent questions to the CIOs. The expert moderator balanced the discussions well jumping from one to another keeping everyone engaged. Unfortunately the enticing headline inevitably focused on server virtualization, private cloud, and VDI as the key theme.

How do you create a link between responsive IT systems to Enterprise efficiency and Business IT Alignment ? The question had everyone stumped and the answer emerged as the lack of responsive systems would imply time wasted by the employees; thus response times are important to efficiency. Intuitive and elementary, so what is the debate ?

Taking another element of research over the last decade on significant portion (estimates vary from 50 to 90%) of IT operating expense is expended on maintaining the lights on or business as usual. So reducing this piece of the pie will presumably shift the budget towards innovation and not as savings. This shift of expense to investment if prudent and allocated to virtualized servers will improve the efficiency of the enterprise. And we will all live happily ever after !

If through some magical process or non-empirical derivation two unrelated pieces of research can be correlated, then as suggested by the Chaos theory, anything can influence the outcome of what the IT organization creates, manages or improves upon. It could be sun spots, or a butterfly in eastern Asia; or global warming might provide insights.

Above is just a sample; simplistic evaluation models defined to justify generic technology investment have almost become the norm. Even when the specific context may not apply, the push to sell is discomforting and creates an auto pushback. Confused, the CIOs have been struggling to divert the discussion to their technology team which is better equipped to discuss alternatives and how they align to enterprise architecture.

The elasticity of hypothesis amuses and at the same time frustrates. Nowadays the headline proposed at any event or by a consultant or vendor speaker has rarely any connect with the subject. The stretch of imagination belies conventional and sometimes unconventional wisdom. However, despite repeated occurrences, the bait still works in getting CIOs excited to come and participate.

The elasticity expected from the CIO goes against the business aligned IT leader with a dialogue that is expected to straddle server provisioning or data centre cooling to improving customer service with process redesign using video analytics, or complex transport management. The diversity of expertise with deep levels of understanding creates a superman like persona who is discussing code optimization with the programmers and engaging the board on shareholder value.

The latter is still rationale and achievable with some hard work, some help and coaching, but the former in which unconnected factoids create an opportunity for specific technology breaks the rubber band.

The follow up nemesis

2011-09-05T18:39:00.000+05:30

The meeting finished with agreement on clear responsibilities, timelines and the next scheduled meeting date four weeks away. The minutes circulated to the team the next day captured this very well. Like all projects, this one was thus far on track though the next three months were critical. The requirement gathering had gone well and the first cut was delivered on time; everyone seemed geared to take on the challenge and another successful project delivered.

Over the next few weeks, some updates were received on the portal, a couple of emails and then none. I began to wonder getting anxious if everything was okay with the project. So a reminder was sent to the group asking for updates; received one response, silence from others. With just one week remaining for the next meeting, and progress report depicting inconsistent updates, acidity levels started rising on the real progress.

So I started calling folks and walking across to their workstations to figure out what gives ? Some titbits:

“Yes, I have completed the tasks, but was too busy to provide an update”

“You should have the status by end of the day”

“Why are you getting on my back ? By the time we get to the meeting, we will be on track”

“Sorry, something urgent came up, so am a bit behind schedule”

All this made me wonder, here we are in the midst of an important project that has Board visibility, will provide a significant benefit, everyone vied to be on the project due to the positive impact, but they do not find time to provide an update. What causes such behaviour ? Why do some people find it difficult to provide open and clear communication on agreed milestones or request for information ? Why is follow up necessary ?

With multiple priorities and fires that need to be doused, short-term dementia is pervasive. Rarely the lack of response is out of disrespect, disregard or plain indifference. Follow-up is essential to bring the issue at hand to attention, to reinforce the signal of ownership and shared responsibility. It also helps in bringing back focus on what matters.

Having said this, there could be instances of no response where connect is not adequately strong or in some cases of missing shared accountability. Another factor that contributes to silence is fear of conflict; this occurs when the issue and people are inseparable. Culturally many are unable to provide bad news and thus prefer not to respond. In all these cases, the leader has to intervene and create the way forward.

IT organizations suffer the most when following up with diverse groups – internal and external – when working on cross functional projects or when solving problems that require different technologies to work together. It is important for IT leaders to inculcate missionary discipline within the team to ensure that initiatives in which IT participates, there is clear communication to all stakeholders.

Someone summed it up well “If I did not have to follow-up, I would save half my day”.

I am a new CIO

2011-08-30T11:20:00.000+05:30

Recent past has seen many young IT professionals make the grade and move up the hierarchy to take on the responsibility of IT Head, some also getting the coveted title of the CIO. For those who made the cut within the same company, it was new found responsibility with new peers willing to guide through the maze. The rest in new positions in new companies charting unknown waters, every swell appeared to trigger emotions of “Titanic” proportions.

One such new CIO gingerly approached for help, tips, advice, anything to help navigate shark and pirate infested courses. Going down memory lane (it was a long lane) trying to collate the thoughts across each early success and challenge, the gushing emotions had to be controlled to provide coherent thought. So we agreed to meet again and mine the memories for actionable insights that can be specifically applied and get some general good practices (almost like doing Business Intelligence, can we call this Mental Intelligence).

Is there a checklist or step-by-step approach that can be used by a new IT leader to gain success ? The answer is yes and no. Yes because there is indeed a framework that helps get started irrespective of variations across different industries or size of company; no because it is not cast in stone and needs to be adapted to the context determined by corporate culture, politics, and industry and company growth. But something is better than nothing. So here is a set of guiding principles; the list is not exhaustive due to space constraints.

Listen. Understand the business, the technology, the rationale behind the decisions taken, the people involved. Take notes and validate them to ensure you have the facts captured accurately.
Observe. People dynamics is important to success. See how your peers and other heads interact and behave with each other. It gives you perspectives on key influencers and roadblocks
Ask questions. Everyone loves giving away knowledge to the “ignorant”; clarify your doubts and seek to unearth the assumptions if you are in a new industry. Gather finer nuances that make your company different.
Bond. Not just with your team, but also across other peers and across management layers. Be approachable and yet confident of your capability that has got you here so far.
Communicate. When you speak (a people language), do it in a way that you connect with others and they are able to understand you. Whether it is good or bad news, focus on the issue, not personalities.
Manage Expectations. As the newbie expectations will be high or none with most somewhere in between. Set realistic expectations, sometimes stretch, but never overpromise.
Always meet people. Don’t wait for a problem, issue or project to meet that is transactional and does not build relations. Have a coffee with as many people as often as possible, including vendors.

Finally if you get stuck seek help from other CIOs or even your boss. Good performers need coaches too.

Language curriculum for CIOs or ...

2011-08-23T10:19:00.000+05:30

The Chairman of the Indian entity of a leading global IT vendor addressing a gathering of CIOs stressed on the (now so obvious) fact that CIOs should speak in business language. Everyone in the audience agreed and appreciated this repetition like the fact that “sun rises in the east”. The senior statesman then went on to present a dozen slides on why virtualization and consolidation should be on the CIO agenda.

A group of CIOs visited an international event hoping to learn from interactions with their global peers and gain different perspectives. While the IT vendor companies represented in the event were somewhat similar considering the global nature of the IT industry, the speakers were different providing a local flavour of the country. Majority of the sessions stressed on the same fact “sun rises from the east”, I mean CIOs need to speak the language of the business. They however presented in complex detail the technology solutions that they wanted the CIOs to buy.

Excuse me ? Did we (the CIOs) miss something? No, we did not doze off during the presentation and neither did we see you skip some slides in your presentation which may have connected to the obvious fact. We were attentive and so was everyone until the tech stuff started. There were many messenger, text, and email messages flying in the room to check that we were all in hearing the same thing. Excusez-moi or should I say Entschuldigen Sie, maybe if you like I can try another language. But where is the connection ? How many of the CIOs in the room were part of your sample size ?

Over the years, IT was nudged, pushed and coerced to discard techno-speak in favour of what everyone else speaks in the enterprise; the quick compliance and transition surprised many and helped bridge the perception about individual and team capability. Projects were no longer about the next big technology or the latest versions of the fancy devices, they embodied holistic discussions around internal process and external customers. On the other hand for some reason the industry refuses to acknowledge the change continuing to cite examples of a shrinking minority of change averse IT leaders.

So how can this perception be changed ? How do CIOs ensure that what they say is what the IT vendors and consultants hear ? I believe that it is time to start challenging the well-wishing speakers to cite examples when they talk about the language course CIOs need and not hide behind the global research reports of named companies to justify their spiel. Can they speak more from personal experience ? For them to be heard, maybe they need to talk business, unless this is a ploy to hide their inability to speak the new language of the CIO.

For the CIO, the sun indeed rises in the east, but maybe just maybe it needs to rise from the west for the vendors and consultants to notice that the CIO has passed the language course with flying colours; maybe it is the vendors and consultants who need the course after all !

The Power to say No

2011-08-15T21:42:00.000+05:30

Over the years for the business dependence on IT has grown to reach a state that it is unimaginable to think of any business running without IT. I am sure that we can start creating a list of exceptions which may be different by geography or economic classification, but predominantly every business operation uses IT to sustain, grow, diversify, improve, analyse, and a lot more.

Over the years the IT Head also transformed through the journey working lock step with the demands of the organization providing the necessary solutions, sometimes wildly successful and challenged, delayed or unsuccessful. Through the era the IT leader kept moving outward from the glasshouse to the factory, warehouse, corporate office, and field and wherever the internal customer was present, and then beyond to where the external customer lived.

Over the years as the transition occurred to the CIO, the discussion changed from the nuts and bolts, three letter acronyms, servers, routers, hardware, software, networking, to business process, order to cash, procure to pay, customer analytics, increasing revenue, strengthening the bottom line, creating competitive differentiation, managing supply chains, collaboration with the suppliers and customers, new business opportunities, until the difference with other CXOs started blurring.

Over the years one characteristic that has not changed is the acceptance of demands = reasonable or otherwise, requirements - rational or not, time pressure to deliver - urgent or not, budget cuts - downturn or not, accepting everything business desired, spoke about, or demanded. The IT function was expected to stay subservient to cajoling, coercion, ransom, threats, with the proverbial sword hanging inches from the neck; if you cannot do it, we will find ways outside to get it done a la shadow IT.

IT was not expected to challenge, they were expected to deliver; whether it is a report that no one sees, a quick fix that stays in UAT for weeks beyond the deadline, systems that saw usage drop faster than the stock market in the downturn, one liners or vague or assumptive requirement definitions, or in recent times consumer devices to be connected to corporate networks. A challenge or denied service was sacrilegious and a pile of turndowns could lead to “lack of alignment” to what business wants.

With increasing comfort with business, conviction, and communication, CIOs have looked the other in the eye and engage in a non-confrontational debate which has germinated into acceptance of the CIO viewpoint and its intent only to the best interest of the enterprise. It’s a newly discovered facet that boosts confidence and fuels itself; the spark is now traveling virulently. CIOs have created the freedom to say “No” to the unreasonable and ill-defined.

When any discussion is based on data, facts, and sound logic, the outcome normally takes predictable route. The acceptance of the CIO into the “Inner Circle” is happening; the retention requires practice of democratic principles. CIOs should exercise this power judiciously and use it to create a better solution or paradigm that encompasses hitherto unused tenets. It takes some wisdom to differentiate between the need and the want and not play favourites; it is always a bad time for dictators who can be overthrown quickly.

Go and exercise this choice, you will be surprised !

Can the CIO help improve Customer Service ?

2011-08-08T16:36:00.000+05:30

The headline for the discussion said “Business transformation”, the participants were CIOs across different consumer facing service industries, the audience a mix of 80 odd CIOs wanting to take away some pearls of wisdom from the collective experience of over 100 years on stage; after all not too often you get to hear success stories on how business has been transformed by CIOs with a mix of people, process and technology.

It started off well demonstrating the rich experience of the moderator who put across some sharp questions to the CIOs. Into the discussion, a couple of service incidents specific to their company had the CIOs on the defensive in an attempt to rationalize what appeared to be process lapses. Few from the audience joined the charge and soon it appeared to be a “Consumer redressal forum” with the hapless CIOs on the dais unable to defend and afraid to rebut the moderator. A brave soul from the audience chastised the moderator for diverting from the core subject and the personal affront to the CIOs. Sensing trouble, the organizers closed the discussion citing time constraints.

Later in the day a debate set off between a few panellists and a bunch of CIOs on whether CIOs can influence service outcomes in the call centre, field service, or responses received by the customers. Service exceptions are reality despite the best intentions and efforts of the enterprise. With attrition being sky high in service functions, training time has been shrinking with on the job training becoming a norm for some.

Even when process and technology has been engineered for effectiveness, the people challenge remains. So what options exist for an enterprise and what can the CIO do to create a consistent framework that the enterprise can depend to provide consistent, scalable process driven service outcomes across geographies ? Is there a best practice that can help to reduce the customer pain ?

Products entice a first time buy, but services create repeat customers. Irrespective of how the service is delivered, via call centre, on premise break-fix or at service centre, it is important to set expectations and manage customer interaction with empathy. Sears coined the “Customer is always right” paradigm; in the current hyper competitive world and unreasonable expectations, the customer has the ability to take her business away to competition.

Enterprises need to stay connected to the customer via all channels seeking and listening to feedback that is out in the social media. It is a space to watch not just what they are saying about your company, but also competitors. I believe that every CXO including the CIO should stay aware of the pulse of the services and continuously improve on the experience with a feedback loop. After all your customers can be your best sales persons and success (or an irate customer) is only 140 characters away.

Surviving Audits

2011-08-01T19:32:00.000+05:30

Once upon a time (actually not too long ago) a company and its audit firm lost their marbles indulging in innovative accounting and logic belying practices. The event resulted in the first shutting down and the other being dismantled. Hapless citizens and investors who put their faith in these lost their financial safety nets and were left poorer. The aftershocks felt by the rest of the companies created an industry around consulting services. SOX became a bad word for all CXOs and everyone dreaded facing audits. Compliance gained prominence and everything else was subservient to it.

IT being the foundation of processes and information enabling the enterprise came under the scanner; it was not enough to demonstrate that data integrity and consistency is maintained, it was also important to provide evidence that others in the organization did not violate process that could result in potential loss of control. Thus as the custodian of the physical information assets and the administrator of the logical processes, the IT organization had to fend off auditors of all types at unnerving frequencies.

Consultants thrived on FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) factor as non-compliance had severe ramifications for the CIO, CFO, COO and the CEO. Perceptions of risk heightened the tension with any risk classified as high needed immediate attention. Tolerance levels of Boards tended to zero and Risk Committees hounded the functional heads to comply by the written word, who turned to the CIO to address the sane and inane collectively.

Whether it is Internal, Statutory or Third Party Audit, the basic intent is to review process execution consistently against good practice and compliance to stated policy. Additional frameworks on quality, process maturity, security and others provide the enterprise incremental value over competitors. Policy once stated requires alignment with the real world to ensure relevance; thus periodic review is critical. When regulatory restrictions impose process change like SOX or PCI-DSS, HIPAA, the enterprise has limited choice but to comply. Some industries are more regulated than others; some companies pride themselves on their GRC frameworks, the rest follow the path of least resistance.

So what are the strategies the CIO can adopt to ensure that s/he does not get beaten up at every audit ? CIOs should partner with their Internal Audit functions to work with each functional head and process owner to review and validate not just the process, but also the management of exceptions. If Internal Audit is unable to provide the necessary attention, seek external help; but do not ignore it. S/he should create clear accountability and transparency of every task across the cross-functional teams involved in the execution. It is important to note that people are the weakest link of any process discipline. Internal process champions or BPM experts are invaluable in the quest towards excellence.

Compliance is non-negotiable; our shareholders and regulators expect every part of the enterprise to conform to the laid down policies and principles. Good corporate governance expects no exceptions; despite all the controls we still come across black swans that disrupt the equilibrium and raise the difficulty level. Unfortunately the enterprise CXOs and the CIO have no choice but to run faster to stay in the same place.

Cost of IT versus Value of IT

2011-07-25T17:11:00.000+05:30

The CFO has traditionally controlled the purse strings ensuring fiscal prudence to keep the enterprise healthy with adequate financial safety net. As a part of the management team the discussion and debate ensured that investments stayed aligned to overall company direction. With adequate risk controls, only in rarest of rare cases the CFO could overrule other CXOs. Recent times have been full of analysis and news that the CIO is no longer in control of the IT budget, now the CFO purportedly controls IT investment decisions.

The CIO being the youngest CXO not always by age but the role has evolved only in the last decade or so and having typically grown from a technology background was perceived to lack business acumen and unable to take all aspects into account. The majority migrated and matured with ease working lockstep with other CXOs to the benefit of the enterprise. Post slowdown “new normal” changed organizational risk appetite and with finances being scarce the CFO rose to prominence. Now with growth back on track, why is it that the CIO continues to stay shadowed considering s/he demonstrated higher changeability and adaptation to the environment.

IT budgets have stayed stable over the years with mature enterprises focusing on bringing down IT operating expense leaving the capital investments open for discussion. Corporate and IT governance provided the necessary checks and balances on where to invest. So what gives rise to the new paradigm ? Does it indicate breakdown of the balance or has the CIO relinquished his/her responsibility now satisfied to stay in the back office ? Has the foundation and partnership set by IT crumbled with cost remaining the residual reality with the value being discarded on the wayside ?

IT does incur cost; everyone is aware and acknowledges that a significant portion (40-90% depending on the enterprise, IT maturity, CIO, Board of Directors, etc.) of the budget is allocated to “Business as Usual”. Where the IT organization and its leader is unable to clearly communicate the benefits or have a dialogue with other CXOs as an equal, irrespective of the good work done, IT gets labelled as a cost thereby nullifying the efforts.

IT also delivers value to the enterprise, customers, employees and the shareholders. Sustained differentiation and competitive advantage in the near term are typically IT enabled innovation. Multiple industry IT and CIO awards, and case studies validate success clearly illustrating value. New disruptions created by mobile consumers, social online engagement, analytics, and many more would find it difficult to survive without a good IT platform and sustained focus. Is the balance shifting ?

I believe that recent times have accentuated the value of IT and have created a wider role for the CIO that goes beyond technology lead interventions. Outsourcing the operational activities has also given the IT team an opportunity to focus on what matters. The task of managing the budgets and reporting has become even more important thus creating a stronger bond between the CIO and CFO. With increasing financial acumen, the CIO and CFO are on the same side of the table with the CIO deferring the financial decisions to the CFO. This is rebalancing the equation and not a shift.

Is divergence the new convergence ?

2011-07-19T10:11:00.000+05:30

“I use 7 screens to manage my work and life” proclaimed a Silicon Valley high ranking geek working for a big technology company. It amazed everyone on the table who had challenges with two phones, one personal and other company issued, and a laptop. 7 devices, portable and fixed comprised the stable of computing assets used across various operating systems, capabilities, synchronization with multiple systems, providing segmented information to cater to specific needs of this executive. Asked a CIO in the audience, “How do you remember which device to pick up for what purpose ?” Quipped the multi-device juggler, “Oh it’s easy …” and rattled off the work distribution.

When Smartphones made their mark with the ability to push email and SMS, it ensured that the corporate worker had no option to 24X7 work. The small screen however posed limitations on what one could achieve on the phone. As screens became larger the phone got bigger and bulkier redefining the shape and size of what was once a small pocket appendage. The good thing is that the phone never aspired to replace the clunky laptop.

The advent of the tablet a few years back had researchers proclaiming the imminent demise of the laptop; déjà vu when the laptop made its appearance. Executives love the soft keyboard on the tablet, plus the ability to scrawl and convert to text but slowly realized speed limits imposed by this input method. Keyboards found their way back connecting to tablets and then everyone wanted spreadsheets and word processors compatible with their other devices. Reading on the smartphone has evolved to allow all types of documents barring few exceptions; the tablet had to compete with the phone and the laptop.

Manufacturers are experimenting with different screen sizes, 5”, 7”, 9”, 10” with justifications on why their version makes sense to the users, while the phones now have crept to 4”. Each has found traction with a set of users, segmenting the market by activity or deemed convenience. While initially WIFI was acceptable communication channel, now 3G/4G is a necessity.

One more connected device, one more data plan to manage, the growing monthly expense is not a discussion, the ability to traverse across the screens is insatiable, which are evolving faster than (Charles) Darwin or (Gordon) Moore thought possible. The want rate is keeping pace with this and suddenly the hapless executive has multiple screens not wanting to discard the earlier one as quickly as s/he is acquiring newer ones.

Will the phone and the tablet converge in the future ? Many believe convergence is the way forward between the capabilities offered by the phone and the tablet with the new device offering the best of both worlds. Does it mean we will be able to make phone and video calls, surf the net, work on documents and applications, talk to the device, type on it as fast as we do on the humble laptop, and use it for entertainment; all this with clear demarcation and ability to segment usage as well as official and personal data.

Me thinks that it will take longer than we believe it will; maybe there are individuals who will happily put a 7” or bigger device to their ear or use it with a Bluetooth speaker, the majority will manage the convergence or divergence with multiple and live with its associated challenges.

