Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
February 10, 2011 meeting
Present: Keith Golden, Ashwin Rangan, William Zauner, Cameron Cosgrove, Subbu Murthy, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown, David Mann, Mike Weller, Joe Desuta, Dave Phillips
We thanked Keith Golden for his presentation and welcomed Mike Weller to his first visit to the OC CIO Round Table. Several members volunteered to introduce future topics:
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 The value of QA Joe Desuta
5/12/11 Enterprise social networking David Mann
6/9/11 IT as a service Jennifer Curlee
7/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
8/11/11 i-pad and mobility Ashwin Rangan
Topic: The evolving role of the CIO
Keith Golden started by reviewing the changes over the last 50 years, both in computers, applications and the demands on the person in charge. The title changed from DP Manager, to MIS Director, to VP Systems/Computer Services, to CIO, where the “I” stands for Information (or Innovation, Integration, Irritation) to Career is Over. The role is a combination of innovator, turnaround specialist, operations/process expert, business leader and strategist. The CIO must align with the business and business strategy, develop leadership and people skills, anticipate and drive change, cultivate board level influence, partner more, spend less and deliver. Technology keeps changing, and the CIO has to keep abreast, or loss out to bright young users who are familiar with the latest mobile technology options. The customer is asking for BP optimization, using new technologies like cloud computing. The ensuing discussion touched on the need to set the right expectations within the enterprise, and report against that. How should the CIO change to adapt to the future? Who should the CIO report to? How integrated should “integrated” be? Many of the CIOs present had their own ideas. Keith's slides are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
David thanked Keith for a very good presentation. He agreed that it is a changing role, and if we don’t change, we will become obsolete. His aim was to become business partners, part of the strategic team, which just decided that they wanted to focus on the business, and not on running IT. They have just outsourced the running of IT to the company they hired to help develop their applications.
Jennifer Curlee is part of a small manufacturing company, which is in a downturn situation. The workload for IT has increased but not the budget, and so IT has to outsource as much as possible. As CIO she focuses on the strategic objectives.
Subbu also thanked Keith for his presentation. A CIO is facing a challenge as the user and business is becoming more knowledgeable. Thus a CIO has to become more innovative, and must gain the trust of the other executives. The CIO has to develop the skill set of a CEO, collaborate with other CIOs in like situations, and come up with an IT scorecard to report progress.
William Zauner said that he felt that the role of CIO would continue to be important in technology companies for at least 5 years. In other companies, the role will become less important and they will outsource most of the function, because of the availability of the applications and the technology options such as cloud computing. Now SAP can be
Installed in companies of 10 people on the cloud.
Joe sees CIOs becoming trusted partners and advisors to their CEOs, who tend to be hands-off on technology options, especially in smaller companies.
Mike agreed especially as users become more self-sufficient, more technology literate. The role of the CIO will become one of being the navigator.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Friday, February 4, 2011
OC CIO Minutes, January 13, 2011
1993-2011
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
January 13, 2011 meeting
Present: Hendrik Gerryts, Paul Gray, Jeff Reid, David Mann, Jon Hahn, Jon Grunzweig, Stephan Birnbach, Keith Golden, Bob Houghton, William Zauner, Jim Sutter, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Hecht, Dave Phillips
Our thanks to Hendrik Gerryts, RJT Compuquest, for making the presentation on BI.
It was nice to see Paul Gray, IS Professor Emeritus, Claremont, on a rare visit. We welcomed Jon Grunzweig, Majestic Realty.
