OC CIO Minutes January 12, 2012

Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
January 12, 2012 meeting

Present: Jim Sutter, Joe Desuta, Jeff Hecht, William Zauner, Jon Hahn, Subbu Murthy, Jon Grunzweig, Ashwin Rangan, Dave Phillips

The following is a list of topics and speakers through August:

2/9/12 10 Career Management Mistakes Susan Howington
3/8/12 New Security Challenges Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown
4/12/12 Mobile Device Security David Mann, Neudesic
5/10/12 Global Company IT Challenges Rich Hoffman, Avery Dennison
6/14/12 Big Data Paul Gray, Claremont (Emeritus)
7/12/12 Developing IT Teams Jon Grunzweig, Majestic Realty
8/9/12 Mobile Application Development Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Coll

Topic: 2012 CIO Survival Tip

Jim Sutter first gave a version of this presentation about 10-15 years ago and was recently asked to update it for a SIM presentation. The challenges for a CIO have changed over the years but one that always is at, or near the top, is the challenge of being perceived to ADD VALUE. This is strange as it is widely accepted that IT – technology in general - has added significant productivity benefits to our industrial economy. But close to home the CEO is always concerned whether he is getting value for his/her IT expenditures. Not that IT is alone in this analysis. All corporate functions are under cost pressures, and why should IT be different? IT has issues that are unique – rarely will the real needs be contained to one user department, and department VP/managers are reluctant to commit to hard savings. Jim’s slides 8 and 9 show IT to have three levels of clients (CEO/Management Committee; Department VP/Management; Associates/individual users) , and provides three types of services (Strategic thinking; Operational Services/Data/ Network/desktop/remote devices support; software development projects and delivery). The impact and expectations are very different depending on who you are and where you fit within the organization. The major take away message here is to make sure that you, or someone within IT, schedules time with each level and type of user. The amount of time and effort will vary depending on the state of affairs but always find time for a minimum level of interaction. The second take away is that everything is measurable in its own way, and so benchmarking is not only possible but very important, whether you do it within the organization, within your industry, or with the best of class companies. There is an amazing amount of data out there, and most of it is fairly accessible. Jim's slides are at:
http://www.slideshare.net/occio .

This was a very interactive session and thoroughly enjoyable. Each member was asked to share what he felt was his most important survival tip, or effective benchmark effort.

William works for the largest company in the alternative dispute resolution industry. They do a survey every 2/3 years but it is difficult to get at the real data. His most effective survival tip is to be paranoid. He makes certain that he visits every office once a year to listen to requirements first hand.

Jon likes the idea of doing more benchmarking and is interested in developing a survey approach. He currently subscribes to Gartner for IT expenditure information, especially for companies in the hi-tech manufacturing/semiconductor arena.

Jim mentioned that in the past, Deloitte was active involved in developing benchmark data in the auto industry.

Ashwin recommended reading an INTEL paper on their website analyzing the ROI on IT development projects.

Joe mentioned that the real estate trade association puts out lots of reports on benchmark data.

Jon ‘s best survival approach is to put the time and effort into touching base with all levels of users from the CEO down.

Subbu felt that there was 3 types of value – real, perceived, relative (used for continuous improvement approaches)