Achieving business agility between ERP and Cloud

2011-07-11T17:25:00.000+05:30

An intense debate between two CEOs ensued while I was listening with concentration to them; there was no debate on the need for every business to leverage technology to stay ahead of industry growth curve. Both had experienced success, but there was indeed a bone of contention. One of the leaders vehemently recounted the inability of ERP solutions and vendors to address the market dynamics. He cited many instances where the ERP vendor as well as his IT organization took longer time than business could afford; small solace that his competitors also used the same solutions and thus had similar issues.

The other CEO countered with an equal number of scenarios when the specific ERP had indeed been ahead of others. Now every ERP solution provides a complex array of parameters and settings that can be manipulated to provide functionality for most business processes. This complexity also becomes a bottleneck when any change is required. It is rarely as agile as other smaller solutions that can quickly be customized. CIOs have had difficult discussions on this aspect with Business and Vendor alike. The monolithic nature of the solutions indeed poses a challenge. Not that there are too many options, so the technology ecosystem has created multiple layers to manage the agility requirements.

Grudging acknowledgements later, both glared at me as if to validate their arguments and then turned back to each other. Before they could continue, I pitched in with thoughts on the new opportunity that has everyone confused and wondering with benefit statements ranging from better ROI to TCO, time to market, productivity, and the panacea to all ills that face every enterprise that uses technology.

This brought a smile to the face of the second CEO who began to lecture on the future being cloudy and why current IT models will no longer survive. He elucidated the benefits of the new disruptive paradigm the Cloud is and why enterprises should be embracing this. Now the other looked imploringly at me to help him and I could not refuse the request. After all I had broached the subject so I had to provide a perspective.

Differing flavours of clouds offer different value propositions; the viewpoint put across by the CEO related to Application and Software as a Service. Both offer an easy way to deploy and get started on any new business area or process. The most widely accepted scenarios are sales force automation and collaboration; for SME the benefit is limited upfront investments and no worries about managing complex technology. Beyond these mainstream business process remain firmly grounded in corporate data centres.

Irrespective of their physical location, the big ERP remains the same animal, big monolithic and complex. Separating processes like sales force or collaboration (read email, chat, etc.) does not in any way create an opportunity for agile business process alignment for the rest of the enterprise. In fact with the cloud, the base expectation is that business processes are standard and can thus be uniform across multiple companies. Clouds provide faster start points, but the change ability remains similarly constrained. A question from the audience inquired about ROI models for evaluating Clouds; that is another story for another day.

The two CEOs representing a large business house and a leading global ERP vendor acknowledged the reality and it was time to move on. The CEOs and CIOs listening to the interaction went away with both sides of the coin clear (?) to create their own agenda and discussion in their enterprises.

Preaching to the CIO

2011-07-04T15:34:00.000+05:30

The other day I attended a congregation of CIOs with a dozen odd vendors sponsoring the event. It was a gathering of 100 odd CIOs who took time off on a Saturday to amongst other things patiently listen to the spiel. With representation across industries and a mix of senior and evolving leaders, the learning and networking potential was expected to be high. The investment of time from these leaders carving out a portion from their personal time was expected to yield reasonable value.

Now every sponsor vendor always seeks to disseminate information on their offerings and pitch their wares to every target segment. Traditionally this has taken the form of slide presentations that no one wants to hear; at times even the presenter is struggling to do justice to the content as s/he is not the creator of the slides which have in many cases lost relevance. Futile attempts to change this model of engagement have left the participants numb as they grace such time with their physical presence but rarely with the mind.

Before embarking on the merits of doing business with their company, setting the context with the audience has always been seen as a good idea; and this is what they started off with. The first one off the ground started with data from respected research companies.

What is the business reality today ? Not necessarily in order of priority, they are: expectations of growth, exploring new markets or products, driving operational efficiency, cost containment, IT lead innovation, and customer centricity. How do these impact the CIO ? The CIO is expected to be a business leader shedding off the technologist skin; s/he should transform and work with other CXOs, overturn the iceberg of IT expense by reducing the operational expenses and allocating higher amounts to new initiatives. Slides titled “Changing Role of the CIO” advised the need to wake up and get going. However, the best part was how their old offerings now enable this shift.

Storage solutions, Security service providers, system integrators offering RIMS, data centre solutions, virtualization solutions, and even network solution providers found a way to connect the dots and make the CIOs appear like cretins and kids in school who needed to be reminded of how their performance will be measured. Best part was the repetition of content with the context lifted from the same reports.

We all know that CIOs are a patient lot and do not ruffle feathers easily. But when speaker after speaker repeated the cliché, the unrest in the room began to take the shape of a mutiny. Half way through the program, sparsely occupied seats greeted the incoming speakers; those present had no interest and thus engaged each other on the table in discussions detached from the proceedings in voices loud enough to send a clear message across. Over coffee the vendors were chastised for their immature behaviour with a clear message:

We know our reality better than you ever would; we transitioned to being business leaders a long time back; however you are still trying to sell to IT Managers believing that the past is frozen. We did impact the expense line and it was not about IT expenses only which is why you believe that we are not connected to the reality. Our CEOs and other CXOs do not look at us the same way they did a decade back; they partner with us, seek our advice and work together towards the common business objectives. We are not enamoured by hardware, software, new technology, we seek to solve real life business problems, sometimes with help from technology. So, stop debating the changing role, it happened while you were busy trying to figure out why there is no traction any longer with the CIO. It is you who need to change to align to the new age CIO.

Do you have one big message ?

2011-06-27T16:43:00.000+05:30

Earlier this month, I was in a conference of retailers discussing how IT can contribute to growth within their business and to the industry at large. The event had its usual bevy of IT vendors who had availed of speaking slots as well as many deciding to exhibit their products/solutions to target potential customers with their offerings. Attendance being large with representation across retailers, it was a great opportunity for the sponsors to engage.

Now this was one conference that was crafted together by a panel of CIOs and vendor representatives in conjunction with an industry body. The panel engaged with the sponsors through the planning process defining expectations and providing the suggested format of their participation in the event. Vendors presenting the traditional way using slides were expected to send their presentation to the Committee of CIOs to validate the context aligned to the theme and to ensure that it made sense to the participants. Thus, the agenda, content headlines and topics (de-jargonized by the CIOs with some catchy titles) were fairly relevant to the audience comprising of a mix of business and IT representatives across the layers of management.

Every marketing executive when provided with the opportunity to deliver an address to a captive audience attempts to put in everything that the company does whether it makes sense to the target audience. The result is that anyone listening is more confused than s/he was prior to sitting through the presentation. Charts and multiple boxes with bullet points are the norm. Animations and pictures add to the already crowded slides.

With a few exceptions, the changes to the pitch comprised of slashing the number of slides to fewer than 20 and making them readable even to people sitting in the back of the room. The clear message to everyone was what is the one big message you want to leave with the audience in your allotted 30 minutes ? Can you engage and provoke thought rather than outline the menu of options your company has to offer ? Given the task of reviewing 3 presentations each and ensuring that the changes are in line with expectations, the CIOs were a harried lot by the time they got into the conference. Few still escaped censorship by either citing unavailability of global speaker slides or by simply not responding.

The end result ? Few chose the case study route to deliver the benefits of their product or services; the compliant presentations created a wow for almost everyone, visible from the crowd outside their stalls. Vendors who did their own thing found the audience twiddling with their smartphones, chatting to their neighbours, dozing off, or simply walking out midway. If I was the speaker, it would be totally demoralizing for me.

In the day end debrief with one such vendor, he insisted that there is no other way to inform the audience of what his company has to offer. If the customer is not aware of the entire spectrum of offerings, how and why will s/he think about his company ? According to him, when he puts across 10 points, a few will be remembered. He refused to believe that his speech was delivered but not received.

Sigh ! some people don’t learn.

Do Clouds really save money ?

2011-06-20T15:58:00.000+05:30

The beginning of the monsoon season in Mumbai inspired me to push the boundaries again in quest of the silver lining in the Cloud. Recent events around outages and security across multiple global Cloud pioneers poses doubts on the movement of even non-mission critical applications outside of the corporate data centres. We are not just talking about Infrastructure or Platform as a service, but everything that is the manifestation of the Public Cloud.

Over the last couple of years every offering saw two shifts, first it had to have a Cloud flavour and second around social networking (that is another story); some termed this new euphoria as bubble 2.0 tinted by valuations achieved in recent IPOs. So everyone justified how this time it is different and why it is sustainable. Many large and small enterprise found efficiencies (at least short term), in moving field functions like sales and service, and collaboration on the move, to the Cloud.

Leaving aside the debate between public, hybrid and private clouds, the real issue is about the promise of the Cloud irrespective of the vendor, type of cloud offering, or engagement model. The big benefit that every type of Cloud offered was savings, real quantifiable savings or better Total Cost of Ownership. CFOs would agree that TCO is always a good measure for any financial model if all other dimensions remain unchanged.

Cloud service providers financial models are contingent on multiple customers adopting their base solutions which give them the efficiency of scale and repeatability. As the number increased, beyond a threshold they start making money. Non-concurrency improves yields, but prices remain the same for customers. So the financial models attempted to capture some efficiency based gains making them look attractive to the prospects.

Most discussions got off to a good start with worksheets providing easy decisions. The newness of the paradigm left some questions unanswered, but during the slowdown, these were brushed aside. Some of these were

What happens if the SLA is not met ?
Is my data as secure as it is in my current state ?
Can I move off to another Cloud if I don’t like something ? How easy is the transition going to be ?
As I upgrade internal systems, how do I ensure integration with the external systems does not break ?
What recourse do I have if the Cloud Service Provider goes bust ? ...

I will stop here, the list is a bit longer, but you get the point.

Business impact due to recent outages and security breaches for some of the smaller customers was significant. Some of them just had to wait and watch with no option. A few had spread the risk across and thus the impact was limited. The big enterprise shrugged and moved on. How does one balance the adverse business impact against the cost savings ? To me this is a bad compromise as everything is subservient to business interest.

Do CIOs really take real vacations ?

2011-06-13T15:14:00.000+05:30

Last month I was confronted by a peculiar but innocent question from a young professional, “Do CIOs take real vacations ? I mean real long vacations with friends and family free from all the worries of workplace and fighting fires that keep them at work beyond the normal hours ?”. I began to wonder about the question and the more I thought about it, the more it troubled me. I mean, vacations without my email, phone, laptop, no connectivity; that was eons ago.
Today every executive irrespective of hierarchy is consumed by the need to stay connected to the workplace. Downloaded information and alerts keep the buzz going 24X7. Approvals via phone, business intelligence on the fly are the norm; one cannot ever claim that I was not informed or I did not have access to information. To add to the clutter, friends and partners want to stay connected using various social networks.

So what is the vacation about ? Working on the road with interruptions on the phone, balancing the laptop in between site seeing trips, late night responses to emails with long attachments, talking to a vendor while soaking into the natural beauty staring in the face ? For most of us who travel across time zones, the first reflex is to reach out to the phone to see what came through while we caught up with the forty winks.

What does it take to sell the Ferrari and become a monk who has no links to what we call “work”, while immersing into “life”. Is that a possibility in the hyper-connected fast paced activity conundrum ? We CIOs created this paradigm for our enterprises to which every corporate employee is a slave.

Imagine if we did not answer the phone (makes us appear rude), stopped responding to emails and had an active “Out of Office” message, let team fight the fires that make up a regular day at work; would it make a stress free day ? 9 out of 10 times people would say yes, but 9 out of 10 times they will suffer higher stress levels’ wondering about what is indeed happening.

So is there a way out ? I would hazard to say yes and it requires excruciating will power to execute; go at it one hour at a time. That is like taking baby steps and setting a realistic target because stating that I will not look at that device called the phone, laptop, or tablet; for a week is unlikely to happen. Feeling awkward, I called many CIO friends who took vacations recently and asked them if they did what I have outlined above. No prizes for the result of the survey.

I think Bob Dylan had seen the future when he wrote in the year I was born “The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind, …”.

Guess what, next vacation I am going to try it. (it’s always the next, isn’t it ?)

Is Outsourcing cheaper in the long run ?

2011-06-06T15:11:00.000+05:30

Once upon a time many moons back, the IT industry discovered multi-shore sourcing, I use this term to encompass all types of (out)sourcing initiatives, and with that came long-term contracts, 10 years was normal, 5 was seen as short-term. A lot of these that termed themselves as Strategic Sourcing also built in innovation, new technology, business process linked contracts with broad intent on changing market and business dynamics.

The fever spread across the globe and no markets or sectors remained untouched. Big or small, almost every company was expected to embrace this new wave. The euphoria within the enterprise as well as IT companies was such that companies that did not enter into such arrangements were seen as stakeholder unfriendly or just plain dumb for not acquiring the obvious value.

As the years passed by many companies reported rumblings of discomfort and missed expectations. Analysis appeared to indicate specific issues with companies and individuals for not putting in their best effort, safeguarding the model with zeal lest the industry collapse with an unsustainable framework if there were indeed cracks in the carefully crafted Contracts, Service Level Agreements and Reference Architecture that represented the blueprint for the future. Business, profitability, political and other pressures forced reviews and scale down.

Prudent and rigorous reviews also exposed that long-term contracts had advantages of consistency and predictability, but lost on taking advantage of swings in the IT industry as well as did not bring in the level of efficiency or capitalization of quick market trends requiring agility that was possible with short-term relationships or with the ability to review and recast the terms of engagement say every alternate year. This was reflected in the drying up of the decade long deeds and most engagements focused on a 3-5 year term. Maybe “familiarity breeds complacence” also took root with in most cases both parties working hard to keep the marriage going.

There is no implication that these did not deliver to promise; some of them did and continue to do extremely well; some required significant investments in governance. Leaving aside labour arbitrage, the value captured did stretch the boundaries of discussion and measurement models.

New models now seem to be emerging with focus on outcome based payment schedules, collaborative investments in new technology exploration, but the basic framework has survived the troughs and waves of the economy and resultant impact. The challenge of growth (manpower retention) has mutated the needs and solutions into new forms with service providers hungry to get back to growth of the past, but discarding the learning of unsustainable linear growth assumptions.

Outsourced contracts or strategic sourcing contracts will thus become expensive and non-tenable with linear growth not aligned to market/business or the (in)ability to manage sudden shocks or black swans that keen coming back to surprise us. Periodic review of terms of engagement even if they imply disruption is the need of the hour; the IT industry however is not very excited.

Don't turn my problem into your solution

2011-05-30T16:10:00.000+05:30

It was an interesting meeting of a few CIOs with the debate revolving around IT Governance. From all types of models being discussed, the common subject of woes shifted to Business Intelligence. All the CIOs present had large investments in BI with varied degrees of success, some more than the others. Everyone acknowledged the presence of multiple tools and technologies with no single vendor’s ability to address the wide spectrum of needs. It was evident that their respective enterprises had reached a level of maturity in adoption of IT that would be the envy of many larger and smaller companies.

Later in the evening, the discussion continued over drinks and with rising spirits, the voices also became louder, the emotions hotter and the language looser. It so transpired that all of them had a few common service providers and solution vendors; stories exchanged stayed in the room but the lessons can be shared.

Most companies have common groups created with IT and Business participants to explore evaluate and decide on solutions. These heterogeneous groups are typically lead by the CIO or another senior IT leader who orchestrates the process. The process is similar across companies, with one or more of the following steps involving RFI, RFP, Demo/POC, Business case and budget approval, negotiation and commencement of project. A few vendors in their excitement sometimes try to take shortcuts which almost always results in unpleasantness for everyone.

But the more interesting phenomena occurs when solutions don’t really meet the functionality requirements by a reasonable margin, but the sales person in their desire to meet monthly, quarterly or whatever sales target pushes ahead with a desperation of a man clutching straws to save himself from drowning. Everything seems possible with a tweak, small code change, customization, bolt-on systems or to be released in the next version or patch.

The resulting tragedy of errors, omissions, round pegs in square holes and heartburn caused to the IT and business teams is imminently avoidable by following the process the way it should be, the urgency on the part of the sales person and his/her manager ensuring that targets do not override good business practices. It is not okay to withhold information or bend the process to fit the tools, neither it is acceptable for the CIO to allow leeway in the due diligence process. Even with rigor practised it is probable that some critical elements may remain uncovered. The Business IT teams will have to manage such exceptions (not a rule).

The luxury of time always eludes us in such activities; many a times deferred decisions put pressure on delivery of milestones thereby compromising quality or extended timelines and sliding targets to fix issues that could have been avoided with collaboration from both sides. Good practice is a result of everyone being on the same side of the table; a skilful CIO should and will recognize the body language when the problem is being twisted to fit the solution.

Would you pay more for quality software ?

2011-05-23T10:40:00.000+05:30

In a class of MBA students the discussion around quality frameworks veered towards ERP class systems and the large amounts of effort it takes to keep them running. The number of patches released frequently as well as the overall administration keeps everyone busy and on their toes. Bug fixes, functionality enhancements, and then some more bug fixes are the norm. Comparatively the in-house or bespoke systems are relatively stable and the effort investment is around incremental functionality.

Is it because the development of custom solutions is carried out by IT companies with multiple quality certifications like CMMi and others; or just that the big software vendors providing so called “off-the-shelf” solutions are struggling with factories of programmers that churn code trying to keep the innovation wheel running just to stay in the game. The resultant code is often bug ridden with usability that requires a PhD and a large team to keep it from falling apart.

Despite paying anything between 15-30% of the initial acquisition cost and spending a bomb on implementation with process consultants attempting to fit business to solution to business, it is indeed a wonder that quality remains firmly in the backseat. The story is no different across the industry which has started believing that it is their birth right to charge customers exorbitantly as Annual Maintenance Charges so that they can forever keep on downloading patches; they also get to call a helpdesk which will in most cases not solve the problem which to begin with should not have been there. The twist in the story is that now AMC is also indexed to inflation which provides a creeping increase every year with no improvement in the service level.

Why is it that none of the big software vendors ever talk about quality certifications or Six Sigma levels of defects ? Do they not believe in churning out quality solutions that will be the biggest differentiator for the customer rather than esoteric functionality that is rarely used; consider the fact that almost every enterprise uses between 5-50% of the functionality, I am sure that customers would gladly shift to solutions which are stable, work as designed and provide updates to functionality collaboratively.

There have been efforts from various CIO and industry groups to rein in the runaway costs of maintaining business as usual of which a large chunk goes towards the AMC and teams managing the big solutions. User Groups have failed to make a dent in the ever increasing charges; it does not matter how big or small you are, neither does it matter if the solution does not work as promised, you got to pay else support will be withdrawn and reinstatement of support is very expensive.

I wonder how many customers will pay AMC if the solution worked perfectly out of the box and did not have any bugs or required patches. Maybe this is a ploy to create solutions that fail on quality tests so that vendors can charge you to just make the system work; after all it is a very large chunk of revenue for these companies. An interesting thought thus emerges, would the CIO pay more if s/he was assured that the software does not require any patches, bug fixes or support ? I definitely would !

Effectiveness of Online Communities

2011-05-17T10:47:00.000+05:30

In the year 1996 when India just started opening up internet access to its citizens, I happened to join one of the first online CIO communities. It was a small group of about 100 of us with global representation and stayed that way for a long time. The community was promoted by an IT services company who mostly stayed off from influencing any discussion or attempt to sell. The moderators were professional and provoked thought from the community who responded with mirrored passion. With the dotcom boom the community transferred ownership to an online giant with commercial interests; en mass the CIOs moved on and created own community that continued to focus on learning.

Recent times have seen an explosion of online communities that are generic, specific, niche, community, profession or domain based, and a lot of me too with hopefully intent to provide many things to their members. A few like have become hot properties with stratospheric valuations and member base larger than many countries. Corporates joined in to understand what the communities are saying about them or their competitors, some started targeted messaging with little success. Industries have mushroomed selling strategy, analytics and a lot more from the mass of posts and unstructured data.

Shakeout has begun in this space leaving the individual confused on the choices made; corporate entities are beginning to wonder how to generate revenue from all the investments made in the height of euphoria. Every intervention requires effort and resource commitment to bind the members. Whether you are an individual or an enterprise, how does one decide which community to join ?

For individuals the choice is largely made by following Connectors (Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell) within their groups or when friends invite them to join new communities with an expectation to stay in touch, share knowledge or emotions, happenings within their friends and family circle, and a lot more. As the numbers start stacking up over a period of time the activity level falls off from most. The winning communities are ones offering a bit of something to everyone, freshness, content, features, etc.

Enterprises have followed the crowd and the hype around the communities with hope of understanding their customers, stakeholders, influencers who potentially impact business outcomes even if indirectly. Crowdsourcing and networked innovation became the buzz with significant investments pouring in. The few success case studies added fuel to the fire. But the large numbers of efforts have not yielded the desired outcomes. Even though the start point for most was Marketing or other functions with no ROI or business case, the online nature of such interactions put the CIO and IT in the middle of the discussion.

CIOs have struggled to moderate expectations and make sense of the noise. Combining these with the relatively clean structured data remains a challenge though multiple service providers and consultants tout the next level of competitive differentiation. These are early days where a lot of investment is a leap of faith or hit in the dark, until the haze lifts and clarity emerges, the worry for the enterprise is not to be left behind in the race to the unknown.