2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
Topic: Business Intelligence
Hendrik gave several definitions of BI – techniques used in spotting, digging out, and analyzing business data; technologies which provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations; DSS by any other name; bringing the right information at the right time to the right people in the right format. The chart on page 4 of his handout is good. He gave a short history of BI, starting with a 1958 article by Hans Luhn, and the relationship between a BI system and a data warehouse, based on Forrester definitions. BI can be applied to measurement, analytics, reporting, collaboration and knowledge management within an enterprise. There are many keys to a successful BI strategy, including choosing the right C-level sponsor (not the CIO), common data definitions, understanding what the user/business needs, and choosing the right tool and systems integrator. He also included a list of CSFs for the implementation of BI. He quoted a Gartner paper from 2009 on the future of BI – I’m not sure the members totally bought into the predictions, but the following trends seemed reasonable. By 2014, one third of BI will be delivered through mobile devices, analytic processing will use in-memory functions, and more of the spending will be on system integrators not software vendors. The last 3 slides contain a list of BI products which contain a reporting tool, BI vendors and a 2 by 2 chart showing challengers and leaders.
We asked those present to share with us their experiences with BI.
Paul Gray, who wrote the first book on BI, is a member of INFORM, an applications group which does OR and analytics. IT tends not to be into modeling or analytics. This is an opportunity for IT to get involved with OR to become closer to the end user.
Jeff Reid reminded us that he has just started with a new company, and they are not heavy into BI as yet. They have a data warehouse application, and are trying to consolidate data more efficiently. They are a SAP shop and will look at compatible tools.
David Mann said that they had no BI implemented as yet either, but plan to this next year. They will aim to use the tools to provide them insight into patient loyalty, claim analytics, and fraud detection, and are interested in the use of mobile devices.
Jon Grunzweig said that he works for a private company in the office/retail/industrial warehousing business, which has just completed a 2-year study of BI tools and applications, but lacked a user sponsor/investor driving the effort. They went through a process of building a portfolio analysis capability using Microsoft BI tool set, but it wasn’t until the owner started to understand the potential that they gained traction within the company – a great case study.
Jon Hahn said that he also had just started with a new company (since May), and his near term goal is to modernize all the systems. BI comes relatively low on their priority list at the moment, but they do have one BI application for reporting purposes.
Stephan Birnbach said that he has a tale of what not to do with $1M. They ended up with a COGNOS application with low adoption. IT took over ownership of the system, and never gave it back to the user. They do have an analytics application in use.
Keith Golden is also only ¾ months in a new job. His predecessor purchased COSNOS but it will take a full year of basic blocking and tackling to get it effectively implemented. Yesterday, they listened to a presentation by Microsoft on their tools but it seems that Excel and a spreadsheet approach will be still in major use.
Bob Houghton spoke about his years at Western Digital, DDI and RealtyTrac - all three had implemented BI. A CSF is to get business ownership of the effort. The biggest fight he had was from within IT in the choice of the “right” tool, but if you do it right then it becomes indispensable.
William Zauner said that they use a DW and an application called Business Objects, which is a good tool other than single sign doesn’t work. The DW applications are pretty extensive and they have some analytics capability. The presentation tool (Excelsius) and its mobile application are loved by the executives. The biggest problem has been to get one version of the truth - one definition of the data.
Jennifer Curlee took over the reporting, after she convinced the CFO and his people that there was a better way, using the BI tool to report the data from the DW. There are still two versions of the displayed data, and she has to deal with a friend of the CEO who has other reporting ideas.
Jeff Hecht explained that this was their 3rd attempt at a BI project. They will use Microsoft tools, and they have several of the problems that are common to most of us – multiple ownership of the data and multiple legacy systems. Several years ago they built a dashboard application, but the owners never really bought into it, and one version of the truth is still a major problem.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
January 13, 2011 meeting
Present: Hendrik Gerryts, Paul Gray, Jeff Reid, David Mann, Jon Hahn, Jon Grunzweig, Stephan Birnbach, Keith Golden, Bob Houghton, William Zauner, Jim Sutter, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Hecht, Dave Phillips
Our thanks to Hendrik Gerryts, RJT Compuquest, for making the presentation on BI.
It was nice to see Paul Gray, IS Professor Emeritus, Claremont, on a rare visit. We welcomed Jon Grunzweig, Majestic Realty.
