Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
November 13, 2008 meeting
Present: Andy King, Tina Haines, Sean Brown, Jim Sutter, William Zauner, John Pringle, Dave Loomis, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Dave Loomis, ex-Barnes & Noble, IBM, and Siemens to his first meeting.
The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the presentation material, when available.
Topic: IT Policies
Andy King, Exemplis Corporation, defined a policy as a statement of intent intended to influence and determine decisions, actions and other matters, for example: a company’s personnel policy. Reasons for having IT policies include prevention of abuse of IT resources, protection of owners and employees, provide guidelines for IT management decision making, integrate with corporate governance, and to meet regulatory, legal, and ethical requirements. Andy had a couple of slides defining where IT policies fit in an organization. Andy listed every IT policy he found - about 33 in total – and focused on the 7 major policies that Northwestern University have developed. These include policies on security, network/infrastructure, hardware, software, residential network, email and external vendors. Each of these can be expanded to multiple sub-policies. He showed us how the security policy expands into 9 sub-policies. I recommend that you refer to Andy’s presentation slides for detail listings. Andy also circulated examples that he gathered from organizations as varied as a mature indutrial (1 long legal 14 page policy document), several universities policies statements, and a government IT policy. He also listed reference items such as http://www.itgi.org/ (IT Governance Institute), and the British Standard ISO/IEC 38500:2008 on corporate governance of IT
We asked members to tell us what IT policies they have or would recommend.
Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, in the continuum of time, they have developed sets of IT policies, but they are not very well coordinated. The company has 35 IT groups which they are just now pulling them all together. The first step is to develop a common set of standards. They intend to develop policies regarding protection of data, security of equipment, email, etc. They are also attempting to install rigorous IT change control and DR. They do have accounting policies in place.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that they have a very limited set of IT policies in place. Customers have their own and their consultants have to abide by those policies. They find that it is quite difficult (3 or 4 days) to gain access to customer’s computing resources because of the access policies in place.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said his philosophy over the years has been fewer policies are better than too many, and if the current financial crisis is anything to go by, having policies in place doesn’t seem to guarantee proper behavior. Policies should capture a set of rules, and IT policies should be part of corporate policies, just like HR policies. When he was at Rockwell, he had the same person who drafted IT strategies in charge of drafting IT policies
William Zauner, JAMS, relating to the handout document, agreed that one paragraph could easily turn into many pages of legal policy. He had an outside council work with the HR department draft the HR policies. What he tries to do is fix behavior rather than define policies on things like password protection, and intellectual property protection when external contractors are involved.
John Pringle, ex-RCMT, said that they did not have many policies until SOX compliance became an issue. A manual was developed and they all had to sign a document to acknowledge having read the manual. To control internal usage of the Internet they use a content filter. They also have asset management policies. More and more customers are requiring their consultants to comply with their policies. The top security issue is access to data.
Dave Loomis said that when he worked with Siemens, they had to comply with the customer’s policies. They also controlled internal Internet access using technology, and were rigorous in controlling what you had installed on your computer, and in installing antivirus software. Quite often, the executives were among those who got caught. They insisted that new employees attended training as a condition of employment.
Andy King, Exemplis Corp., added that they also have all new employees sign a technology use policy as a condition of employment, which is tied into the corporate strategy.
Thank you, Andy, for a very good presentation and handout. A copy can be found at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
See you on December 11, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 10-9-08
1993-2008
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
September 11, 2008 meeting
Present: Jim Pick, Paul Gray, John Pringle, Carmella Cassetta, Andy Stameson, Tak Fujii, Jim Sutter, Andy King, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
Paul Gray introduced our guest speaker, Professor James Pick, University of Redlands, as our subject matter expert and author of several books on the topic. We also welcomed Andy Stameson, ex-CIO at FileNet, to his first meeting.