As for me accepting every new invite that comes my way, I think I will pass for now at stick to the couple that offer me personal and professional connectivity. The direction for enterprise and peers remains “keep a watch on the horizon, stay invested but focused on what matters”.

BYOD Security Paranoia or Necessity

2011-05-09T20:06:00.000+05:30

Not too long ago, IT departments faced the challenge of integrating a new consumer device into the corporate infrastructure; this was the iPad which took the fancy of every CXO and techno-affiliate with its cool factor. It did not matter that the tablet was another appendage to do everything that the earlier devices did well enough while ensuring that the information assets of the company stayed protected from nefarious elements. Said the tablet toting executive “I want it; security is for you to go figure”.

The starting point though was the iPhone, which was contained to some extent; the tablet was something different, a wave that swept away all opposition. Developers mushroomed all over creating applications to do everything that mattered and some that did not; IT had no clue what kind of vulnerabilities these created or introduced on the device. Faith in mankind was one of the strategies promoted by many to allow the devices to connect.

In another part of the world, employees went up in arms against the corporate issue compute devices, laptops, desktops, citing their home computers superiority over the standardized and locked devices. Thus the trend started that is now gaining momentum of BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device. It frees up financial resources, support too if the employee fends for herself, no hassles of managing refresh. But what about information on the device ? Confidentiality or sensitivity of information especially when the employee leaves ?

Now extend the same to the mobile, which is lot more like a consumable and gets changed on an average every year, in some cases earlier too. With the space evolving and a multi-polar world of IOS, Android, Symbian, Blackberry and Windows, that too with many versions, the challenges are unique and getting out of hand. In a world where every corporate employee expects all kinds of information on their fingertips (read mobile device), the security framework looks worse than a coarse sieve.

Mobile device security is an evolving subject; vulnerabilities on the mobile are being discovered every day and they are attaining critical proportions with multiple applications vying for attention. In a 24X7 world, the definition of acceptable risk has changed. CIOs are expected to create visibility of the potential compromises and keep the critical information assets secure at all times. The change in the security stance thus creates new challenges and opportunities requiring higher agility to respond. Abstraction of applications and information layers from the device is one of the strategies that helps and many frameworks are emerging in this space. Keep abreast of these developments and experiment before business forces change.

In another couple of years the expectation is that the dependence on the big computer (including laptops) will reduce dramatically; the CXO will carry a few devices (personal, corporate, function specific devices) and all will require management and access to corporate information assets. Start preparing now !

Work in Life in Work

2011-05-02T20:53:00.000+05:30

A CEO in a heated debate asks a question to one of the CXOs; the poor phone tapping guy has no clue what the discussion was all about. Confused in his reality, he blurts the words that were top of the mind recall, the interaction he was having with his girlfriend. Everyone on the table smirks, but the CEO accepts whatever nonsense comes out. “Go ahead, mix your worlds” proudly says an advertisement for a mobile service justifying the jumbling up of internet social media world and the workplace.

Ever since the time of portable computers to the current paradigm of everything on the handheld device, be it mobile, tablet or the laptop, work transgressed the boundaries of what was earlier a 9X5 or whatever hours people worked, and the dividing line between what was referred to as work and life has disappeared. It is normal to expect a response to a mail 24X7 and many obliged. In an interconnected world with business being conducted across timezones, this became a way of life. Umpteen cases have reflected the damage this phenomena causes to friends, family and the individual.

As we grew up through school, there was a sense of relief that there will be no homework when we start attending a job in an enterprise. The irony of the situation is that work has expanded to fill all the time beyond the cubicle or cabin reaching the bedroom permeating every nook and corner of life, threatening to follow like the shadow.

So a debate on work life balance is an exercise in intellectual stimulation; reality for most executives is that balance is a utopian state never to be reached with the swing all the way towards work. So if work activities are standard fare, why not allow the life to creep into the workplace ? Why do organizations abhor the thought of employees occasionally checking personal email or posting a few updates on social or micro-blog sites but expect them to work on the presentation or spread sheet while traveling or in their homes ? Security is one of the justifications and then corporate data travels all over the world. Consultants will tout productivity loss due to distractions not recognizing the gains in after office hours.

This is more so now with the IT function with networks, ERP systems, messaging and collaboration, you name it is buzzing with activity through the day and night. Downtime ? What’s that ? And scheduled downtime shifts again and again until the breakpoint is imminent. CIOs struggle to retain teams engaged in keeping these running. Weekends, holidays, vacations belong to an era gone by; the executive is now chained on a WIFI, GPRS or 3G network which cannot be unshackled.

IT and work policies straightjacket the behaviour on premise and often off premises too when using corporate assets like the laptop, smartphone or others. We all accept these as a way of life. Progressive organizations have taken a lenient view of some digression, as of date they are the exception. I believe that productivity will be higher when knowledge workers have the flexibility to escape a few times. Unfortunately there are no empirical data or solutions to validate this. Contradictory claims make such decisions difficult while burnouts continue. Incidences of fatality are getting younger with stress induced by work pressures and lifestyles that may get promotions, but what is a promotion worth when you are dead ?

I don’t know what can help alleviate the issue; unless life is allowed to creep into the work hours.

P.S. I wrote this past the midnight hour on Saturday

The micro-app nemesis

2011-04-25T23:21:00.000+05:30

If you have looked for an app on Apple’s App Store, I am sure you have faced a Google search kind of frustration with hundreds of applications purporting to do the same stuff, one better than the other, or many times just a me too. So some of us end up downloading more than one to try and then decide which one is better; many a times we don’t end up discarding the others. Check around with friends who would have downloaded say an “Alarm Clock” and it is quite likely you will find that their app is different. You may be tempted to download that one too, just to try !

I met a CIO who was showing his angst on the fact that there were more than a dozen applications within his enterprise for travel approvals. While some were a result of “forgotten” acquisition synergies, the others were created by Shadow IT for departments to address short term need. These sustained themselves even after the corporate version was deployed. And now to top it all, almost all of them had mobile versions for different mobile devices thereby multiplying the number of micro-apps that were floating around.

The resulting collection of travel approval micro-apps exceeded a number that crossed the tipping point for the CIO. There was an uneasy silence on the table as she described the chaos and now the support expectations when some of them failed to work with the clamp down or rationalization of applications. Sympathetic nods followed as new governance processes were discussed and general agreement that the actions taken were fair.

Most of the micro-apps on the App Store are written by enthusiasts and programmers wanting to showcase their prowess. They test waters with free apps, and then add features and a tiny charge. Some start-up companies too indulged in similar bunch of apps on the store getting a few hits and lots of misses. How did this suddenly become an industry with 10 billion downloads in such a short span ? Because you can !

The simplicity and ability to create such apps is I guess one of the reasons that contributed to this explosion. Consumerization of the handheld device has given rise to the opportunity that had to be capitalized upon. The slowdown/recession encouraged the blurring of the lines between work and life, while everyone wallowed in the need to stay connected 24X7. The pressure is now on the CIO to stay ahead of the game and deploy even more processes that can be accessed on the mobile. Even if you have already formulated a mobility strategy, review it frequently to stay on top of the situation.

But what about the increasing number of micro-apps that are being downloaded, sanctioned or otherwise ? No one knows what kind of vulnerabilities they create; what will they lead to in the future ? Are they the future support nightmare ? Only time will tell; until then tread cautiously, create the micro-apps required, test the ones you may want to endorse from the store, and pray !

Making it stick

2011-04-18T19:05:00.000+05:30

An intense debate was on, on how we ensure team alignment across the different organizational units that form a workgroup within an enterprise. As the discussion moved towards pinning responsibility (read blame) when things go wrong, there was a palpable sense of unease across the group; specifically the team that manages the vendor relationships and is expected to deliver and monitor the service.

The discussion had started when one of the stakeholders had raised the issue of inter-dependency across other teams and his ability to influence how the team is rated during the review and appraisal. It is true that all of us are no longer islands with any connection to others. We use services from within and outside and similarly provide it directly or indirectly to internal and external customers. The work subdivided into interrelated tasks when performed in unison lead to a positive outcome (in most cases).

Adversarial attitude is the result when we are not satisfied with the result or our perception of the effort put in by others. The conventional solution is to create Service Level Agreements, cross-linked KRAs (Key Result Areas). Review meetings are often heated while everyone trying to pin the “blame” on the other. Such meetings are rarely productive and highlight the gap resulting in the “you” versus “us” stance. The meeting was headed for a showdown that would have been messy for everyone with skeletons tumbling out of the proverbial closet.

It was an eye opener remark from one of the participants in the meeting that had everyone hushed and staring at the person who uttered the words “But are we are all not on the same side of the table ?”. Could anyone have disagreed to such a profound insight ? Speechless everyone exchanged glances feeling generally uncomfortable without acknowledging the cause.

The acknowledgement of the fact that we all are working towards the same objective is a starting point not just for any collaborative endeavour, but for teams within the organization. Everyone contributes and brings a skill to the table that matters, even if in a small way. When we are in a challenged situation, we know that the best recovery strategy is to help the other overcome the challenge and not berate the lack of skill or achievement.

Great teamwork is always a result of shared goal and common objective; the acknowledgement of complementary skills within the team provides a framework that nurtures healthy collaboration and focus on what matters, i.e. the result, without compromising the quality of team spirit. Keeping this as the foundation of review helps ensure better outcomes. It is indeed difficult to sustain such a mindset when one is at the receiving end.

The hierarchical leader of the team and the CIO in this case has to play the role of setting expectations and resolve confrontations and conflict which will always be there. The matrix organizations of today are necessary; we have to learn to live in the rain.

Quest for a perfect SLA

2011-04-11T12:55:00.000+05:30

I recently had a discussion with one of the respected global company that specializes in providing consulting around outsourcing and managing Service Level Agreements. My friend on the other side of the phone passionately tried to convince me why it is important to create SLAs that can tie down every aspect of the service that the outsourced service provider will deliver now or in the future. He cited many examples of how his company helped many customers “win”.

In another setting a debate was set off between CIOs on how they ensure that their service providers deliver what they promise consistently that meets the promise to the business. For more than a year, one of them has been unsuccessfully trying to get a bunch of vendors to come to the table for a discussion on creating effective SLAs. Not that the vendors are shy of the subject but collectively at the same table with multiple CIOs is not a viable proposition.

Service levels matter to everyone, the customer, the provider and the end consumer of the customer; I do not believe that deficiency of service is due to wilful behaviour or mal intent. The exception to this may be in monopolistic scenarios where no incentive exists. When it is relatively easy to switch services or move business to competition, efforts are indeed put in by the provider, the end results may however not be aligned to expectations.

The reasons why SLAs fail could be many ranging from ambiguous definition of service, staff involved in execution not being aware of quality of service expected, lack of skills on the ground, unrealistic expectations, or force majeure conditions to name a few. Irrespective of the reasons, when things do go wrong, contracts come out of the closet again to review the penalties that can be levied or avoided depending on the frame of reference. My belief is that “if-then” motivation will not deliver world class service; i.e. if SLA is met you get paid, if you better the SLA, you collect a bonus, whereas if the SLA is breached, there is a penalty.

SLAs are typically calculated on statistical data which fails to recognize business impact when the service is deficient. Creating complex SLAs that factor in all types of exception conditions makes it readable and enforceable only by lawyers and not CIOs. A SLA should illustrate the intent of partnership between the two (or more) parties. Incremental innovation or improvements are expected as much as occasional failures that could be for any of the reasons listed above. Both parties need to work together towards ensuring that they understand the root causes and work towards prevention of repeated adverse impact.

Unfortunately such behaviour is rarely seen and everyone invests significant resources towards the scripting of a document that covers all bases. End result is that the parties involved split hairs with irrational discussions thereby leaving the spirit of partnership aside. Most successful relationships are based on simple few page documents that capture the intent with the managements investing time in frequent reviews not just when things go wrong, but when they are working too.

Over the years it has been a difficult journey on this path, but it has been worth the effort. The big companies (customer as well as provider) have however yet to learn.

Industry awards for ICT Vendors

2011-04-04T10:18:00.000+05:30

I had the privileged invite to judge ICT vendors; from a respected enterprise that gives away awards every year. This was their first attempt to form a jury to decide the awards. Earlier years the awards were decided based on size, growth, market share, and in some cases new innovations added during the previous year.

The number of award categories had grown over the years from a handful to more than double score. Thus multiple juries consisting of senior CIOs were appointed and the task was split.

Absence of customer-inputs

We got started with the understanding of categories we were to judge and the time allocated for discussions of each award. Everyone agreed and we jumped onto the first category. The nominated and shortlisted names were not a surprise.

But as we started to scratch the surface, the question came up “where is the customer dimension? How can we assess the relative merits of performance without the voice of customer?” It was evident and confirmed that over the years there was no thought given to this aspect in deciding the winner. The sound logic stated that size and/or growth demonstrate customer confidence.

The jury did not bite that. Sometimes size is a function of regulatory play, incumbency factor or better marketing machinery. Progressing through the categories, the debates took many hues; at times the shortlisted vendors were not perceived to be market leaders or worthy of an award.

In some the selection criteria of the nominations made it appear that the award was pre-decided; the deliberations had the jury wondering if these were sponsored awards being played out to gain respectability.

Truth Vs. marketing babble

Not too long ago a CIO had used social media to highlight the farce behind one of the industry awards for CIOs. In the world of scams, anything is possible. Over lunch the discussion did veer to this doubt. We were animatedly appeased by the organizers that such was not the case. They acknowledged the shortfall in data and that some criteria needed amends.

CIOs listening to vendor pitches and presentations tend to believe awards cited by the vendor. They purportedly validate the technology, solution, or service as it is assumed that experts indeed evaluated objectively across formal KPIs that matter. A few dazzling awards may appear alien but are rarely challenged. If an exotic niche publication conferred the award, so be it. Micro-segmentation works to serve a purpose. Ho hum!

Importance of being prudent

Sticking to what matters to the business is always a good starting point while selecting any vendor. The other important factors include, and not limited to, cultural alignment, success in solving similar problems, industry/ domain focus, long-term development strategy, apart from size, growth, and the awards they have accumulated.

If you are an early adopter of technology, seek safeguard that shares the risk/ reward. For others, nothing works better than peer reference, i.e. talking to existing customers.

Back to the awards, we the jury were aghast at the invisible customer angle. The high point of the day spent was a category that was denied an award in the context presented and one that got away was a lone nomination to a category that at best had a start-up as a challenger.

So next time a vendor puts up a slide or gives you a brochure with glitzy photos of awards, acknowledge them, but do remember to exercise your right to references with or without the help from the vendor.

The vanity show of technology

2011-03-28T19:57:00.000+05:30

“Apple announces iPad 2 with better, faster, newer ….. Bargains available on earlier version.”

“When software vendors continue to create new versions of every solution, there is pressure on us to stay with current versions; how do we manage such a paradigm with budget constraints?”

The first is news that everyone saw and reacted to depending on their reference point with the much coveted tablet computer that is a must have on many lists. Some queued up to get the new device last weekend, while others decided to capitalize on the available bargains on the earlier version. Few competing tablet manufacturers wondered on how they can keep pace.

The second was a question from an SME (small and medium enterprise) CEO to a panel of big enterprise CIOs in a seminar organized by one of the large office automation, unified communication, and collaboration solution vendor for the mid-market customers. Majority of the audience nodded to the question as if they all faced the same predicament and did not know how to resolve the situation.

Vanity Fair

There appears to be an inherent desire amongst us to crave the latest version of gadgets or software similar to the desires to keep up with the latest trends in fashion that vanity demands. The technology vanity also permeates organizations; after all the same individuals pride themselves flaunting the latest must have phone, music player, and camera, whatever.

Organizations can ill afford such a race and the break point has a direct correlation to the profitability of the enterprise and the contributions of the IT function. The enamoured CEO and CIO will also cite examples of how and why it matters and the benefit thereof to the business, customers, and off course themselves.

When this is weighed against the basic rules of conducting prudent business with rationale investments filtered using good governance rules, the decision shifts to what matters. Every organization has a set of rules for financial investments; these measure the results and provide a framework that applies in most cases to every decision. However, IT sometimes escapes this rigor with justifications ranging from necessity for security to lack of support on older versions, fear of obsolescence and many in between. In absence of tools to validate or ignorance, and the incessant push from the vendors, the SME customer faces devil’s choice.

Being prudent

Irrespective of size and compulsions driven by technology vanity, vendor threats, competitive scares, boardroom chatter, or peer pressure, the rules of good investment decisions should always stay in the forefront. My answer to the question from the CEO was, “We still think like the SME we were in the past. Every investment has to answer the following questions: Does it help the customer, employee, or shareholders? Does it create a new capability we require to differentiate? Is it required by law? If none applies, then the investment is not undertaken.

But then the thirst for the latest is irrational. We have become participants to a mega race to acquire the next. There is no justifying the next version of laptop with the latest processor, nor any rationale for the next zillion megapixel camera. Why do we need the latest version of communicator or the micro-app on our phone? I think the simple answer is because it is there!

Offsite Meeting effectiveness

2011-03-21T12:20:00.000+05:30

Every leader at some time seeks to engage the team in thematic exercises that are personified as offsite or outbound programs. Most of these are facilitated by external trainers who engage the team in field or classroom exercises. Typically such events spread over 1-3 days in out of city resorts where the external environment entices the participants while they struggle with the agenda and expectations. Almost everyone looks forward to such a sojourn from day-to-day work.

Over the years I have attended and conducted over a dozen such programs with teams, large and small, across organization layers. All of them were great experiences and opened up a new line of thought, provoking some action or reaction with me as well as other participants. Many companies conduct these annually by department or sometimes horizontally taking layers of management for team building, bonding and improvement of cross-functional dynamics.

In the last outbound program one of the participants posed a question to the moderator, how can we ensure that the learning from this program stay with us and bring about positive change? The volatility of learning defies expectation and evaporates by the time everyone reports back to their workplaces. Nonetheless this does not deter teams, companies and trainers world over from conducting such programs. The moderator promised to revisit the question before close of the program.

CIOs probably manage the most diverse teams with skills and competencies that are specialized in their own right. Be it infrastructure which can be subdivided into network, servers, data centers, or core application stacks that require technical, functional and architectural expertise; all of this and more form a typical IT team. Each professional equipped with ‘professional arrogance’ believes s/he is unique and better than the other. For the enterprise to function cohesively, these teams have to work in tandem like the machinery in a shop floor lest production come to a standstill.

The siloed nature of teams creates friction as well as competitive spirit that require the CIO to balance internal expectations with the expectations of the business leaders and customers. Outbound and offsite meetings thus serve an important purpose of breaking the ice, bringing together the teams even if for a short while, and provide a platform for exploration of themes that bring success to the team. It is foolhardy to expect everyone to create the same level of benefit for themselves; if some of them find their change agent, the event has served a purpose. It’s analogous to a classroom where all the students listen to the same teacher but hear differently.

Coming back to the moderator of the last outbound, in the final session, he said, “I am sure you liked parts of the program, participation level was great. I had nothing to give to all of you; it’s for you to decide what you want to take back.” Well said indeed, because no one can ensure what you take away from any program, discussion or stuff that you read; it’s a choice the participant makes based on his/her presence, participation (or lack of it), fiddling with the phone, or side talk.

On another note, Zig Ziglar said, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing, that’s why we recommend it daily.”

Intuitive Analytics

2011-03-14T15:19:00.000+05:30

It was a packed house listening to a panel discussion between two CIOs, a CEO, a vendor and an academician. After almost an hour of discussion on various aspects of Business Intelligence challenges and opportunities, the session end requested final words on what they would like to see from vendors in the future ? Leaving aside the Oscar-ian twist on being good to customers, better decision making and paying more attention to talent, the crowd applauded unanimously to the CIOs wish list. The CIO representing a “mature” user of solutions from the sponsor BI vendor, made a passionate appeal:

Has anyone in the audience attended a training program on how to use Facebook, or any other website or messaging system ? If no, then why do we require everyone even with above average intelligence in the corporate world to be provided training on usage of internal systems ? What makes these systems so complex that they cannot be used without handholding ?

I wish that we can all evolve to a level of BI/DW tools such that any user within the enterprise can start using transactional data to convert to information that can assist informed decision making. Anyone who can use a spreadsheet should be able to extract the insights hidden within the sea of information. They should be able to intuitively understand what is expected from them to get to the next step with no prompting or help (online or otherwise). I am talking about Intuitive Analytics, a term coined by me a while back to refer to analytics that is intuitive in its interface; intuitive to the user the way s/he is able to open the browser on the PC, Smartphone or tablet and start the journey of discovery on the Internet.

In recent times there have been multiple initiatives around improvement of how information is presented to the consumers. Evolution from rows and columns to dashboards, drill-downs, pivots, multi-dimensional analytics has evolved; the evolution of mathematical models as well as technological advances on speed of crunching data have pushed the boundaries across enterprise datawarehouse projects. Over the last three years, DW/BI has consistently been in the top 3 technology and business priorities.

The experiences are however inconsistent in their delivery of business value. Some of the barriers include data quality, data model deficiencies, bad ETLs to name a few. The biggest deterrent has however been the complex user experience which has seen lesser evolution as compared to the technological advances. All tools with no notable exception provide the basic building blocks to create the DW/BI foundation and analytical layer; standard templates, internal IT teams and implementation partners have yet to breakout from the mould to provide a rich, consistent, and meaningful capability to the end consumer of information.