2/10/11 The evolving role of the CIO Keith Golden
3/10/11 Offshore outsourcing update Jeff Reid
4/14/11 Cloud computing update Jeff Hecht
Topic: Business Intelligence
Hendrik gave several definitions of BI – techniques used in spotting, digging out, and analyzing business data; technologies which provide historical, current and predictive views of business operations; DSS by any other name; bringing the right information at the right time to the right people in the right format. The chart on page 4 of his handout is good. He gave a short history of BI, starting with a 1958 article by Hans Luhn, and the relationship between a BI system and a data warehouse, based on Forrester definitions. BI can be applied to measurement, analytics, reporting, collaboration and knowledge management within an enterprise. There are many keys to a successful BI strategy, including choosing the right C-level sponsor (not the CIO), common data definitions, understanding what the user/business needs, and choosing the right tool and systems integrator. He also included a list of CSFs for the implementation of BI. He quoted a Gartner paper from 2009 on the future of BI – I’m not sure the members totally bought into the predictions, but the following trends seemed reasonable. By 2014, one third of BI will be delivered through mobile devices, analytic processing will use in-memory functions, and more of the spending will be on system integrators not software vendors. The last 3 slides contain a list of BI products which contain a reporting tool, BI vendors and a 2 by 2 chart showing challengers and leaders.
We asked those present to share with us their experiences with BI.
Paul Gray, who wrote the first book on BI, is a member of INFORM, an applications group which does OR and analytics. IT tends not to be into modeling or analytics. This is an opportunity for IT to get involved with OR to become closer to the end user.
Jeff Reid reminded us that he has just started with a new company, and they are not heavy into BI as yet. They have a data warehouse application, and are trying to consolidate data more efficiently. They are a SAP shop and will look at compatible tools.
David Mann said that they had no BI implemented as yet either, but plan to this next year. They will aim to use the tools to provide them insight into patient loyalty, claim analytics, and fraud detection, and are interested in the use of mobile devices.
Jon Grunzweig said that he works for a private company in the office/retail/industrial warehousing business, which has just completed a 2-year study of BI tools and applications, but lacked a user sponsor/investor driving the effort. They went through a process of building a portfolio analysis capability using Microsoft BI tool set, but it wasn’t until the owner started to understand the potential that they gained traction within the company – a great case study.
Jon Hahn said that he also had just started with a new company (since May), and his near term goal is to modernize all the systems. BI comes relatively low on their priority list at the moment, but they do have one BI application for reporting purposes.
Stephan Birnbach said that he has a tale of what not to do with $1M. They ended up with a COGNOS application with low adoption. IT took over ownership of the system, and never gave it back to the user. They do have an analytics application in use.
Keith Golden is also only ¾ months in a new job. His predecessor purchased COSNOS but it will take a full year of basic blocking and tackling to get it effectively implemented. Yesterday, they listened to a presentation by Microsoft on their tools but it seems that Excel and a spreadsheet approach will be still in major use.
Bob Houghton spoke about his years at Western Digital, DDI and RealtyTrac - all three had implemented BI. A CSF is to get business ownership of the effort. The biggest fight he had was from within IT in the choice of the “right” tool, but if you do it right then it becomes indispensable.
William Zauner said that they use a DW and an application called Business Objects, which is a good tool other than single sign doesn’t work. The DW applications are pretty extensive and they have some analytics capability. The presentation tool (Excelsius) and its mobile application are loved by the executives. The biggest problem has been to get one version of the truth - one definition of the data.
Jennifer Curlee took over the reporting, after she convinced the CFO and his people that there was a better way, using the BI tool to report the data from the DW. There are still two versions of the displayed data, and she has to deal with a friend of the CEO who has other reporting ideas.
Jeff Hecht explained that this was their 3rd attempt at a BI project. They will use Microsoft tools, and they have several of the problems that are common to most of us – multiple ownership of the data and multiple legacy systems. Several years ago they built a dashboard application, but the owners never really bought into it, and one version of the truth is still a major problem.
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