OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 7-10-08

1993-2008
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
July 10, 2008 meeting

Present: Omar El Sawy, Joel Manfredo, Jeff Reid, Randy Miller, Tina Haines, John Pringle, Jim Sutter, Joe Cracchiolo, Sean Brown, Paul Gray, Jeff Hecht, Bill Baker, Dave Phillips

We welcomed Bill Baker, the new CIO at Arbonne, to his first OC CIO Round Table.

Please check Attachment A for the list of topics chosen for the rest of the year, the dates of each meeting and the person who has volunteered to prepare the introduction.

The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the host’s presentation material, when available. Please provide us with the “url” of your presentation materials.

Topic: The Future of IT & Business Scenarios for 2013

Omar El Sawy, USC, divided his presentation into 3 parts: IT-savvy line managers in 2013; Top 10 Omarisms; and Whither uber-CIO? It’s not about technology - it is how the use of technology is an enabler, a transformer, how people adapt it to their needs, and take advantage of the relationship between IT and the business. IT has become part of the fabric – boundaries between IS and BP (think SOA), and work and life (think mobiles and Blackberrys) have become blurred. Line managers are IT-savvy, and manage with IT. Omar shared with us slides depicting the strands of IT-enabled management, and the Yin & Yang of managing with IT. A McKinsey report (12/07) listed 8 business technology trends to watch, from managing relationships and interactions (Web 2.0, open source), to leveraging information through analytics/BI, to managing value chains. Omar suggested 3 possible scenarios for managers in 2013: business as usual (with some disconnect between the business and IT); rise of the global “BizTech” manager; emergence of the “Eco-globalistic” manager. He then moved on to his 10 Omarisms:
- consumerisation of IT (Web 2.0 is just the tip of the iceberg)
- personalization and customization through “rich digital identity”, where advertising becomes recommendations from friends
- open source will permeate all aspects of managing enterprises
- digital rights laws will be turned upside down to benefit the user
- mobile devices will have multiple personalities
- multiple personality IT-enabled supply chains
- business models for services through digital platforms
- in 2013, web services and SOA will be the prevalent IT application architectures
- proliferation of hybrid 3D virtual worlds
- “emerging” countries will become “high growth” economies, not “catch-up” economies
Read Omar’s presentation slides for more detail. He then went on to describe various models for the uber-CIO in 2013:
- HUMMER: the transformational all-terrain CIO, part of top management
- PRIUS: innovative, lean CIO-plus, focused on new products and marketing
- OLDSMOBILE: traditional shrewd CIO, efficient, cost conscious, reports to CFO
- MINI COOPER: hip web 2.0 CIO, customer-centric, emerging technologies focus
- TATA: super efficient, cost-conscious CIO, reports to CFO, lots of outsourcing

We asked the members to describe their view of the future of IT and the CIO.

Joel Manfredo reminded us that he came from the business into IT. He still believes that business analysts should be in the business unit. The future of IT in 2013 will be web 2.0/3.0 based, and the business models have yet to emerge to take full advantage.

Jeff Reid, Toyota Material Handling, said the most important IT contribution will be social networking, like Linkedin. The successful CIO will be more like a Prius, although looking back at his time at Conexant, the CIO had to move back and forth depending on the direction of the business at any particular time.

Randy Miller, reflecting on his search of a new opportunity, finds that specific technical skills, such as SAP implementation experience, and industry knowledge are the two most important qualities to get past the gatekeeper and on to an executive search’s short list of candidates. Only then do you get to try to impress the hiring CXO.

Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, said that in the aerospace industry, the CIO is most valued as the element which keeps the company glued together - not sure where that fits within Omar’s 5 varieties of CIO. A good CIO helps develop the company strategy, and is valued as the transition agent.

John Pringle, RCMT, feels that the financial health of the company will determine what type of CIO will succeed. In the last 5 years, there was lots of money to spend on new projects. The next five years does not look that rosy. In his mind, the major IT issue of the next five years will be security.

Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, thanked Omar for his thoughtful presentation. When CEOs are asked what they are looking for in a CIO, they invariably say they want a team player, someone who can work with the other members of the management team, and who is an effective technology leader. Promotions to CIO from within a business unit are usually not well received by the IT technical staff.

Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, reflected on the fact that times are changing, the economies of business are changing, which will result in how things get accomplished, more than what is accomplished. New technologies will provide a variety of different approaches to getting things done.

Paul Gray, Professor Emeritus at Claremont, had several comments. He suggested that young new CIOs are willing to try anything – older CIOs learned from their parent’s memory of the depression not to take chances. Maybe if the depression we are in hits hard, attitudes might change. It takes 40 years for new technologies (like the PC) to really blossom, and even then senior people in industries, like medicine, are still uncomfortable using computers. The latest Government manpower forecast shows a reduction in the number of programmers required.

Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, also liked Omar’s presentation but suggested that he missed one CIO model – the one where the CIO becomes the CEO/CIO – the one who has the technical vision and the ideas and strategies about how best to move forward. He is the one who hires the best people with the appropriate technical knowledge to implement his ideas. In the end, it is the people who become the keys to success.

Bill Baker, Arbonne, had the luxury of working with some of the biggest IT groups and successful CIOs when he was a consultant. He joined Arbonne a few months ago and they sell to consultants who use their products. Arbonne is about $1B in sales and sell 100% through the web. They are similar to an Amway, and sell skin products, etc., to distributors. IT is driving the strategy, and is heavily involved with product marketing.

Our thanks to Omar, who as usual did a great job in introducing the topic, and preparing the handout.

See you on August 14, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:

940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.