I believe that this is an opportunity for one and all, CIO, DW Architects, vendors, implementation partners, to take up this challenge on making BI as easy as getting on any social media site and get started. If you have already crossed this bridge, do write back, but the applause on the floor to my comments, makes me believe that the journey is still more like an uncharted expedition.

Retiring CIOs

2011-03-07T17:36:00.000+05:30

Recent months have seen quite a few CIOs retiring; many of them started their careers a really long time back, growing from technical beginnings and successfully transitioning from the role of EDP Manager to a CIO over more than last 3 decades. The next few years will see many more ready to handover to the next generation of younger aspirants. The subject of succession planning suddenly comes to fore raising questions where the transition had some impact on the organization. We discussed that some time back in “Succession Planning for the CIO”.

So what do retiring CIOs do ? Do they just fade away from the limelight gradually or in a jiffy just like that as if someone pulled the plug and in an instant from the next day there is a blackout? Or there are opportunities they can pursue to continue adding value to enterprises, younger CIOs, academia, may be consulting? Probably all of this and a lot more; what are the options a CIO can pursue after putting in 30+ years into the industry ? Should we just let go of the rich experience?

Almost 8 years back, I met a retiring CIO from within the CIOs I knew, a few months before his D-day. The conversation naturally veered towards plans post retirement. His face lit up as he talked about his plans post retirement from the 9-6 grind as he described his passion and involvement in a NGO close to his home town to contribute to the education of the underprivileged. There was obviously a clear vision of the future and that had nothing to do with his current role in a large Pharma company.

Beginning of last year, I came across a surprise New Year message from a CIO who had disappeared from the scene quietly and no one had a clue where he might me. He was running a small consulting organization focusing on specific technology and domain thus working with a few customers providing them with the insights gained from his experience. It became evident that he had planned for this day and was satisfied with the continued usefulness and revenue/income it generated.

Then there are many who pursued academic interests joining institutes as full or part time faculty; some decided to become freelancers on specific subjects like ITIL, COBIT, etc, which require experienced hands to bring out the context for the students by relating instances and anecdotes from experience.

Retirement is another phase of life which requires planning and preparation; you cannot stumble upon these opportunities after reaching the milestone which says “Stop”. It’s almost like a new job; except, in this case, there is no formal job (there are exceptions where CIOs have continued as consultants in the same company or joined other enterprises); but the accountability is to self first and then to the task.

The ranks of the new age CIO are raring to go with new skill sets for the new era of computing with a fabric of social media and clouds linking these across the ecosystem internally and externally. They are ready to challenge the grey hair with less technology, more business, and say what matters, effectively. If you are contemplating retirement in the next 5 years, and if you have not yet started, get started now!

Do you sleep well ?

2011-02-28T13:12:00.000+05:30

It was a gathering of 80 odd international CIOs from the customers of a mid-sized IT company. The keynote speaker’s industry experience was larger than the age of almost all the participants. This giant towered over the CIOs reflecting on his vast experience and how he witnessed the role of the CIO changing with time, accelerating in the last decade. I was enjoying the learning interspersed with anecdotes. One question had everyone nodding and agreeing except a lone figure who disagreed. The question was, “Do you sleep well or are running from one fire to another 24 x 7?”

He did not pass judgment on the crowd magnanimously except as one being busy with no respite. He sympathized with the majority seeking the causes of their misery. The murmur rose to a buzz citing various operational reasons including data inconsistencies, network outages, backup failures, and many more that kept them from the forty winks mandated by the Doctor. The crescendo unanimously in one voice cried the expectation to respond to the next message on their hand-held.

The grand old man trundled down the aisles whispering to some, nodding at others, patting a few, creating a wonderful sense of unity cutting across ages, cultures, geographies, and industries. It was like a universal global malady to which research has failed to find a cure. The binding complete, he turned around to the solitaire CIO, quavering finger pointing at his bewildered face and thundered, “Young man, what do you do differently that puts you above all?”

“I pass it on to others, I delegate!” Nothing dramatic, no magic formula, simple plain old fashioned delegation; the CIO went on to explain how he helps his team run with operations as well as projects. He empowered his team to take decisions, reporting back frequently on progress made, plans for the next fortnight, challenges faced and overcome, escalations that needed attention. He engaged the team in regular meetings to discuss this and new opportunities. The audience resonated, “All this sounds like what all of us do every day!”

The difference is in giving up the control rather than holding on to the umbilical cord. Effective delegation requires the responsibility and accountability to be with the team; they have the freedom to take decisions, make mistakes (hopefully not too many) with the coaching and mentoring of the leader. If they have to seek permission for every step or decision from the CIO, that is not delegation.

Autonomy comes at a price, but also offers reward of time to the leader. S/he can focus on what matters long-term while the tactical is managed by the team. A word of caution though, delegation is not abdication of responsibility, because when things go wrong and there is an adverse impact to the business, the CIO is finally accountable for the actions of the team and the outcomes.

The question to you is “Would you like to join the lone figure in the crowd?”

CIO Resume - Part 2

2011-02-21T18:47:00.000+05:30

A few weeks back I had written about my tryst with a CIO struggling to create a resume that would evince interest from headhunters, executive placement, or companies looking for one. After an unsuccessful struggle attempting to advise her to illustrate the business benefits of her interventions, I finally invited her over to collaboratively create a document that may interest someone looking for a CIO.

Together reading through the resume, I noticed she was passionate about her achievements and the impact they created, but had no words in her vocabulary to transform the bullets into business impact. So I decided to indulge in some role play and asked her to be the CEO of a company who wants to hire a CIO and read the document again. Every few minutes I stopped her to observe if it meant anything to the CEO. Her Oh I See moment stretched through until the second reading!

Take an example “16 years of experience in deployment of technology projects“, changing to “16 years of aligning business and IT consistently delivering to promise” or for that matter “Implemented FICO, SD, PP, MM, HR modules ….” which was replaced by “Optimized processes and improved business efficiency by up to 30% …., driven by SAP implementation”. The entire document underwent clinical surgery over two hours with the promise of post operative care to reduce the overall size to fewer than four pages, shedding almost 40% irrelevant content.

Everyone has a story to tell, but the story needs to catch the attention of the reader in the first 200 words or so. The risk of a boring or unintelligible document is real when the supply is higher than the demand. A large volume is less likely to be read compared to a concise one. Cater to the targeted audience and not a generic one. Research the target organization and change accordingly is a great way to at least make it to the shortlist. Talk to common friends or vendors if you are able to.

So is there an ideal format for a CIO resume, structure, content, layout? The answer is no, everyone is unique and has a different story to tell with their background, industries worked for, technologies deployed, and contributions made. Make sure that your headlines attract attention; the text that follows has conviction in what it portrays.

Finally, I think that what really matters is how you have contributed to the enterprise growth or savings, impacted customers (internal or external), what kind of influence you have within the industry you work for, the teams you have managed, the geographies and cultures that you understand, and contributions towards success of your peers. Isn’t this what a CIO or for that matter any CXO anyway expected to do?

Read CIO Resume: Part I

Discussions at CIO Appraisals

2011-02-14T12:33:00.000+05:30

A few weeks back, I met a CIO who was feeling elated post his annual appraisal with the local and global bosses. He had reason enough to be proud for the ratings received, expansion of role and monetary benefit (of course). I also had to deal with a CIO who took a long time raving about the injustice meted to him by the organization which does not seem to get IT. Two extremes, and I’m sure that there are many experiences that fall in between.

Every year with certainty like the taxes, every individual dreads, anticipates, is indifferent, or resigns to the annual appraisal. The emotion varies depending on multiple factors, including but not limited, by past experience, organization culture, boss relationship, team, industry, and in many cases individual performance. Appraisals have always been debated on fairness, appraiser bias (positive or negative), as well as the bell curves to which they are expected to fit.

How does the CIO get appraised? What can he do to ensure that the dialogue is fair, the feedback constructive, and reward/recognition aligned to defined metrics and the overall performance of the IT team? Should these aspects be engineered (read as politically managed) to ensure a favorable outcome? Is it that we always expect more than what is due to us?

Any process or relationship between a subordinate and his reporting manager that leaves the discussion to its anniversary is fraught with danger. The discussion will rarely be able to consider contributions through the period, since last few interactions or outcomes will assume top of mind recall. Thus the benefit of the good work done through the year may be tainted by a recent minor incident. We all fall into this trap as appraisers too, and to that extent it is unrealistic to expect a completely unbiased interaction.

Appraisal is a continuous process with reviews, discussions (formal or informal), communication by the appraisee (MS Word does not like this word) and feedback by the appraiser. The formal culmination of this is the period based appraisal—typically bi-annual or annual, occasionally quarterly. One of the key tenets here is communication by the appraisee. Periodic updates and visibility of wins is critical towards building a reputation and mindshare. The CEO has to balance between all the functions similar to the way the CIO manages across differing expertise and IT domains.

Across functions, levels and CXOs, the best stories are always around measurable impact to the business, which can be communicated in unambiguous terms. This is non-debatable, and thereby provides a fact based discussion with the boss, even when he may be IT unfriendly or agnostic. The bell curve will take care of itself—you have that one meeting (similar to your job interview) to convince the appraiser, why you should continue to be where you are, or move up the ladder.

Maybe there is some merit in what Pythagoras said 2500 years back. “Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they please”

Leadership is ...

2011-02-07T15:28:00.000+05:30

Across two events over the last few weeks, I came across many CEOs and thought leaders who debated, discussed, and opined on the future state of the economy and what the industry can look forward to. There exists a general sense of optimism and expectation of a brighter tomorrow. A few mentions of the struggles that still remain in pockets, not to forget the lessons learnt in the last couple of years. But the highlight was the speech delivered by a third generation young family owned business entrepreneur.

He was speaking for the first time in public and that too in an event held outside his home country. After a hesitant start he warmed up to the subject which was the journey of the family business as the reigns are eased onto the new generation with the grandfather keeping a dictatorial but benevolent eye on the day to day affairs. Every generation starts from the bottom of the pyramid working their way up until the patriarch decides it’s time to move to the next level. As the story unfolded, the audience listened in rapt attention wondering how each generation has built upon the foundations laid six decades back with humble beginnings, now run by a large joint family of over 150 managing the enterprise successfully.

I could draw parallel to some incidents of the protagonist with our experiences with corporate behavior, complexity of the markets and the organization culture, as it shifted with each new leader entering the business. Swayed by the economic turmoil and political uncertainties, the company was buffeted in the waves up and down as if it had no direction of its own. Reflecting on my own experiences and the various case studies that came my way, life unfolded as if in slow motion reminding the lessons it left behind. The one tenet that was evident through the session was perseverant leadership that kept the family going through rough and smooth. Tough decisions taken resulted in many positive outcomes and a few that made the situation worse. What has all this got to do with the CIO?

To me the CIO leader faces such decision points a lot more frequently irrespective of whether s/he works in one industry/ company or across different ones, big or small, and agnostic of geography and lineage. The CEO is personified in the patriarch, occasionally benevolent when s/he is IT friendly, else indifferent or sometimes hostile. The CXOs pull in different directions like the family members with different priorities. Competition and the overall economy impact everyone and are thus similar in their effect.

Many IT leaders are rightly felicitated for success and contributions to the company; influencing industry trends with early adoption or innovative use of solutions. They take decisions which could potentially wreck a business function or create a setback in the short-term. Risk ability is a critical part of every leader’s armor and CIOs are expected to fail less often as compared to other business leaders.

CIOs who are able to manage across the journey are classified as successful and turnaround specialists while few suffer ignominy of the technology world. Leadership is after all a mindset and not a position. Like the grandfather, many CIOs are now well positioned to mentor fresh talent to take the mantle. But will they? That’s a story for another time.

A CIO resume

2011-01-31T18:10:00.003+05:30

I was reading an article on CIO resume for 2011 with some interest and a bit of cynicism when an email popped into my inbox asking for help. The sender was looking for opportunities as a CIO wanting to expand her role moving from an SME organization to a larger one. Her decade and half of experience across various companies had served her well and she felt that with the economic growth, there would be openings where she could try her skills and luck. Now whether this was providence or coincidence, I don’t know, but I started reviewing the lady’s resume against the principles in the article on my screen.

Everyone, well almost everyone has debated ad infinitum the changing role and expectations from a CIO. We all agree that in the current context, the CIO is a business technology leader driving business and efficiencies with help from technology. Contributions to top line as well as bottom line are now a rule rather than an exception. Any self-respecting CIO would vehemently defend his/ her position and seat at the management table; the discussions are no longer about what is the value, but how much.

So I was surprised to see the mail from this friend who was struggling to find an opening as a CIO. She was technically competent, had delivered most projects for her various companies, and had worked hard through the ranks and risen to head IT for a small business. All the ingredients existed that are required for movement to the next level. I reflected on the discussions with her during a few past meetings and could not find anything that would disqualify the person. So what was missing?

Opening the attachment that was the resume, I started reading. As I read through the first few lines, it was evident that she had achieved success in most of her endeavors be it setting up MPLS enterprise networks, implementing ERP, greening data centers, virtualization, and a host of technologies. Through the years across companies, she stayed with contemporary technologies and collected a bunch of certifications like PMP, ITIL, CCNE, and MSCE to name a few. Some projects brought fame in IT publications and they were reflected prominently in the document. Is something missing?

Then I put my business hat on and restarted reading. Looked impressive; but where is the value to the enterprise, colleagues, peers, and in general, the connect to benefit that was accrued to the company? The resume lacked mention of initiative, change management, teamwork, metrics or values around the impact of the projects. As a leader, how did she work the internal and external teams towards delivering what mattered! Suddenly I felt that the person had remained enveloped in the world of technology rarely visiting the outside world of business. Her portrayal did not reflect a CIO, but a tech professional.

So I communicated my appraisal of the document advising change to ‘sell’ business alignment and what matters to business; technology is the foundation and can also be outsourced, but domain skills are valuable. Months later, another document landed in my inbox with changes; I tore my hair wondering where I missed in my communication. Maybe she struggled to find the value statement; maybe she does not know how to articulate. Many thoughts wandered through my mind.

After another chance meeting with her, I recommended that she come over for a discussion to my office and hopefully we can together unearth the value and pin it down. It’s a meeting I am awaiting as anxiously as I hope she is.

Read CIO Resume Part II

Murphy at work !

2011-01-25T15:31:00.000+05:30

Any festive season brings with it a sense of joy, bonhomie and general feel good factor. After all, there is a planned celebration, friends getting together, family reunions, and if nothing else, some quality time with the family. We all look forward to such occasions to come. Different reasons across the world make for such gatherings, be it festivals, commemorations, faith; however, the world unites together to bring in the New Year.

Now, imagine this scenario:

New Years’ eve, and the day begins with an outage notice from the network team citing a company-wide network outage for causes unknown. The team gets down to figuring out the cause and fix, but the problem appears to be more than just a router failure. It is evident within a few hours that it’s going to be a really long day, maybe a night too, before the situation comes back to normal. So what do you do? It is evident that vendor support will be limited, and global support skeletal.

In a not too dissimilar scenario on a Saturday morning, I have seen the Operational CIO get off a meeting not to return. On another occasion, a balanced CIO keeps tabs periodically, and on the other extreme a “strategic” CIO continues with his life as usual, knowing that the team will finally resolve the situation.

Murphy strikes when everything appears to be nice and bright with the world at large. He has a way of unsettling the best of plans of good men. These are the times for which all the plans are created, the maintenance contracts signed, and the service levels (SLA) monitored. The machinery has to crank itself up on such moments to deliver. Everyone in the team has to know what they are expected to do, including communication within the enterprise, of the situation and plan remedial action. Beyond the explicit, on such occasions, relationships work their magic. Teams with passion, understanding of the impact and ownership will always rise to any occasion.

So in such an eventuality, what is the role of the CIO? It does not matter whether the CIO is operational, strategic or balanced. Should the CIO continue with preplanned celebrations while the team toils the midnight oil? Or lend a moral shoulder to lean upon? Just get out of the way lest he becomes a pain for the team trying to solve the problem? It is important for the CIO to understand the value he will bring to the situation and decide what works best. But one of the key actions required is to communicate the impact if any to business, what are the measures being taken to minimize the adverse impact, and keep information flowing periodically to keep shortening tempers at bay.

Post incident resolution, acknowledgement of the effort along with words of merit and appreciation are definitely worth engaging in. The message it sends will ensure that when Murphy strikes again, the team will be up to the task.

Buying IT, a financial decision ?

2011-01-17T11:21:00.000+05:30

IT procurement has always been an activity that provides the CIO and IT staff with substantial power —that of a customer who defines the requirement, negotiates, and sweats the poor sales person through each interaction. There are horror stories of negotiations beginning post midnight, as well as of joyous ones with a handshake happening across the table in less than an hour. In a few cases, this negotiation is the role of a specialist IT buyer or purchase department.

The recent past has seen a lot of rigor in this process, with expectations of better deals and discounts driven by tightening budgets. In many cases, Finance teams were thrust upon the CIO to validate or take over the negotiation. The underlying assumption is that Finance has better negotiation skills, and they will fiscally protect the enterprise’s interests. It is another matter that these individuals (with best of interest) had little knowledge of the overall value propositions on the IT solutions. Another angle discussed is of governance, elimination of temptation driven by large value transactions, and keeping everything above board.

In the early days of my career, one of the executives charged irregularities in IT purchases. I welcomed the conducted audit, which validated the IT departments’ innocence and above board dealings. This set into motion a change in process with the induction of another coworker from Finance during the buying process. While she was in the initial stages an observer more than a contributor, over a period of time, she was able to start adding value. The cast aspersions were no longer a talking point, but collaboration was considering the perceived transparency that it brought to the process.

There have been not so pleasant experiences too for some CIOs facing “interference” from other functions, as they do not understand (nor make an effort to). Thus the strained relationships between IT, vendors, and largely the finance/purchase team leads to a lose-lose proposition for the enterprise—with delays, inefficient negotiations, and missing line items in the overall project charter or Bill of Material. Everyone finds this an ordeal, but is unable to change the outcome, as the value propositions are not understood.

If your organization is functioning well without involvement from other functions in IT procurement, periodically review the perception of how you are seen doing that same. It would help you address issues before they become a talking point. On the other hand, if your organization does require purchase decisions to involve a larger group, get them into the discussion from day 1. Else you may face frustrating moments in the future. Their involvement and participation will be a function of whether they are measured on this. Make sure that KRAs are aligned; else they have no reason to devote time beyond what makes them win and look good.

I also had the privilege in a company to have senior finance personnel sit through tech vendor presentations nodding knowledgeably for a while. Then they would start making excuses not to participate, or get off the meeting as some important call took them away. After a few months, they rarely turned up !

Time Value of Information

2011-01-12T03:30:00.000+05:30

Every now and then, there’s a flurry of activity, questions and debate around real time information, on inventory, sales, production, process approvals, financial metrics, and so on. The passionate appeals by vendors makes one wonder whether the business is really inefficient or missing out on a large opportunity by not disseminating information to the managers and CXOs in real time. Add to this the new dimension of “complex event processing”, and the picture depicts a Jurassic era of information enablement.

Real time information availability has been business’ aspiration for a long time. IT enablement of the processes and operations in an enterprise expedited availability, but batch processing still did not provide the information as the event happened. As the data mining tools matured and models appeared for predictive modeling, gaps of the present became very evident. SOA Integration and middle layer technology solutions reduced the time gap. Mobile computing removed the physical presence limitation, as trickles of information could be provided on the handheld.

Now cast an eye across industries and various processes that are fed with, or create information. We will observe that today information flows with every step, decision, and event, irrespective of the sector, size or geography, the paradigm is uniform. People create information, people consume information, and people transform information. Managers, supervisors, CXOs, and even customers, seek control with real time information availability. Is it necessary to provide real time information to all the stakeholders? How does it change their behavior, decision or end outcome, if at all?

Take the case of retail. For a customer shopping in a store, price information on nearby stores in real-time is valuable, as it helps her get the best price for a product. To the retailer, a product sold is information, as it indicates that a customer has chosen a product from the shelf, and the stock count is down by one. Based on the supply chain’s agility, the retailer can use this information to plan for replenishment. The information can also be shared with a supplier who may use this snippet for planning next delivery and the impact on production schedule.

All this looks good in a one-one relationship, but when you multiply the dimensions, the complexity renders the simplistic scenario unviable as the optimization across the value chain has multiple constraints that operate on each decision point. Even when the collation and decision points can be automated, “complex events” have a way of making decision making a really difficult task requiring human intervention. In the above scenario, if the retailer received hourly information, will it materially impact the quality of decisions or process triggers (like a replenishment)?

The ground reality is that real time information does matter to an enterprise, but the rule cannot be applied for every byte of information. For a nuclear reactor, there is no other way. In case of a manufacturing plant, PLC data is, inventory data is not. Similarly for a financial institution, risk positions can build up quickly unless near real time monitoring exists, but a trial balance can wait for end of day. The application of technology for real time information is a good tool to be judiciously applied, and not get carried away by the use cases presented by the seller of the technology. If you are not doing it, get started, but ask the question at every stage. What changes with real time information?

Paradoxically, this post is delayed due to travel !

My CFO is my best friend

2011-01-03T14:52:00.000+05:30

The recent past has seen many discussions, debates, as well as advice from anyone and everyone who has an opinion and finally some pieces of alignment between the CIO and the CFO. All of them make interesting reading, depending on whether you are the CIO or the CFO. Last week, my CFO and I were approached by a media house to do a story on our relationship and the CFO called to ask "Is this a story"?

Almost every CIO (and I will not debate the merits or lack of) passionately believes that he should be reporting to the CEO or the Board. This is a demonstration of IT’s strategic intent, as the CEO has direct overview of the direction taken by IT and the influence it has on the business. Reporting to the CFO is fraught with pitfalls, as the primary discussion is around cost. While I largely agree with this hypothesis, a lot of equations changed during the downturn, as the CFO grew in his span of influence.

IT was at the receiving end to some extent, with squeezed budgets, investments becoming difficult and overall sentiment prevailing around cost containment. Organizations with good governance processes as well as CIOs who were aligned to the enterprise realities adapted quickly, and worked with the CEO and CFO to create models that worked for everyone. Innovation slowed in some cases, but did not come to a halt. On the other hand, some CIOs had difficulty in adjusting to the new reality as the CFO dominated the decision making process.

Gigabytes of information were created around this new paradigm; CIOs hating it and CFOs wondering about what’s wrong with IT. The strain in an otherwise cordial coexistence or tolerance became a sore point for the CIO who could only vent his frustration at the inability to break the deadlock — unwilling to recognize that change begins from self. In the last 18-24 months, I had many interesting discussions with CIOs who struggled to get on with the IT agenda. Not that this was universal; many adapted to the new reality. In the new normal, the baseline has shifted and the new paradigm is a way of life. The CFO is an integral part of the decision making process, and signs off at least large value investments or costs.

Coming back to the interview between my CFO, myself and this senior correspondent, the discussion was around the relationship, alignment, issues and challenges. The bantering between us left the reporter surprised, until it was clarified that I am the CIO and my CFO is indeed the person who manages the money (amongst other things). The stereotype CFO too has changed as the CIO has evolved; thus to expect a Bean Counter in every CFO is like expecting every CIO to go fix the CEO’s laptop or the boardroom projector.

CIOs who have cultivated a relationship with other CXOs (including the CFO) would wonder if this hype is created by consultants wanting to sell models of alignment or governance. My quip would be that you should invest in relationships with all CXOs. If you do not help them win, why should they help you?

Return on Investment, Intelligence or DR

2010-12-27T10:36:00.000+05:30

Considering that almost everyone is at some stage of the next year’s budgeting process, ROI has been dominating mindshare. Amongst these were two discussions around return on Business Intelligence and return on Disaster Recovery. Both are fairly nebulous in their manifestation, and difficult to put a fix on the number that can satisfy the CXOs, especially the CFO and the CEO.

Business Intelligence is a discipline that as an enterprise orphan suffers from detachment from its real users and owners, largely due to the technology’s complexity. Thinking beyond conventional reports to analytics is a leap of faith, and the enterprise’s ability to formulate and use trends and associations that are atypical. In the flurry of operational activity, discretionary time is a luxury that many can ill-afford. Thus, most organizations end up with expensive automated reports which serve the same purpose that ERP reports did earlier.

Disaster is something that strikes others; so why put aside significant investments, time and effort that could be used to create new capacity or build additional capability? With a few exceptions, almost everyone has a disaster recovery plan on paper nominally funded, rarely tested end-to-end, and seen as an item necessary to pacify the statutory auditors. Should an untoward incident strike, the ability to retain continuity of business would not withstand the rigor of time and process.

In both cases, continued budgetary support is seen as cost and not as an investment. The discussion on ROI is thus fraught with danger avoided by the CIO, challenged by the CFO and others. Is there a way out of this predicament? Definitely yes, but it requires the CIO to approach the discussion a bit differently maybe play a difficult hand; conventional dialogue will not change the outcome.

One track that some have used is to debate the absence of these solutions, what it implies and the associated risks. Absence of BI may probably not be treated with the respect it should, as transactional reports are also possible from the ERP systems and the belief that everything else can be done in a spreadsheet. So a BI discussion has to be guided towards the benefit to different stakeholders and possibly transferring ownership to one of the business CXOs. IT should not be the driving force and implicit owner. After all, the starting point of BI is B-business.

The absence argument has better traction with DR; with the primary systems being out for a period of time, the impact with varying degrees will be felt by everyone, irrespective of industry segment. The time to recovery will decide the type of DR option to be executed. DR is also synonymous with insurance. No one wants to die, but almost everyone buys insurance. So if the data center were to pop it, DR does step in and take over (hopefully, and that is where the discussion went awry).

Are there any models that can be universally applied to formulate ROI on BI and DR? Unfortunately, even those that exist (perpetrated by vendors or consultants) are being challenged to shorten the payback period. Innovation is pronounced after success is evident else the debate will get ugly. We all know that “insurance promising ROI” is not insurance, we are paying more than we should.

Why do vendors sponsor CIO events ?

2010-12-21T11:03:00.000+05:30

It is a general belief that CIOs are a pampered lot, with every vendor equipped with a marketing budget vying for time of the CIO wining and dining them, or taking them to exotic locales under the aegis of a larger event organized by, say an IT publication. A destination’s lure or the fine dining opportunity is what the vendors believe attracts their audience to accept these invitations.

Now, the CIO is usually attracted by headlines promising to transform the business, strategies to enhance business value, getting ahead of competition or additions to the corporate bottom line, to just name a few juicy titles. It does not matter what product or service the IT company offers the titles are very similar in their stated intent to help the CIO in being a winner. Expectation mismatch?

The reality is more on the lines of a captive audience, subjected to what can be described as Auschwitz style torture by presenting presumptuous facts of a micro-segmented market that has no correlation to the reality (of the audience). They then propose the same old solutions around data centers, storage and server virtualization, wrapped on cloud computing enabling the business statements using logic defying rationale.

Recent times have seen the gas chamber (read conference room) pumped with cloudy trends and solutions suffocating CIO prisoners and adding to the confusion. The CIOs’ silent cries are lost in the din of the collar-mike-d speaker who avoids eye contact with the victims, so as to not be cursed by their souls. Sighs escaping occasionally are drowned by the amplified voice of the person standing a head above the rest (on the stage). Basic decency and courtesy prevents the CIOs from walking out; a few regularly pass out, even as their snoring disturbs those who seek solace.

This cycle repeats endlessly, with the CIOs hoping in vain that IT vendors have probably taken their last feedback. That they have changed their way of using the precious face time with a group of decision makers. But no, it is as if the basic principles of customer engagement have been thrown to the winds. Forget the customer or his needs, sell what you have; it does not matter whether the customer needs it or not. Twist the message adequately to make the square peg fit into a round hole.

The vendors’ defense is typically on the lines of, “Listen to the customer? How can I do that when I have only 45 minutes of stage time? I have to tell them my story (the story that my company wants to propagate). I will read the slides, take a few minutes longer than the allotted time, so that there is no time for questions”. After all, I have spent some hard money to sponsor the event.

Over the last year or so, many CIOs have started excusing themselves from these excursions and invitations, in many cases at the last minute, citing business exigencies. This number is growing, and such opportunities will just wither away unless the model changes to encompass “Engagement, Listening, and Empathy”.

Is anyone listening?

Holy Grail of IT, Operating Expense vs Capital Investment

2010-12-13T12:55:00.000+05:30

IT budgets were never a great discussion; the CIO struggled to find the right balance between “Business As Usual”, or keeping the lights on, IT infrastructure, incremental innovation, new projects that business wanted, initiatives that IT wanted, and some that the CIO believed will have a transformational impact on the company. Over a period of time, the operating expense ran out of control to reach almost 90% of the total. Across the industry, this required a conscious effort to bring back the innovation budgets with BAU settling around 70%.

In the recent past (at least the last two years that is vivid in my memory), almost every IT solution, vendor, consultant, and CIO has promoted the idea of shifting capital investment to operating expense. Capital investments almost withered away, as the economic challenges dictated cash flow controls. Large initiatives found it difficult to get initial funding. IT companies turned around models to offer almost everything as a service, thus obviating the need for capital expenses. New business models liked payments to outcomes spread over a period.

The operating expense model helped forward movement; in success based engagements, everyone was a winner. For the CFO or the CIO, in the absence of success, it was easy to pull the plug, and stop loss. Yes, there was, and is, an inherent risk of the project or initiative not working, but we have not heard of any such anecdotes as yet — as if success rates now equaled the past’s failure rates. Is this due to the fact that the financial risk is now shared in a different proportion between the stakeholders? Or is there another angle to it?

The answer is probably affirmative when it comes to the shared financial risk. However, I also believe that the vendors now prefer the OPEX model, as it helps their profitability over the long term with continued revenues and the ability to spread their capital investments over a set of customers. The customer is probably paying more over the useful life of the product.

There is another angle as well. Once any process operates over a shared IT infrastructure, application, or solution, with the data too being stored in the service providers premises (sounds like the Cloud?), the ability to get out of such an arrangement into an independent model will be a huge, if not insurmountable, challenge. Everyone recognizes it, and believes that the changeover is executable, but I would be worried to be in a situation where I could be held to ransom — despite what the lawyers tell me.

I am not propagating the message that we all need to move back to the good/bad old days of big capital expenses. The CIO should be wary of the “too good to be true” deals, and safeguard the enterprise’s interests by reviewing alternatives to disruption of services, or the possibility of a shift should the service levels fall below acceptable limits; and in the worst case scenario, the service provider increasing the fee to abnormal levels. The time and cost of any change in this situation can be very high indeed.

Mr IT Vendor, grow up

2010-12-06T13:31:00.000+05:30

A few weeks back, I was at a round table discussion organized by one of the big IT vendors which focused on “Virtual Desktop Infrastructure”, amongst other things. A gathering of about 15 CIOs was invited to explore the adoption of desktop virtualization, its associated merits, challenges and opportunities. It was an opportunity to engage, that once again failed to engage the IT leaders.

The group had a fair representation across industries from manufacturing, banking, insurance, retail, IT enabled services, and some more. The agenda was fairly simple, with the expectation to understand how different industry segments view VDI and what has been the journey thus far. Of course, it was about market sizing and qualifying leads that could result in some business from the vendor’s perspective.

Discussions started off with differing perspectives on filters that every CIO applied to their business operations to determine the suitability of desktop virtualization in their environment. Some amongst them included the kind of work undertaken (task, analytics, office automation, and graphics intensive work), volume of desktops per location, type of applications used, and not the least, ROI on such an initiative. In the same breath, challenges were also debated listing cost and resilience of connectivity (specifically in the Indian context), licensing impact, cultural issues, and again ROI.

Within some time, it was evident that the vendor and CIOs were talking different languages; the former talking about the technological innovation, and the latter focusing on business benefit. With no translator or moderator, the two conversations found it tough to converge on common ground. Thus, the anchor closed the discussion after about 90 odd minutes with some CIO doodles labeling VDI as Vendor Driven Initiatives or Very Dumb Idea!

Post panel networking had an interesting insight shared by the vendor CEO with the anchor; the CIOs today are not willing to discuss technology anymore. This is making the task of selling to them a lot more difficult as compared to what it was. For sales persons to get into the customers’ shoes and then have a discussion requires different skill sets than currently available.

My rebuttal to that is “Mr IT Vendor, what else did you expect from the CIOs?” Over the last decade, expectation levels from the CIO have shifted from a technology advisor to a business advisor. CIOs have seized this opportunity (not challenge) and many have gone over the tipping point to take on incremental roles in business. To expect this level of discussion from the same vendors who always have “IT business alignment” as one of the top 3 priorities reflects that they too need to embrace the same change that they have been preaching so far.

The IT vendor evolution is a paradigm that I think CIOs have to start contributing to, else they will continue to be at the receiving end of inane discussions and presentations around technology, not winning with the business. Get started and do your good deed of the day, so that the next CIO they meet will not go through the same pain.

Are you micro-apping ?

2010-11-29T14:12:00.001+05:30

Mobile data services brought about email as the first (and probably still the biggest) killer application on the mobile. This is the opportunity that created Blackberry and its many competitors; almost all focusing on creating a better email experience for the corporate user.

Browsing was at best a chore with the small screen, and unwieldy websites struggled to fit on to the small screens. Corporate IT and the CIO were, and continue to be under pressure to enable business processes on the same handset that earlier provided email.

The same users demanded their personal emails on the handset that expanded the market to consumers, albeit in a small way, until iPhone came to the party and changed the smartphone market. Consumerization of IT ensured that corporate suits wanted the iPhone, while a large segment of consumers (who were earlier fringe data users) became a large force. This created an industry around micro-applications that did inane stuff at times, but mostly enabled the smartphone user with earlier unimaginable capabilities. Competing platforms played catch, while zillions of applications sought favor spanning across categories like utilities, travel, education, entertainment, productivity, and finance.

IT organizations on the other hand, continued to work on large projects with reducing timelines and budgets. Enterprises using and deploying monolithic applications have advertently compared the facile microapps with the clunky screen-based complex navigation to conduct business operations. Small applications made their way to corporate phones, largely enabling road warriors and pushing information to the real-time executive not that it changed business decisions in a big way. Sales force enablement was the quick (and in many cases the only) derived win. Another disruption arrived with the tablet demanding attention with better capabilities than the phone.

It is evident that the era of large applications as the primary interface to business process is on the wane. IT is expected to create mobile enabled micro-process automation. Its starting point may be on the fringes with quick tactical workflow approvals, graduating to complex processes on tablets. CIOs should be exploring options that are able to use the existing infrastructure with microapps.

With multiple competing mobile operating environments, transportability of applications will remain a challenge in the mid-term, but that should not restrict attempts. The multitude of form factors and devices that a corporate user now possesses, also poses a conflict of choice. Scan the various app stores, and endeavor to find a set of applications that may find favor within the enterprise. Security will of course remain a red flag as this trend gains momentum. So the CIO has to work with other CXOs to define “acceptable

Lists I don't want to see in 2011

2010-11-23T22:45:00.000+05:30

It is that time of the year when everyone starts creating lists — of priorities, challenges, opportunities (which hopefully also get budgets allocated), new technologies, and so on. Everyone from analysts, researchers, academics, CEOs, CIOs, publications and anyone who has an opinion contribute to the increasing top three, five, ten (or in some cases a random number) based on their comfort of things that are a must do, must watch for, avoid, don’t even think about it, failures, every possible happening, news, people, the list is endless. I am tired

A lot of these are thought up while on the keyboard, some have inane research to justify, a few are meaningful too. CIOs and IT folks love these, and watch them like religion. Or hate and ignore them because the lists only add to the existing chaos. Adding to these is a set that creates lists for internal and/or external consumption.

Over the years, I tracked lists from major IT research houses and publishing companies to ascertain their alignment with what I planned to do. Like with every list (and that applies to horoscopes too), I found that the alignment varied from 10% to 80%. If you put together a list of current buzzwords, hype curve technologies, magic quadrants, waves, or similar research, you are bound to get a few that will resonate with the personal and corporate agenda.

Now the differences are always explained in context of industry, geography, size of company, maturity in the IT adoption curve; you could also include sun spots, solar or lunar eclipses, global warming, or any other metrics that you can think of. So why does everyone continue to invest significant resources, time and manpower towards the creation of such lists? My belief is that they need to pin up something on their (and others) soft boards, put in presentations, or just publish them for others to marvel at.

Reality is that the lists created by surveys and research are self-fulfilling, based on the asked questions. If a list (of say 10 items) is presented and the respondents are asked to prioritize them, that’s what you will get. Rarely does anyone ask for respondents to fill in 10 blank rows with what their priorities may be. That would be chaotic and statistically not tenable in a report, but would make interesting reading.

So here is my list of lists (and it is not 3,5,10 that I do not wish to see in 2011.

Top 3,5,10 priorities/opportunities for the CIO/IT organization
Top 10 technologies to watch out for
Top (pick a number) business priorities/challenges
Top (pick a number) challenges for the CIO/IT organization

If you have any others, do put in your comments. If you love the lists, enjoy them, or if you are cynical of them, join the party. However, if you are indifferent about these and have achieved a nirvana state, can I enroll as your student?

Justifying IT budgets and the bicycle stand syndrome

2010-11-16T11:26:00.000+05:30

A long time back during a budget meeting, one of my CEOs narrated a story (or maybe a fable) on Boardroom discussions on budgets. This story has stayed with me for a long time, and the memory was refreshed last week in a discussion with some industry leaders. Here’s the story:

In the Board meeting of a large and successful company with multiple manufacturing plants, two agenda items were tabled; first to discuss $400 million investment in a new manufacturing facility, and the second the layout including employee amenities of the same manufacturing plant. The second agenda item was unusual for the board to discuss, but found its way into the chambers since the Employee Satisfaction Index at one of the older plants was low. The financial proposal was tabled by the Head of Manufacturing, with added guidance from the CFO. The resolution was passed unanimously, and done with, in about half an hour.

However, the discussion on amenities took almost two hours — with the longest time spent on the location, structure and type of the bicycle stand. Everyone had an opinion, and disagreements continued until the Chairman of the Board decided to put the debate at rest by appointing a committee headed by the HR Head to review other plants (including those of competitors) and table the recommendations in the next meeting.

Last week, the meeting with fellow CIOs and a few marketing heads veered towards budgeting and ROI. Snide remarks aside, the debate on how these distinct functions justify their million dollar proposals took an interesting turn. When the CIO presents a business case for an enterprise wide system that potentially benefits everyone but requires significant participation and change, it takes immense effort and documentation in order to get everyone to listen, review and agree. Multiple iterations are the norm, and a chain of signatures essential before the grant of even a tentative approval. Whereas, the CMO sails through in a jiffy citing brand building, customer touch and impact on sales, even when most of them are not necessarily attributable to the discussed campaign or idea.

Why is it so difficult for CIOs to get funding for new projects as compared to, say CMOs? The difference is, I would guess in many parts. To begin with, the language in which these proposals are put across. Another is the change that IT purports to create in a change-averse world. It could also be that marketing as a function always focuses on the end customer, while IT initiatives are predominantly inward focused (though that is changing fast now). The conversation initiated by CIOs when they connect to stakeholders and customers does find traction. So maybe peer learning has to be gained on how to pitch right the first time, every time, and win when every function is competing for the same precious resources.

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) in his unique manner put across the marketing formula, “It’s just liquor and guessing”. I have yet to find a good enough one on IT budgeting.

Communicating Success, Successfully

2010-11-08T16:56:00.000+05:30

There is an old Hindi song “The peacock danced in the jungle, who saw it ?”; no one is the wise answer. Now what has this got to do with the CIO and the IT organization ? A lot !

IT is one of those functions whose absence is felt a lot more than its presence. Whether it is a simple email or internet access outage or the impact felt on the enterprise users when billing fails, or an invoice does not get created or printed. The ripples across the organization can be heard louder than the thunder on a wild stormy and rainy day. And what about small incremental development or changes that IT delivers everyday helping the business do some activity or task better, faster, cheaper, more efficiently ? Do these get to the eye (or ear) of the management teams ?

CIOs and IT organizations do a good job of communicating big project kick-offs with a lot of fanfare; the project plans and progress is tracked on some dashboard or report at regular frequencies. They are discussed in management review meetings and focus on timeliness or budget depending on the progress report. User and IT teams debate functionality within the review and steering committee meetings which typically see senior management participation wane as the project progresses. Other priorities take precedence and the resolution of conflicts or issues is left to the project team comprising of a few IT folks, vendor representatives and middle management users present as they are nominated to the project.

If all goes well even with some timeline or budget overrun, the project go live calls for some back patting, an email from the CXO (could be the CIO too) to announce that we are now operational with the new system. In rare cases the Post Implementation Review is conducted by the users or the CIO to validate the base case and benefit if any.

Now the IT organization apart from managing the operations also contributes continuous improvements to the small and large systems working with various internal functions and vendors (hardware, software, development partners, etc.) to address the ever changing needs driven by market forces, internal changes, or sometimes by customers. Many of these could be changes that create significant internal or external impact, but they are rarely on any report or dashboard, leave alone corporate announcements. These typically take away almost 30-40% (figures may vary by company and industry) of the total IT resources. They are deployed and forgotten, moving on to address the never ending pipeline of work.

CIOs should communicate these across levels to demonstrate the benefit, new or improved capability, cost reduction or avoidance they have enabled. To sustain the message of IT enabled sustained enterprise advantage, it is imperative that the users or the IT organization create the visibility. The beauty of the peacock with its feathers in a symmetric formation is to be cherished and enjoyed. If no one knows about it then “IT does not matter”.

Padding up the enterprise

2010-11-01T17:42:00.000+05:30

Recently, I had an interesting discussion with a handful of global CIOs from Korea, Japan, Germany, India, USA and a few others. It centered on the pains, acceptance and way forward on the much flashed about computing device — across all seminars, airports, lobbies and any other place that you want to be seen with it. It has created a range of wannabe devices, been written about by every type of media, physical, internet, business magazines, newspapers, leisure, technology … Sigh, you get the point? I am referring to the Apple iPad.
The iPad has taken the IT world by surprise. It started off as a consumer device, and stormed into the corporate world — taking the CIOs literally on the wrong foot, just as they were getting comfortable with the iPhone. A CIO recounted the story of his team being given the task to connect a new shiny device to the corporate network; when no one had ever seen such a contraption. While the IT team was able to get it onto the corporate network within the stipulated 30 minutes (an unreasonable demand from the Chairman’s son), others have not been so fortunate, and have later discovered employees happily connecting to the WiFi network.

Driven from the top, the iPad has infiltrated every organization, giving a hard time to many CIOs. Sales and marketing organizations are creating business cases for deployment, while the evolving market is pushing newer competing devices. The applications landscape is catching up fast with enterprise software vendors getting there. Although challenges around security exist, new opportunities are vying to offer game changing business propositions that did not exist earlier.

The convenience of this tablet device scores over the conventional laptop, but is a long way before it replaces it totally. As manufacturers experiment with the form factor and features, one thing is certain, the iPad or equivalent is here to stay. Globally, the iPad has been successful in Pharmaceutical industry for detailing. Market researchers now use it for interactive discussions, even as it becomes a convenient add-on to the CXO, and an alternative to e-book readers, amongst others.

CIOs should move into proactive mode to embrace the inevitability of tablet computers within the enterprise. It is time to redesign processes with the new device rather than replace current devices for existing processes as the benefits may not be worth the effort. The iPad is disruptive technology, and thus deserves different treatment. Challenge the enterprise across layers to explore how it can create new possibilities that did not exist before.

The global CIOs without exception agreed that they have to deal with this surge. Some are approaching it using policy, while others are taking it head on. So don’t wait around to get beaten up by the business, as it may just bypass IT to serve their quest for innovation.

Over the weekend, one of the new entrants splashed the newspapers with a global simultaneous launch of another device. I am sure this Monday, the calls from various parts of the organization would have reached a cresendo.

A year of active blogging

2010-10-25T12:02:00.001+05:30

Many moons back, this column was conceptualized based on the intermittent musings posted on Oh I See. It has evolved with feedback from readers and critics in equal measure who keep providing me with feedback, headlines and thoughts that can be converted into a column. The weekly frequency has settled down to a couple of hours over the weekend — after many hours during the week has been consumed in figuring out what matters — amongst the many wanting attention.

CEOs, CIOs, students, techies and business readers have written back with their views; some in agreement, a few in disagreements. I learned different perspectives from both — views that added to the richness that I consume and try to disseminate across this column. The Gonzo approach (a la Hunter Thompson) to Oh I See appears to bring out the warts, moles and at the same time, airbrushed images that attempt to make them palatable. Until a few weeks back, I was ignorant of this branding, until it was pointed out by the editor at TechTarget. I am simultaneously suitably impressed and humbled.

Celebrating a year of Oh I See and reflecting back on the various topics that were brought up, discussed, debated, challenged, analyzed, I hope that you would have gained something; a laugh, a connect to the CIO reality. If nothing else, it’s a smile or a frown — hopefully not a grimace. But if your reaction was indeed extreme, did it stimulate you enough to write back? And if not, then you better do it the next time.

Last week was great. I managed to catch up with some old colleagues whom I had mentored. It was heartening to see them achieve new peaks in their career. The event that brought us together from different parts of the world was better than most, since it had limited product pitches (which were relegated to one-on-one meetings, though some did escape). The learning was indeed that irrespective of geography or industry (specific and additional challenges could be regulatory), experiences across the globe seem to mirror each other with fair consistency. Similar challenges and opportunities observed during discussions with peers from China, Japan, and other countries reinforced the belief that the human factor overrides all other forces.

Is there a Holy Grail for the CIO that can overcome the nemesis of IT? Something that manifests itself as one or more of “Alignment”, “Change Management”, “Budget pressures”, and “People issues”.… Someday, I hope to find the illusive mantra that CIOs can universally apply under most situations to overpower Medusa.

Back to Oh I See and the journey through the year, I hope the coming year will have a lot more to discuss and write about. Amongst the feedback, my favorite quote comes from someone who aspires to be a CIO. “I don’t need to read books or take management training from any business school any more. Your regular articles on different sites like STL center, Oh I See, IT Next, etc are enough to fill all the required skills and capabilities in me to get and justify with the position like CIO /Head IT.”

CIO speeches at Award ceremonies

2010-10-18T15:56:00.000+05:30

"...and the award goes to ..." All of us have seen award ceremonies like Oscars or Grammies (on television or live). Some would have also received awards usually followed by the award winner being asked to say a few words. Almost all of them sound like clichés, since they follow a predictable pattern.

Recent times have seen a number of awards (for the CIO and the next level) competing for the participants’ attention. Some of them have become prestigious and much vied for by the CIOs, while a few have lost their credibility, largely for want of effective communication and process management. Thus, CIOs have now started to choose between the awards that matter to them, and those that don’t. The natural selection process has thus differentiated the ‘Oscars’ from ‘me too’ awards.

Initial years saw the awkward CIOs on stage, as they tried to be graceful in their acceptance speeches. With time, they grew adept at being on stage. This also meant that the speeches became a lot more predictable. “I would like to thank my team, my boss, my users …” it could have been any award, CIO, or company, but the same spiel. After the ceremony, it was back to business as usual, with the accompanying cribs.

In 2009, I found changes. In one of the award ceremonies, the CIO was accompanied by his CEO to collect the award. The CEO stood alongside the CIO accepting the award — sharing the joy — telling the world at large about how the awarded IT initiatives transformed his organization. It was indeed inspirational to the recipient, as well as the audience.

Last week, I attended two award ceremonies, where the number of other CXOs made it a very different story. The CEO and CIO jostled on stage for airtime, and collaborated to tell their success story. Gone were the usual “thank you” messages, which were now replaced by what has changed for the enterprise, employees and customers. It was about revenue generation and profitability.

Reflecting on this change, it is evident that the CIO has evolved into an equal business leader who is not enamored by technology. He is self assured, confident of himself, and is able to hold his head high, while acknowledging the success of initiatives taken or supported by the IT team. I get this warm and fuzzy feeling as I hope that the future will bring better tidings for CIOs — not just in IT awards, but other CXO award categories.

P.S.: One of the CXOs in my organization pronounced that we now need a separate wall for all the IT awards we are rightfully getting. I turned the air conditioning to chill.

Doing business with startups, due diligence and lessons

2010-10-12T02:52:00.000+05:30

Every CIO gets many calls from startup IT companies wanting to bounce their million dollar idea—to seek the CIO’s advice and understand whether it makes sense in the enterprise. Some of these are self-funded, while a few may have angel investors or private equity already in place for growth. The steady growth of such small startups in the recent past has created an interesting problem for the CIO. Why is it a problem?

In quite a few cases, there is not much to differentiate one startup from the other. So how does the CIO separate the chalk from cheese? What is the due diligence required before getting these vendors on board?

A majority of these startups are seeded in institutes like IIT and IIM (globally pertinent equivalents may be the Silicon Valley or MIT kind of institutes), where the idea takes shape fuelled by the entrepreneurial bug. Most such ideas take a while before they gain traction with their target audience. These are the real gems, and being an early adopter of such startups provides an immense advantage.

Having worked with a few such companies, I realize that it does take a lot of effort to get the product/service aligned to enterprise processes and direction. As the first or amongst the first few customers, the value proposition is almost always attractive. Their reference checks largely depend on their mentors (professors or others) who are able to provide the details behind their continued support to the new entity.

The second category of startups comprises breakaway groups from existing companies, where a group of people have decided that their ideas have higher value than what they currently see within a large entity. This group typically specializes in services for a specific technology, domain or application. Such companies do well to begin with as they are patronized by existing customers (supported by them) who see a price advantage with a smaller startup. Such entities pass the tipping point within 12-18 months by either reaching a steady state, or falling apart. The due diligence is thus largely dependent on the team’s leader and its past track record as they continue to offer similar services.

A variant of the second category is a group being lured by an investor who believes that unlocking the potential has good upside for everyone. The service offering is thus no different from the above. A private equity institutional player invests in existing entities that needs funds to scale up or laterally, but in this case the carving out was initiated by the investor. How does one ensure that the entity will survive and make it to the tipping point? The team comes with impeccable credentials; the unknown factor is the investor who may pull the plug. In such a case, it is critical to conduct diligence on the investor and his past track record. Search engines come to your rescue in such cases, as past footprints cannot be obliterated.

Either way, put in safeguards to protect your enterprise’s interests with financial, legal or even escrow accounts to address sudden disruption. Work with your legal team for once, ask all the questions even if they make the other queasy; at least you will be able to sleep with ease.

Strategic vendor meetings, slip between intent and execution

2010-10-04T14:12:00.000+05:30

I met the CEO of a global market leading hardware and services vendor recently – he’s from an organization which has been engaged with us for many years. He was earnestly seeking customer feedback on how is his company contributes to the success of customers and what is required to sustain or improve the mutual value. My submission to him was that all is well and hunky dory; we think of their company when we needed something. Once the transaction is over, the Account Manager as well as my team part ways until the next requirement comes up.

As a purely transactional arrangement, this works well, but many other value added opportunities get missed as this vendor is not our first recall. The CEO was aghast and promised to remedy the situation quickly through a strategic meeting with solution heads and domain experts; this was to be repeated every quarter, or on demand.

Six months passed, and nothing happened. Another chance meeting, and this time the CEO turned crimson on hearing the progress. In the interim, some more business went to their competitors. The chastised managers began the chase attempting to fix this meeting, which materialized after another three weeks. Time requested and granted — 1½ hours, scheduled start 2:30 PM.

D-day arrived, and this is how events unfolded:

2:30 PM came and went with no sign of the delegation; No call, no SMS, nothing. The audience comprising of the CIO and a few General Managers waited with some concern and amusement.

3:00 PM: Account Manager turns up. After 10 minutes, the second person ambles along. Meeting starts at 3:15 with a presentation on how the vendor sees the current market. They shared their beliefs about our challenges, and thus the opportunities for engagement. He talked about services that we have tried unsuccessfully with the vendor as the key unique selling points.

3:30 PM: The Sales head joins the meeting while the discussion was on an organizational matrix—a model that would support us in the collective quest to take engagement to the next level. As we started tabling issues, the vendor team had reasons for all that had nothing to do with them. An ERP upgrade, change in account managers, shift of support personnel, I am sure you get the point. But there were only fleeting regrets that they did not update us on open issues or orders despite multiple reminders.

3:45 PM: “What are your priorities and projects for the next 12 months?” and we quipped “To explore new and alternative vendors”. My colleague whispers that this meeting is worth a mention on Oh I See. Saving grace for them came in the form of an urgent phone interruption.

4:00 PM: The reception announces arrival of the last person who was to join the meeting. I get up and walk out of the meeting.

I wonder whether the vendor realizes what they (did not) achieve with the strategic meeting scheduled by their CEO with intent to enhance business with our company. Why does the IT vendor fraternity not teach its sales force to listen, engage, empathize and show some patience – the four tenets of retaining your customers? All of them (except a handful) are interested in talking, or presenting the great slides provided by their local or global HQ with inane survey data that normally has no connect in the local dynamics of business. Like every other business, retaining customers is all about creating a differentiated experience, unless you always compete on price.

Aspiring CIOs

2010-09-27T18:08:00.000+05:30

Last week, I was invited to speak to a gathering of IT Managers (CIO aspirants). The subject was of course “How to become a CIO”. With some confusion on the start time of my presentation, the audience had almost 30 minutes of waiting time, but in their desire to pick up some tips and tricks, they patiently waited for the session to begin. As I entered the room, the expectation written on the audience’s faces brought butterflies in my stomach.

The agenda included: timeframe to make the grade, domain versus technology expertise, degrees and qualifications, soft skills, management challenges and opportunities, managing teams, all the qualities that matter and what to watch out for. I decided not to use the standard slide presentations with bullets, process diagrams et al, or the usual stuff that most presentations are made up of. The idea was to engage the audience, and engage they did. With 40 minutes allotted, the hour passed quickly without realizing it–the questions took away another half.

Today’s aspiring IT Managers are well aware of the challenges faced by the CIO; they shadow their bosses. They learn by observation and try to understand the intricacies and finer nuances. The only thing that they lack is a playground to test themselves and a coach to hone their skills. It was refreshing to see the young talent raring to go, waiting for an opportunity to knock. Many are abreast with financial skills and also aware of how to justify hard numbers in the enterprise quest for ROI. Finally, the importance of networking and challenging status quo makes the well rounded personality that creates success.

Succession planning for the CIO creates a platform for the next level to demonstrate their acumen. Learning is real on the battleground; no amount of theory can substitute real experience. Mature CIOs are today working towards nurturing their teams to challenge them; this was evident in the post event networking where some CIOs of the IT Managers joined in. It was heartening to see the connect between these leaders and the potential leaders of tomorrow. As the current lot of CIOs plan their retirement by 2020, the next generation has to be ready to take on the mantle by 2015.

My takeaway from the session was that the skills that worked for current CIOs are required even for the next generation. Apart from this, the new CIO will also have to keep his antenna tuned to new developments like the cloud and mobility, the latter being driven largely by consumerization of mobile devices.

The Q&A revealed existence of comfort zones in what the IT Managers do — be it technology or business process enablement. Now the challenge is to give us their comfort zones if they want to move to the next level. After all, Trina Paulus in her book "Hope for the flowers" said it very well, “You must want to fly so much, that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar”.

Types of CIO and CIO longevity

2010-09-21T13:30:00.000+05:30

My Sunday morning breakfast with a CIO proved to be quite an interesting discussion. He was wondering whether it is time to change now, since he will be completing almost five years in the current company. “Renewal is necessary to keep the learning going”, pronounced the person sitting across the table, as he mulled over his toast. It’s not that he was underperforming, or that the company had suddenly decided to defocus on IT spending. The diversified enterprise enjoyed healthy above market growth. It was recognized as a strong company on the leading curve of technology adoption. Curious, I dug more.

The CIO’s reminiscence of his journey proved to be very enriching and rewarding. Industry recognition and internal appreciation from across business units helped with continued investments and new initiatives. So there was no adverse impact in overall sentiment during 2008-2009’s difficult times. I could not uncover any recent or past incidents that may have even triggered the thoughts of movement to pastures unknown.

Global surveys generally indicate the CIO tenure to be between three to five years depending on industry, geography, and personality. There are some who move like clockwork every three to four years. Compulsions vary for most of them, while words imply, “no new challenges to address … or no new opportunities”. Analysis indicates the existence of a well defined pattern across these movements.

Now, I am not outlining the type who has spent over a decade in a company and done very well. They are a small breed, who are either cherished by their companies or work in public sector enterprises or equivalents (yes, there are many enterprises where the culture, urgency and behaviors are akin to a public sector enterprise). Nor am I including the IT Managers with CIO titles—people who are called upon (and indeed enjoy fixing) the board room’s faulty projector.

Many CIOs are recognized as successful leaders who specialize in implementation of ERP solutions. Once these missions are executed, their interest in sustenance or alternative solutions diminishes quickly. These are the ERP specialists who get into enterprises with struggling legacy systems. They are masters in the implementation of a specific ERP that brings some efficiency, who then move on. They are extremely useful to set a foundation of technology; average longevity is in the range of three years.

Another type of CIO flirts from company to company. He is able to communicate effectively hide his ineffectiveness with a choice of phrases and jargon. Thus he impresses upon the CEO why he is their man Friday. With strong political skills, such a CIO uses the three envelope process quite effectively to last anywhere from two to four years in the organization (depending on how political the company is). With little to demonstrate as delivery, their networking and communication skills save the day with amazing consistency.

The last category consists of CIOs who are aggressive, consistent, demanding, and articulate. They get in, transform, create the next line of leadership, and move on to the next challenge—typically achieving this within a three to five year timeframe. It dawned upon me that the person across the table was such a leader who had completed the wave of innovation. In the pause that came after addressing all the discussed challenges and opportunities, he had a crisis of “What next?” These leaders grow from strength to strength, are not tied to any industry or technology, and are truly business leaders who understand how to effectively leverage the tool.

As the discussion progressed, it was evident that the question was rhetorical. It’s just a matter of time before the CIO finds another large enterprise to host his quest for innovation.

CIO Trilogy: last brick in the wall

2010-09-13T15:05:00.000+05:30

Recently, a respected publication’s edit piece on CIOs highlighted the enterprise’s changing expectations from a CIO. This insight was gleaned from “CIO wanted” advertisements as well as discussions with headhunters or executive search companies. Some of these headlines were on the lines of “CIO with ABC ERP implementation experience”, “Full lifecycle ERP experience is a must”, “Should have worked in discrete manufacturing”, and “Strategic CIO with operational experience reporting to CFO…”. The last one especially is a paradox!

After an oscillating experience between East Asian and Indian leaders on their perceptions of the CIO this month, changing expectations from the enterprise brings up an important question, “Is the CIO role changing subtly by taking a direction divergent from where current and future CIOs want to be?” Yet another passionate discussion revolved around enterprises hiring CIOs from outside the IT functions. This trend may be positive or negative based on your frame of reference.

Enterprises have faced challenges in the execution of large cross-functional (or high-end technology) projects. Many of these adversely impacted operations or delivered limited value commensurate to the effort. Some were possibly due to oversell by the IT organization which led to inflated expectations from these investments. However, a large number of these projects have observed no correlation to technology (as has been consistently reported by the Standish Group in their tracking of IT project success over a decade). Instead of technology, management involvement has remained the primary influencing factor in these projects. Even if it seems irrelevant at this point, the final buck for effective technology adoption stops with the CIO. Thus, this has given rise to the hypotheses that “forget the strategic part of IT, let’s get someone who can fix the operational pieces first”.

Outsourcing of the support services, changes in educational structure, and consumerization of IT has demystified the technology black box. The new workforce has grown up with technology. As a result, they are unafraid of exploring new frontiers that current set of leaders and managers in their 40s and 50s may not always be keen upon. With the continuous thrust on Business IT alignment (BITA) and many commentaries on “IT is too important for the enterprise to leave it to techies”, the new business leader is emerging from non-IT domains. More importantly, he is reasonably equipped to get started on the journey towards becoming a CIO.

The current generation of technology professionals (either CIOs or those moving towards the role) must pay heed to this new trend. As is evident, the minimal expectation is to ensure operational efficiency from all projects and meeting of baseline business expectations. Industry knowledge now supersedes technology expertise for the leader, but well rounded experience matters at the next level.

After all, if the enterprise continues to remain challenged on effective usage of technology for any reason, even if not attributable to the CIO, the role will be downgraded to the position of an operational IT manager reporting into the CFO.

Another variation for the CIO (Chief Imagination Officer)

2010-09-06T18:56:00.000+05:30

Last week in my post OMG …, I wrote about a CIO perception that was probably the lowest that I have observed in so many years. That was the perception of those who labeled the CIO a CDO. It rankled for a while, as I tried to put that experience behind me. As a result, I was wary while getting into a discussion with a veteran leader and yet another politician a week later.

I came away pleasantly surprised from the experience.

At the annual event of a large software vendor (held with no sales pitch, presentation or brochures in your face), the invited dignitary presented a keynote that focused on the positive direction most economic indicators appears to project. The audience enjoyed this rollercoaster ride based on the vast experience (that promised more than it delivered); but then, an hour can only give so much. As he regaled everyone with anecdotes connecting the past to the future, the CIOs lapped up everything that came their way. And then began his narrative on IT.

Having led industries and media houses, the speaker talked about how his earlier companies used IT and increase in the pace of advances in technology as he grew older. Meetings with EDP and IT Heads merged with the evolution of the CIO–making it sound like the natural evolution that universally applied to this species called the Chief Information Officer. Then he turned to appeal to the audience to give up this role and start imagining what the future can hold for them.

Almost like Isaac Asimov’s science fiction and Arthur C Clarke’s space odysseys, the CIO moved along this path made of dreams.

Déjà vu? Inception?

Dream within a dream, I pinched myself and so did a few others–wanting to wake up as if this was a dream, but hoping that it would never end. The words echoed and kept ringing much after I departed from the venue.

Imagine what the world can be, what you can make it into, let your imagination soar as the spirit does. You all have the talent and the knowledge; make the world a better place with judicious use of technology like no other can. The world will know you as Chief Imagination Officers”.

The warmth in the room rendered the air conditioning ineffective, but no one was sweating. CIOs rewarded the speaker with applause and the questions that followed had nothing to do with technology and kept the speaker thinking while acknowledging that the CIOs have a lot more than technology on their minds.

Gratified with this experience, I walked away comparing the contrast in experience from elsewhere in Asia to India, and that reinforced the generally accepted view that the Indian industry adoption of IT and the general management maturity contributes to higher success rates and growth for the CIO. I like the way it sounds–“Chief Imagination Officer”.

After I finished writing this piece, I read an edit in a respected IT magazine’s recent issue which wondered why the industry seeks IT specialists while labeling them a CIO? But that is another story for next week.

Oh My God not a CIO, but a CDO (Chief Disinformation Officer) !

2010-08-30T11:56:00.000+05:30

The other day, I found myself aghast by the onstage passions of learned men—those who had absolutely no kind words for the CIO. I tried to get up from my seat in the audience with a wish to raise my voice against what was going on (CIO bashing), but something invisible pulled me back. The 400+ audience comprised largely business folks (with probably a handful of CIOs), and that was their reality. I felt sad, as I internally seethed with no avenue to vent my feelings. I wanted to tell the poor audience that the CIO does not stand for Chief Invisible Officer—or clarify that they are not CDOs (Chief Disinformation Officers). So I began to analyze their reality, hoping to catch some of them later during the event. But, let me start from the beginning.

The event was a leadership summit attended by a cross section of global CEOs, Board Members, CXOs from various functions, and a few invited CIOs who were categorized as business leaders—not just a technology CIO. The setting was a panel discussion between few thought leaders, a senior Asian government bureaucrat, and a couple of CEOs; the topic, the economy, growth challenges and opportunities. Everyone was enjoying the insights and the rich knowledge being shared, as the subject veered towards business analytics, IT and the CIO.

It was evident that for most speakers that the CIO was an inept technical being—rarely visible except when something stops working like the Boardroom projector or WIFI. Beings for whom the phrase Business IT alignment (BITA) is foreign, while IT feeds the hapless business with inaccurate information. They evidently experienced the CIO’s challenged ability to come up to a level of basic understanding of business drivers. The CIO contributing to business discussions was alien to them. Thundered a bureaucrat, “I have only seen Chief Disinformation Officers, not Chief Information Officers …” Others almost broke off into a spontaneous applause.

Though a CEO did appear a bit uncomfortable, he did not consider it prudent to disagree. The thought leader commented on the CIO’s ability to stay invisible most of the time, and thus christened him “Chief Invisible Officer”.

As I walked out of the auditorium thinking about this discussion’s various aspects, I reflected on my experiences within my multiple CIO roles, interactions with peer CIOs, vendor speak, and discussions with CXOs across enterprises big and small. My reality appeared a lot different from what I had heard from the Magi, who have seen more of the world than I have, but from a different frame of reference.

Are CIOs living in illusions of grandeur in their castles far removed from reality or the experiences, especially of the government speaker as an exception? With some relief, I recollected many Indian enterprise CEOs talking positively about the contributions made by their CIOs and IT organizations. Of certain CIOs who have also took additional charge of business, as well as a few CIOs who have also led cross-functional enterprise projects that made a difference in difficult times.

I guess reality is multi-faceted and not bipolar. Everyone reflects their reality and experience; the world is full of diversity that cannot be captured into a stereotype. Many CIOs I know would react similarly upon hearing about the above discussion, while a few CEOs (hopefully none) may actually be able to associate with the panel’s experiences. As enterprises invest significantly in IT enabling the enterprise, they also recognize the importance of a CIO leader who can walk lockstep with other CXOs while working towards achieving excellence using technology driven efficiencies and innovation.

I believe that a consistent movement is required towards spreading the good work done by many CIOs in conjunction with their CEOs. The learning from these can be applied towards improving the kith and kin. It is also important to talk about and discuss the challenges faced so that everyone does not have to rediscover them as a part of evolution—not just in CIO events, but also in industry and other CXO events. After all, the wheel needs to be discovered only once, and then it’s about replicating success.

Mobile computing and security paranoia

2010-08-24T11:43:00.000+05:30

The last few weeks have seen many news and analysis items on the enterprise mobile market leader, a player that made ‘email on the go’ a way of life, in addition to creating sore thumbs and marital discord for many corporate executives. After all these years, now there are growing concerns around national security in many countries around the world, not just corporate data compromise.

A few countries have taken a tough stance banning the service or seeking the key to monitor all traffic. The European Union decided to totally shift away to a popular consumer phone for their state offices with 20K+ users. The phone’s largest users as well as the associated services are worried about whether they will be required to shift away within a short span to another option. They are scared about imagining life without the familiar buzz every few minutes (of another email) and business applications.

Today we cannot think of work life without access to email, corporate applications, sales data and many more on the mobile. These devices have made 24X7 slaves out of their owners. Expectations of instant response to a message (irrespective of the hour) are becoming the norm. This increased productivity is now factored into the workload. Apart from enabling the sales force with planning, reporting and sales data, mobile devices have provided even the typical desk bound executive an ability to stay connected at home. Thus enterprises have seen improvements that were not possible earlier. Suddenly, all this appears to be under threat.

Should the CIO be worried about this looming uncertainty? While a total shutdown is not imminent, restriction in services is a reality. This may extend in the future and cripple the basic functioning of these devices.

To me, the answer is a resounding yes. Country laws and regulations are paramount for every entity operating within the geographical boundaries. There is no circumventing these; so if applications depend on a type of service, they may have to be rewritten or discarded. Alternatives should be explored and options made available, should a switch be required to reduce the adverse impact. This should be discussed with the management and the level of impact (if any), be communicated clearly and explicitly.

With an ever increasing number of mobile devices deployed by the corporate or just connected to the enterprise (employee owned), it’s important to periodically assess and review mobility solutions and options. Work with the service providers to create an insurance policy. No one wants to die, but insurance always makes sense.

Strategic or Operational, the choice is yours !

2010-08-16T14:45:00.000+05:30

Recently, I met a CIO who was berating the fact that whenever (which is infrequent in any case) a meeting was scheduled to discuss the strategic IT agenda, the gathering ended up discussing operational issues in almost every case. This was leading to a buildup of frustration, and the CIO was wondering if the business had no interest in pursuing the strategic alignment of IT for their enterprise. As I listened to these woes, I realized that the CIO had a remote possibility of getting there. This was not because the company did not understand or appreciate the value of IT’s contribution, but since the malaise had its roots in the way IT was engaging with the rest of the company.

Every CIO aspires (and rightly so) to create a significant impact to the company with the help of tools and IT enabled processes that give them tactical advantage many a times. IT organizations which are able to create several such initiatives sustain the benefits that IT provides, and creates IT advocates from within the business. However, this is possible only if everything else is working hunky dory, or at least has a jointly agreed review process that allows the organization to conduct a dialogue that focuses on the issues and challenges they face.

Periodic review meetings with different functions (like finance, marketing, sales and production)—singularly or jointly—provides a framework to list, review, mediate as well as track issues that are irritants to daily chores and operations within the enterprise. Over a period of time, as the IT organization resolves issues and engages in an open dialogue, these meetings become a regular way of exploring new opportunities that allow for mutual win-win situations. The assumption is that these issues are resolved to the satisfaction of “users” within the agreed to timelines. Where the formal review meetings are not the norm, any meeting that discusses IT in any shape or form becomes the ground to rage war with the CIO.

My CIO friend suffered from this lapse. He considered it inappropriate to engage the business in operational meetings, as he wanted to discuss only the strategic agenda. His team worked diligently to address operational issues when they were brought to their notice (normally when it was a crisis). As a result, the IT team was always fighting fires, without opportunities for an across the table discussion. This lack of a structured review mechanism ensured that the CIO rarely had an opportunity to table the strategic agenda which he was passionate about.

CIOs should balance the need for operational reviews, along with discussions that look at the long term impact created by innovation and new technology. Failure to engage the business across both planes will result in the strategic agenda being hijacked and loss of credibility to deliver business as usual. Such situations just end up further distancing the Business IT Alignment (See BITA).

Weather predictions and the CIO: enough of Cloud Computing

2010-08-09T10:39:00.000+05:30

Last month, I was part of a two day gathering (attended by a little less than 100 CIOs) at a great beach resort in the wonderful locales of Goa. It had stopped raining after 20 days of incessant rain, said the lady at the Reception while welcoming us. The next few days were expected to be cloudy, with some sunshine bringing smiles—the CIOs were looking forward to rewind, relax, and network while exploring some serious thoughts on IT during the day. Weather stayed faithful to the prediction—apart from the occasional showers, the sun played hide and seek with the clouds. I could recognize cirrus, nimbostratus and cumulus.

As the conference progressed, it was evident that every IT services and product company (irrespective of what they had to offer), created some connect with cloud computing. We had power management, data center hosting services, servers, virtualization, software, telecom services and some of the global top five IT companies—all talking about cloud computing as the essence of IT. This herd behavior had resonance with hype seen in the late ‘90s around the Web and Internet. Words from the past echoed, “Any company who does not have a Web strategy will be dead in the next decade”. We all know that most of the companies which had only a Web strategy fell off the cliff into the chasm of oblivion. Predictions and promises of the cloudy set mirror the irrational exuberance that was pervasive in the dotcom era.

Do you know what cloud computing is? A rhetorical question; the speaker did not wait for the answer and began his 30 slide presentation starting with what is virtualization. The next speaker added to the misery with green data center and energy efficiency, while acknowledging that IT contributes to only 2% of the carbon emissions. If everyone did their bit, carbon emissions would come down by 0.4%. And, if all of us moved our entire infrastructure to the cloud, maybe that figure will go up to 0.7%. Save the world, move to the clouds. Over the next day, almost everything (from basic definitions to use case models and in between) was pushed down on the hapless audience, which braved the frontal attack while wistfully looking at the sunny sky outside.

Out of courtesy to the speakers and organizers, CIOs continued to field the inane presentations as well as panel discussions on clouds, clouds, clouds, and some more clouds. A resurgent CIO challenged the vendor’s wisdom (on stage) about treating the audience like kindergarten kids. They were challenged on solutions for the enterprise’s current ailments or help for the CIO’s real life problems; not just talk about irrelevant solutions. CIOs broke into spontaneous applause which would bring a politician pride, but evinced no answers from the speaker—again, like the politician. Sections of the audience wandered away after every break, leaving behind a thinning crowd for subsequent speakers. The sun too teasingly invited captives to come out, as the waves’ murmur tortured the spirit. The CIOs saw merit in discussing cloud formation in the skies—no connection with the conference room’s discussion.

With the ecosystem yet to evolve and create meaningful cloud transition strategies for enterprise users, the IT vendors will do a favor by not increasing the hype and aligning to reality. Privately, most vendors acknowledge the fact that clouds are as yet mature, since the concept is surrounded by a lot of questions that require hard answers like security, geographical data residency, privacy, licensing, and many more. Their organizational compulsions prevent them from being honest in a public forum—lest it be seen as them not toeing the party line. Thus, vendors and consultants will do well to listen to their customers before charging ahead on their favorite subject for now, cloud computing.

As the conference was coming to an end, a tweet escaped the room, “Cloud in the sky, cloud in the room, my mind is cloudy too after listening to so many speakers on cloud computing”. Personally, I enjoyed counting the clouds outside than the utterances inside.

IT Chargeback, gain or pain ?

2010-08-03T11:33:00.000+05:30

Every so often, the subject of chargeback raises its head, and challenges (un)conventional wisdom. In the recent past, it has been in the news as a critical requirement for deployment of cloud computing. Many reports have been written on why IT chargeback makes sense—especially in a diversified enterprise, with multiple business units using IT services provided by a corporate function. Almost everyone uses the rationale that chargeback helps IT allocate fair (?) cost to consumers of these services, and thus possibly provides the budgeting framework for KTLO (Keeping the Lights On) or BAU (Business As Usual).

I looked up IT chargeback on Wikipedia, and found the paragraph below as the closest definition:

“IT Cost Transparency is a new category of IT Management software and systems and that enables Enterprise IT organizations to model and track the total cost to deliver and maintain the IT Services they provide to the business. It is increasingly a task of Management accounting. IT Cost Transparency solutions integrate financial information such as labor, software licensing costs, hardware acquisition and depreciation, data center facilities charges, from general ledger systems and combines that with operational data from ticketing, monitoring, asset management, and project portfolio management systems to provide a single, integrated view of IT costs by service, department, GL line item and project. In addition to tracking cost elements, IT Cost Transparency tracks utilization, usage and operational performance metrics in order to provide a measure of value or ROI. Costs, budgets, performance metrics and changes to data points are tracked over time to highlight trends and the impact of changes to underlying cost drivers in order to help managers address the key drivers in escalating IT costs and improve planning.”

A mouthful indeed! Now, I agree that IT cost transparency matters, but chargeback? Having been part of enterprise IT across industries and IT models that included chargeback systems or none at all, my perspective:

Chargeback systems are important if IT is a “service provider”, and needs to justify every expense; innovation will have limited scope in this context
Chargeback systems will always be challenged by the majority of business units, as being an unfair practice
You will be required to reduce costs year-on-year irrespective of volume, and especially when business goes through recessionary cycles
Even after automation, the effort required for maintaining and managing data can be humungous. This will have the IT team on a defensive stance, churning out unusual associations of metrics in reports

So why is chargeback coming back again? Does virtualization, cloud service, or the next disruptive technology suddenly turn the tables in favor of chargeback? Does it really matter which specific function or business unit pays for the service, considering that it’s a zero sum game for the enterprise? So why should you bring in the complexity of managing unit costs for transactions, memory, CPU, storage, bandwidth, man hours and licenses?

When IT shops struggle to get incremental budgetary support, the practice of chargeback is typically seen as a vehicle to justify the high cost of KTLO or BAU. This is evident if you consider that with the exception of manpower cost, all other metrics have been on the downward spiral over the last decade. Thus, marginal reductions in these KPIs help in sustenance of inflated budgets, while keeping the attention away from metrics that matter (like contribution to business growth, profitability or customer retention).

CIOs should carefully evaluate why they need to implement IT chargeback mechanisms. After all, if they have aspirations to move to the next level of evolution, they should be enamored by business, and not expend energies counting pennies.

Outsourcing travails

2010-07-27T12:05:00.000+05:30

Almost every mid to large size organization now outsources the basic maintenance of desktops, laptops, printers and other end computing devices to service providers under the broad framework of facility management. Some have also given away the tasks of managing servers, backups and networks. As far as I remember, this practice is definitely more than 15 years old, considering that the first time I came across this concept was in the early ‘90s. So by now, one would assume that the vendors and service providers (along with the CIOs), would have fine tuned this basic support activity to a level where it does not require significant management time and attention. However, recent discussions bring out a different story.

Essentially, outsourcing of the basic break-fix and first level support (typically personified as the IT Helpdesk), broadly constitutes a centralized number, email or web based form for users to log their calls. The person at the other end is expected to acknowledge the call, and attempt troubleshooting via phone or remote control of the computing device. If this is not feasible, he’s then supposed to provide desk side support through an Engineer. Track progress of the call until completed, repeat ad infinitum. Sounds simple enough!

Add a dash of best practices, frameworks like ITIL, service level agreements, and periodic reviews—everything should be hunky dory?

As computers get ubiquitous, cheaper, sturdier, and easier to use, the expectation levels have also risen. Today the expectations veer towards near instant resolution, which reflects the high level dependence as well as time pressures that are typical of today’s workplace. Mobility adds to the complexity, while security concerns mount—new and old threats challenge existing solutions, and compliance add to the challenge. To add to this, budgets are shrinking, and attrition is on the rise. So is it fair to expect service levels to sustain and improve, quarter on quarter?

CIOs with reason are right in their expectations from facility management, as this is what the enterprise demands in a hyper competitive environment. On the other hand, service providers have been struggling to rise up to these challenges and seize the opportunity. A few CIOs mentioned that they were reviewing alternatives, even though the contract period was far from over. In these circumstances, root cause analysis points towards many reasons that contribute either singularly or collectively.

Key amongst these factors remain people (See Challenges of an upturn), where service providers did not plan for attrition, with growth coming back; thus the pipeline dried up, and customers saw an adverse impact. If the person exiting is a Project Manager, it can take up to six months to recover. And we are not yet talking about quality of resources on the ground, which is deteriorating slowly and surely. Most new hires were fresh out of institutes, with very limited or no soft skills orientation. Customer service is not just about fixing the problem, but also with respect to addressing the person behind the computer and his downtime.

The second big issue is process compliance, with or without ITIL. Every outsourcing engagement has a plethora of checklists and processes which need to be rigorously followed to ensure success. However, for the person on the ground, this is a distraction, and sometimes seen as policing. Inconsistent data and incomplete checklists lead to increasing grievances with the users.

Weekly, fortnightly or monthly review meetings are at best a post mortem of the issue; instead, daily exception management between the vendor and customer Project Managers is required to ensure that these do not get discussed at the Management table. CIOs need to conduct periodic assessments to remain connected to the process, a practice which also keeps the teams’ focus on deliverables.

Cyber Commute on a day the country decided to shutdown

2010-07-19T18:21:00.000+05:30

I wrote this a few weeks back sitting at home on a Monday, when a Bandh was declared by the Opposition parties to protest against the rising food inflation and the hike in petrol, diesel, LPG cooking gas prices.

Every Monday, the chores begin—to get up a little earlier, get ready and off to the place of work. Every Monday, the average person gets the blues as he thinks about the week ahead and its pressures, timelines, political issues, performance, and many more. These are worries that are unique to everyone, but common in a way that they manifest themselves universally. But, this Monday is different. The majority of us did not travel, and decided to stay at home rather than risk a limb or broken glass on the vehicle. This Monday, there was a call for strike, bandh, and disruption; all to evoke the response of empathy.

Establishments either declared a day off with compensatory working on another weekend, or left the choice to employees just for safety. Rail and road transport saw very few utilizing the facilities, thus running almost empty. News channels searched for news on empty roads, and declared the empty roads as news. Impact to productivity in a blue collared environment was moderate to high; however, the white collared worker was not to be denied.

Armed with a laptop, Netbook, Blackberry or a smartphone, Wifi at home or at the least broadband, the road warrior was prepared for such exigencies. Finish the morning cuppa and settle down in the corner office with the device of choice connected to his corporate network on a high speed line; working similar (if not better) to the corner office at workplace, with no disruptions caused by the ringing phone. Churning numbers or making presentations, productivity barriers were unshackled, and deadlines appear a thing of the past.

In many countries and companies, working from home is a well accepted norm. This helps reduce the operating costs of space, power and other entrapments associated with office facilities (apart from offering flexibility to the employee to work from their cozy environments). Added benefit is accrued by the green nature of “no travel by hydrocarbon fuel driven transportation”. Many Indian enterprises have provided facilities to their workers—normally for after office hour exigencies and weekend support activities by some functions. The middle and senior managers are driven by compulsions to respond to the next mail, react to the next crisis, no crisis? Then let’s create one for the adrenaline rush.

IT enabled processes and employees with connectivity become a boon in such times of force majeure, when travel is a constraint. CIOs and enterprises which recognize the benefit of mobility and benefits thereof are able to reduce operational impact within the internal ecosystem. The larger environment (if it is cyber enabled) and the connected pieces can work with some efficiency, thereby reducing the potential adverse impact. Business continuity and disaster recovery plans should factor in productivity losses due to such events. So push forth and enjoy the fruits of boundary-less connectivity and empowerment.

One thought troubles me though; what will we all do if we face a cyber bandh some day?

What's in a name ?

2010-07-12T17:31:00.000+05:30

In recent times, there have been many consultants, research entities and academia discussing the IT organization’s transformation. The proposed concept seeks to rechristen IT to BT to reflect the new nature of the expected role. The rationale is largely around the fact that business drives technology within an enterprise. So the function should be called business technology (BT). Many CIOs like the new nomenclature, and have attempted to adopt this new symbol that represents their purported evolution and alignment.

Flashback to 2002; I interviewed for a Fortune 50 company’s Indian operations. The process progressed well, and I joined the company (which had a federated IT organization). The corporate IT organization was responsible for standards, infrastructure, architecture, and many applications that were supporting the operations. Then we had Manufacturing IT, which focused on the requirements of the manufacturing plants, connecting to suppliers, managing the manufacturing process, and running the warehouses. The company also had an R&D IT function that empowered the large and globally spread research teams with enabling technology solutions that were critical towards maintaining the company’s leadership position. Each IT organization head reported to the respective function head with dotted line to the global IT head; they had the flexibility and independence to create solutions or choose vendors. Last but not the least was the function called Business Technology, into which I was inducted.

Business Technology worked with the sales organization. It existed in almost every country that the company operated in, and reported to the CEO. It was the largest group and also the most powerful, since the sales teams connected with customers, and thus also had the power to garner larger IT budgets. Thus this name signified a closer relationship with business. It provided technology initiatives that impacted life everyday on the field connecting with customers, while competing with others in the industry. Not that those other teams were not aligned to their respective business folks, but the impact of changes was slower, and largely created internal efficiencies or benefit. Thus, every introduction to an outsider required a five minute discourse on why we were called Business Technology.

Was BT any different? We still had our challenges around vendors, change management, new initiatives, budget approvals, technology adoption, political issues, everything that a normal IT organization experiences every day. As the CIO, my role was acknowledged with a seat on the management table, but like every other CXO, it required consistent performance to keep it there. The basic expectation from the CIO was to create business value, challenge status quo, and participate in all discussions around the table that influenced the company’s future direction.

So, what about the role today? The CIO is required to do all of the above, sometimes even fight to get a seat on the management table; in a few cases where the CIO does not report to the CEO, they are dependent on other CXOs to be their voice in the management team meetings. Will the change in name to business technology bring about the transformation and fast track the evolution and acceptance of the function better than when it is plain old IT? I guess not–the enterprise, the IT leader, and the culture largely contribute to its success. BT happened almost a decade back, evolution is catching up.

After all, as the bard said it a long time back, “What’s in a name; that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”!

IT Annual Report

2010-07-05T18:01:00.000+05:30

Almost a decade back, I met the CIO of Intel, who talked about an Annual Report of the IT organization— similar to the Annual Report published by the company for its shareholders. This report made good reading, which at that time presented metrics around availability of systems, uptime of links, number of problem tickets, budget performance, and a few others. At the turn of the century, a lot of these were indeed deemed relevant, and accepted by everyone. The report’s interesting parts depicted ’Voice of Customer’, discussed projects undertaken with their status, impact to business, and customer quotes. It was a slick report, similar to what a company would create with help from Marketing and Advertising.

Fast forward to 2010, when I was listening to a presentation on “Why should IT create an Annual Report”. The examples quoted were from Computer Associates (CA) and Intel. The audience of about 40 IT leaders listened in rapt attention, made notes, consuming the speaker’s insights, who mesmerized the audience. The KPIs were largely different, reflecting evolution of the IT organization and IT leader. Post the presentation, a debate started off on how many in the room did anything similar in terms of KPIs, reports, transparency, or even the basic weekly or monthly presentation at the management meetings; and if they did, what did they report?

Almost everyone had some kind of report being tabled, though not an Annual Report akin to the one that was presented. These hard copies were typically printed and distributed to the stakeholders, with help from an Advertising agency or Marketing department. A large IT company’s CIO mentioned that he has started working on something similar (with external help). He hopes to emulate the success that we all listened to. The thought that crossed my mind was that are CIOs of IT companies a step ahead of the rest of us in the room who represented other non-computer related industries. It was a disconnect, considering that a fair number of IT companies did not provide a seat on the management table to their IT heads.

Thinking for a long while after that, I kept wondering about why I never took the step (despite having the benefit a decade back) and when it was rekindled from memory again. The thought also wandered around as to why the representative Annual IT reports were only from the IT industry. Where were the examples from the large and successful marquee CIOs as well as IT enterprises (of success stories that everyone talks about)? Don’t they need the Annual Report to publish their success story and present it to their shareholders (CXOs and Board)?

I believe that success does not need an anniversary to present, but is shared within the enterprise on occurrence, during frequent management meetings, and gets acknowledgement. The Annual Report is a vehicle to tell the rest of the world what we do well. But maybe, I am totally off the track.

It's monsoon time again and raining clouds

2010-06-28T17:34:00.001+05:30

Yes, it’s raining, and the country is covered with rain clouds for which everyone is thankful; after a year when everyone was worried. It’s as if the economy’s slowdown and lower budgets had a link with the reduced rainfall. You must be now wondering about the relevance of monsoon for a CIO. Please have a bit of patience for the ‘Oh I See’.

Someone is launching a book on the support models and delivery on a specific cloud (amongst the oldest service offerings globally before the term ‘cloud computing’ was coined). This book is derived out of thousands of support threads from customers, analysis of response times, efficacy of the model, and the pitfalls in putting your business on the cloud. No, the book is not about cloud bashing, but more about the reality of what customers faced—either in their ignorance, or due to lack of definitions and omissions.

With enough being said about why everyone (CEO and CFO included) should go cloud watching or about CIOs being beaten to death about adoption of cloud computing, the proponents of this disruptive technology are growing. This often leaves the CIO wondering about why he doesn’t get it and looks up for insight from Almighty—only to see some more clouds!

Recently, I met up with a cloud evangelist from the world’s largest cloud company. He was patiently explaining to the CIOs in a step-by-step way—on how to get started, where to get started from, and what to realistically expect. Now that made everyone sit up and listen with attention! Following the discourse getting into a debate with selected CIOs, the reality dawned on everyone that various XaaS models (where X = application, platform, and infrastructure, for now) do have limitations and challenges for any large enterprise to function in a hybrid model using cloud and internal capability.

Almost everyone who has adopted the cloud has used it for non-critical applications, test and development environments. In many cases, organizations use the cloud on fringes to connect road warriors or partners. Concerns remain around security, manageability, data retention, geographical statutes, service levels, and the evolving experience around how clouds behave. One point that had me jumping out of the chair after reading the above mentioned book’s synopsis was the gap between perception (and reality) around turnaround times for issues, patching and security management in an IaaS model. With 20+ hours to resolve issues and no patch management service, I would not even bet my test or development environments to the cloud.

Every industry evolution goes through the hype curve, and for now, cloud is still on the rising edge. With the number of companies announcing cloud based services (which do require large investments), I wonder if the future will see a cloud burst akin to the dotcom bubble burst that we experienced a decade ago.

I would stay cautiously optimistic until then, and learn to live in the rain !

Market Capitalization and Customer Satisfaction

2010-06-22T18:00:00.000+05:30

Recent front page news pieces in many dailies, online media, (and almost everywhere) claim that a tech company’s market capitalization has overtaken the long standing leader on this metric. It’s being written about by many business publications, tech journals, writers, edits, and discussed by everyone as an important event. Now, even as the displaced leader CEO retorted, “We are still the most profitable”, customers like me cringed. Analysts are now creating theories around the dark horse’s upsurge, about a company which was written off by the same analysts—not too long back, if memory serves me right.

Over the last couple of decades, I watched the new leader with interest—wondering why they never had mainstream commercial success, despite having products which almost everyone loved. In the meanwhile, the displaced moved from strength to strength creating a monopolistic era. Everyone hated this practice, but continued to embrace its products as if there was no choice. Choices came and withered away like the autumn flower; a few showed promise, but could not sustain themselves in a hyper competitive world where big brother came down guns blazing on any who dared a challenge. All along, our new leader continued to innovate, gaining a small but steadily growing breed of followers—never big enough to raise an alarm, but shunned by IT organizations as too esoteric.

The erstwhile leader spawned many factions seeking alternatives, never really succeeding enough to threaten. Fan following and hate groups alike embrace every news, release, solution and acquisition. Corporate customers experimented, but left with no real choice, continue to grin and bear it. Governments’ attempt to leash the giant bore puny results, as the alternative movement around open source has remained just that—an alternative that few are interested in.

Did customers love this ‘choice’ of one, and the price it came at? A survey will probably show the number of naysayers touching highs on product quality, price, support, or any other parameter that you may want to explore. The challenger scores on all these parameters, but surprisingly continues to receive no traction.

With guaranteed revenues from the ever growing corporate market and almost 90% market share, the fruits of such labor remained the envy of everyone in the technology world. At least, that was the case till a couple of weeks back, when surprise, the giant was belittled. Did the CIOs suddenly realize the value of embracing the alternative and shun the “standard”? Have analysts become wiser, or did the company create a game changing product (or service) that swept the world off its feet?

We all know the answer; the new leader was created by the end consumer, not the corporate world. With the exception of a few industries that discovered its efficiencies, enterprise shops avoided these technology solutions, or allowed it at the fringes with multiple caveats, despite the pains of managing existing solutions.

With increasing consumerization of the end computing device, the future will displace the old and boring, though deemed standard and secure devices of today. Our personal choices indicate that there is a very small place for the past leader. The new hero of today has consumers raging upon every new innovation that has come from its stable.

Over the next few years, I believe that this rapidly growing mindshare will put pressure on IT organizations and the CIO to be inclusive of this trend rather than fight it. The only spanner in the works could be situations where the new found success becomes an anchor round the neck—one which drags down the innovation pipeline or consumer connect that has become the hallmark for the industry. After all, market capitalization has limited (or nill) correlation to customer satisfaction.

Online Customer Service in a connected world

2010-06-14T17:16:00.001+05:30

In the last few weeks, I attempted to reach out to various service providers—organizations whose services I had availed in the past via their websites. The objective was to seek help with unsubscribing from their mailing lists, as well as for assistance in resolving problems I faced with a few purchased goods, respectively. While I thoroughly enjoyed the services and products, when it came to problem resolution, the process fell through the gaps (with no resolution).

We know that every business selling services or merchandise has had online aspirations since the Internet and World Wide Web came into existence. These aspirations skyrocketed with the mobile market growing at a fast pace and phones becoming smarter. Today, every business irrespective of size, geography and market potential, has a Website providing information. In many cases, these Websites even provide transactional capability, as they experiment with mobile based engagement models.

Customers have lapped up these offerings, as they have offered convenience (apart from discounts) over conventional modes of buying in many cases, or facilitated anytime anywhere commerce. Information enabled customers are also making smart choices by comparing offerings from various retailers. The industry has grown faster than conventional retailing in developed markets, and in the developing world, growth via non-brick-and-mortar model is higher by multiples.

Now, here are a few examples of my experiences with these organizations:

Case 1: Tried to reach a portal offering match making services to unsubscribe after my nephew found his match. However, the email ID for unsubscribing from the newsletters was incorrect. With trial and error, found the right id, and guess what? The mailbox was full, so the message bounced back. Not giving up, I wrote to the Webmaster and feedback email ids. Three weeks later, I still continue to receive offers to get married!

Case 2: Bought a leading brand’s stereo Bluetooth speaker from a store. All was well for 2 years, until I wanted to install the device on another computer. Unable to find the driver, I found that the website was not helpful. Emails to customer service, the CEO, and Web-forms have gone unanswered for a month now.

Case 3: Used the services of a large domain registrar. The payment gateway failed four times, prompting me to reach out to customer services, which helped me with the process. On the payment gateway screen after providing my credit card details, I get an error! Customer service says in an online chat session that the transaction is successful, and disconnects. I am left wondering if that last the unsuccessful attempts were also charged. Email sent to them evinces no response.

What do you deduce from these incidents? Technology can enable processes, but people have to execute them. If staff does not recognize that a customer is to be served through the Website, email or chats as well as they are served in the offline world, the customer can choose to take the business elsewhere. I am reasonably certain that I would do business with these sites or their associate sites only if I had absolutely no other options. Do they care about the outcome? I don’t know. Can CIOs and IT do anything to improve such a situation?

For starters, CIOs could be the process’ co-owners in the virtual world. The CIO can use his network of friends to periodically test efficacy, provide feedback, or fine-tune the process to achieve desired outcomes. Technology enabled blackholes (such as the outlined cases) are a negative reflection on the organization’s brand value and customer perception. Every customer counts—more so in a connected world when social computing influences consumer behavior; the ripple effect needs to be addressed before it becomes a big wave rushing down.

So, do you know what are consumers tweeting or blogging about your company?

Are you "Open Sourcing" ?

2010-06-07T18:34:00.006+05:30

Couple of weeks back, I had the privilege to meet international thought leaders from different parts of the world. A large number of them worked with ministries, governments, or educational institutes after having spent decades with the industry churning patents for the companies they invested their time in. As the discussion progressed through a myriad of technologies, it was seen that for almost every commercially available technology solution, they had explored, experimented, and in many cases deployed “open source” solutions. Amazed at their ability to implement these solutions, I started digging deeper to understand how I could leverage from their experiences.

Across countries, almost every government function and government funded organization has made bold statements and commitments towards the open source movement. They believe in not promoting or getting tied down to proprietary and expensive solutions to enable processes, citizens and overall functioning of the government. The belief is that tax-payers’ money should be saved to give the biggest bang for the buck. So forget the hugely popular operating systems, office productivity tools, virtualization, management solutions, and almost everything in between, that does not have the open tag. This is a topic that has taken a lot of vendor and system integrator stress levels north in the past.

The luminaries interacting with me had a lot of experience with a variety of open source solutions. We discussed open versions of office productivity tools, open source virtualization, learning management systems, database solutions, operating systems, and many more. They advised that most open source solutions had been adopted by quite a few large IT companies to create their version, and bundled them with charged support services. Thus, corporate entities should not have concerns around support. They work equally well as compared to commercial solutions; maybe in a few cases, the user interface may not be as user friendly—but that should not deter the strong hearted to push its case through.

There were too many questions in my head, so I started what appeared to be an interrogation. Can such solutions still be called “open source”, or should the nomenclature be “originated from open source”? How does the ROI or TCO model change from pure open source to adopted open source? Are these deployed for critical or core functions as well or they are still around the fringes? What is the level and quality of support from either the open source community or the vendors? Did they struggle with or face any interoperability issues? How did they manage the infrastructure and applications? Were there any performance or scalability issues? And so on I kept on rambling (to the group’s embarrassment), which started looking uncomfortable with most answers having a “conditions apply”.

The big realization was that the criticality of applications, infrastructure, service levels, performance parameters, expected resilience, and turnaround times were all dissimilar to what the enterprise CIO is typically expected to deliver. Even in such scenarios, it was evident that critical applications were procured from, and deployed on, commercially available environments—though not always discussed in gatherings. Quiet acknowledgements were also provided on the ROI and TCO cases—as not been significantly attractive for open source solutions.

The reality is that for almost every enterprise solution, there exists an open source alternative. The adoption and usage of these has been to typically support non-core or non-critical activities depending on the industry segment (including government departments and public sector enterprises).

When business depends on any technology, the risk appetite is low to negligible. Is this likely to change as the numbers increasingly inch up for open source solutions being deployed?

Well, my belief is that we will continue to see this divide for a long time. Everyone will talk about it—some will deploy in non-core functions, and the rest will debate.

Business IT Alignment (BITA) is also a 4 letter word

2010-05-31T16:02:00.003+05:30

Recently, an international event management company approached me to conduct a workshop on Business-IT Alignment. It made me wonder whether CIOs are really interested in one more presentation on this subject unless these CIOs lived off another planet (or have just been born), and needed to be seasoned with a dose of the much discussed subject. I think, maybe apart from the subject of CIO reporting into the CFO/CEO as well as what next for the CIO (role of the CIO), the most oft discussed topic in the IT industry is definitely IT’s alignment to business.

No event or seminar is ever complete without a reference to the wonderful BITA. Most presentations assume that BITA is indeed an issue for CIOs, and the CIO requires help. In fact, many vendors and consultants project their products or solutions as the key ingredients towards achieving BITA. Now I can’t claim to be an expert on this hallowed subject, but have had my share of contributing to the discussion based on some experience and observation. Based on these, I have a hypothesis on what enables BITA, and where it is a challenge.

Let me first list out the standard assumptions (or ‘Conditions Apply’). A CIO understands the business, and is able to conduct a dialogue where he is understood across the organizational layers. He has good verbal as well as written communication skills, and is able to use these in internal and external meetings. He has the confidence required to debate a business or IT issue without getting so frustrated that others do not understand him. He has a reasonable track record of creating value from projects undertaken which meet (or exceed) expectations most of the time. He has a good network of vendors and partners who provide the CIO with technology advisory based on the domain. Finally, he is a good leader of people, as well as able to motivate and lead large cross-functional teams.

As I wrote the above paragraph, I wondered—if a CIO has all the skills listed above, can he still be challenged with BITA? Many might say yes, that is, if he did not report to the CEO. So let’s assume that a CIO does not report to the CFO. Will all these factors contribute to BITA? My analysis indicates a high probability of success, but I will still give it an even chance, i.e. 5/10 for the combination to lead to BITA. Have we not considered all factors? One might argue that if the CEO is technology friendly, the probability would go up to 6/10. So what can nudge the figure higher to 8/10 or 9/10 ?

My ‘Oh I See’ moment happened in a chance conversation with a CFO. When is an enterprise willing to invest in new initiatives? When are budgets relatively easier to get? When do justifications not get into the realm of fiction? The simple answer is that when a company is profitable. Not just simple profitable, but with good cash flow and available money. If the company is meeting analyst or shareholder expectations, is growing faster than the industry, and has higher margins than competitors, it’s not possible to deny BITA. So every opportunity gets the budget, as well as every employee is charged and amenable to change, as they all understand the dimensions contributing to success.

Unprofitable or marginally profitable companies always struggle to cut costs, reduce (or defer) new projects, and challenge every investment, looking for the lowest cost option. All these challenge the CIO, and keep the focus on business as usual rather than innovation. There will be exceptions to this too, but then they will be the 1/10 or 2/10 driven by the force of the leader or CIO, as compared to the higher propensity of success for a profitable company.

CIOs in business roles or add-on responsibilities are likely to have higher appreciation of the hypothesis. The new normal post 2009’s slowdown may have contributed to a shift in a few cases—in profitable as well as profit-challenged companies—based on the role played by the CIO during difficult times. If the CIO was a key player, the alignment pendulum would have shifted right, if he was not, then it may have shifted left.

The power of CRM to alienate a customer

2010-05-24T15:29:00.002+05:30

Last week, I was subjected to five calls in a day from an insurance company wanting to sell me a new improved high return insurance cover. The first time round, I listened to the caller, and politely advised her that I already subscribed to the said policy. I interrupted half way through the second time and told the lady I already had the policy. The third caller was not fortunate enough, and as soon as he announced the company name, I told him I had no interest in their products. The fourth could not get beyond the first line, and had to answer questions on how the CRM worked. And the last cut the phone when I advised him that I had taken a policy a few weeks back, and now wanted to cancel it. These were different sales agents armed with a database trying to “sell” insurance.

How many times do we wish that CRM solutions work the way they are sold to companies by the vendors? Why can’t the stupid CRM tell sales and marketing teams that the customer has already been contacted five times in the last week, and that the last interaction resulted in the customer calling the caller unsavory names for repeatedly calling him? This is despite the customer saying that he is not interested in one more credit card, insurance policy, new personal loans, or whatever the company offers. The problem compounds itself when the harried customer is already a receiver of the service.

Every customer facing enterprise seeks to implement a CRM solution to service the customer effectively, as well as to understand the customer requirements and behavior for tailoring the product or service based on customer preferences. All such initiatives start with big expectations; the processes are sometimes complex and time consuming. In a few cases, these initiatives are not aligned to reality at the front office, thereby rendering usage ineffective.

When data entry ends up being outsourced, the quality of customer information suffers. So when it’s not possible to find the customer quickly, adding one more record is an easy solution. Buy databases, simply upload, and in no time, rest assured that you will figure a dozen times. Attempts to scrub and de-duplicate may bring some efficiency, but as the number of records increase exponentially, the effort starts losing its efficacy.

Successfully operational CRM solutions have little relevance to the technology deployed, but are built on the foundation of strong processes, buy-in from every function which will interact with the customer, technology sizing that can address peaks in capacity, and a simple design that is effectively implemented and executed across the enterprise. The IT organization diligently reviews data quality with the marketing and sales organizations to ensure uniqueness of the customer records. Data quality is never an accident; it requires significant planning and discipline of execution. Despite the best efforts of men and women, we still end up with some challenges when integrating with external data. These are as yet being addressed through innovative strategies, but are not fool-proof. Maybe the unique identification number (UID) initiative will help solve this issue, but that is a long way off for now.

Coming back to my “friendly” insurance company, I called my insurance advisor with the promise of canceling all policies, should I get one more call from his company or their sales agents. He profusely apologized and promised to fix the issue. I am hopeful until the next bought database gets uploaded or a new agency is appointed or the pressure to acquire customers based on month end, quarter end, or yearend pressure begins, and the calling starts again. Sometimes I pity them the barrage they face every day for no fault of theirs, but then companies don’t appear to care beyond a point, as the universe of customers is still probably 1-2% of the addressable market. So who cares!

How to become a CIO - Part 2

2010-05-17T15:17:00.003+05:30

Every time I meet a set of people aspiring to become a CIO, they are interested in the 101 of how to become a CIO. So a long time back, I gave my viewpoint (this link takes you to the old post) on how can one become a CIO. That was driven out of a discussion with aspirants who wanted a checklist. In recent times, the discussion has come back with renewed vigor, which includes various themes including succession planning, on which I commented last month. However, the moot point is about how one can indeed become a CIO in the new normal—when everyone is now discussing about whether the CIO role as it exists today will disappear in the next five years.

Almost all the CIOs I know understand business (process, results, metrics, and influencers) as well as other CXOs. They are no longer enamored by technology, but are always asking the business benefit and ROI questions to vendors as well as partners. Most of them are able to hold a conversation on broad business subjects with management, and challenge the CEOs on why they should be engaging the Board. Their soft skills are well honed, and the CIOs are taking on additional responsibilities within their enterprises. A few CIOs (based on their interests) are seeking lateral movement or even nudging the CEO chair.

Now, that’s indeed a reflection of how the CIO’s role has evolved, and continues to break new barriers. So what should aspirant CIOs be working on? Should they adopt a role model from amongst CIOs, or look up checklists that many paper and web publications offer? If only transformation to a CXO role was as easy as ticking off an objective question list!

There are no training programs for someone to become a CIO, nor any specific qualifications that are inherent to a CIO. Like any CXO, the CIO is an integral part of the decision makers who influence the business’ direction. However, technology enablement of the business (process, results and metrics) is one of the key contributions expected from the CIO. To successfully execute this, I reiterate that the CIO’s focus is on par with others; evidently, the key ingredient for an aspiring CIO is the understanding that the business of IT is business, and not technology. This is the key tenet on which the CIO role is evolving, and success will largely depend on the (aspirant) CIO’s ability to further the business with, or without help from technology. The remaining traits can be developed with training, coaching and/or mentoring. Look around, and you will observe that the successful CIOs are indeed business leaders—not technologists.

So no 101s on how to become a CIO, or a checklist that you can use; did I not meet your expectations? I would rather do that, than give anyone a false sense of hope!