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: GIS – Its time has come for business
Jim Pick, University of Redlands, defined Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a database of attributes, spatial information, and a linkage between the two. Jacqueline Tyrwhitt began using overlays for land use planning in 1950. Ian McHarg carried it much further and published “Design with Nature” in 1969. Also in the late 60’s, ESRI (HQ in Redlands) developed a software package, Arcinfo, and GIS was born. Military R & D eventually developed satellite systems for Global Positioning Systems (GPS). GIS moved into the business environment in the early 1990’s. Jim showed several examples, including a routing and scheduling application for a business fleet (see his presentation slides for other examples). The family of spatial technologies also includes RFID, sensors, handheld devices (such as PDAs), and LIDAR (light detection and ranging) for laser 3-D profiles. There are legal and ethical issues with using spatial technologies – including privacy and eligibility. GIS has moved towards web and mobile platforms, and almost everyone is familiar with Google Earth and Yahoo maps. Jim gave many other examples. GIS is starting to be integrated with ERP systems, especially with Oracle ERP, and in the energy (oil) value chain. It is also being used as a strategic business weapon (e.g. at Rand McNally) and it needs to be aligned with the IT strategy. Jim described at some length the use of GIS at Norwich Union. It is coming to the point where most companies should evaluate GIS and its potential. The management issues include cost vs. benefit (ROI). Should the GIS group be part of IT? In-house or outsourced? When should it be integrated into the ERP systems (not yet a smooth process)? Jim’s slides contain much more information and I recommend that you take the time to review them. They are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
We asked members to tell us what they are doing with GIS.
Paul Gray, Claremont, complimented Jim for a very comprehensive presentation. Paul’s knowledge is limited but he has reviewed favorably several of Jim’s books. Claremont is starting to get interested and have a few education projects – young Ph.Ds are good as missionaries. So far, it seems that people have problems viewing things spatially.
John Pringle, ex-RCMT, said that he is somewhat familiar with GPS tracking on boats as a component of marine technology. He has been thinking about the privacy implications when you start to link GPS/GIS to social networks.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, can see how this has implications for the transportation industry, tracking trucks and delivery status. She is less certain about its use in student related activities. One issue is what is the ideal background for people who want to go into GIS? Is it a background in IT, or government, or geography? ESRI alumni may be the ideal!
Andy Stameson, ex FileNet, said that they had started to look into these technologies at FileNet. They were trying to link Salesforce.com with GIS to get a better feeling for the ideal territories for sales and service.
Tak Fujii, Olson Company, said that since they are in housing development downtown, they have used GIS for years for mapping purposes. Now that Google Earth is readily available and very useful, they have started to use it in place of more expensive tools. They overlay demographic data and infrastructure data over the physical picture. Google is putting pressure on ESRI.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, recalled that Rockwell had an early contract to build the first constellation of GPS satellites. He remembers meeting Jim Pick years ago and taking him on a tour of Rockwell Semiconductor (which became Conexant). Gallo Winery is a big user of GIS in the vineyard to track application of fertilizers, etc., and in marketing to track selling demographics. Adding an RFID tag to each case is costly (50c)
Andy King, Exemplis Corp., expressed two thoughts – this was a very informative presentation, especially as he has been thinking about how to introduce it to his executives for personal navigation aspects, and to find where books are available. The second was to his Boy Scouts troop in place/addition to the map and compass exercise.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, also had two thoughts. He is working with a small company, which is thinking about going public, and they want to track drill bits, combining positioning and soil characteristics. GIS is also a plus for any CIO to present innovative ideas to his/her management where it might add value.
This was a very good presentation by Jim Pick, supported by a good handout and list of references.
See you on November 13, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260.
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
September 11, 2008 meeting
Present: Jim Pick, Paul Gray, John Pringle, Carmella Cassetta, Andy Stameson, Tak Fujii, Jim Sutter, Andy King, Jennifer Curlee, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
Paul Gray introduced our guest speaker, Professor James Pick, University of Redlands, as our subject matter expert and author of several books on the topic. We also welcomed Andy Stameson, ex-CIO at FileNet, to his first meeting.
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: GIS – Its time has come for business
Jim Pick, University of Redlands, defined Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a database of attributes, spatial information, and a linkage between the two. Jacqueline Tyrwhitt began using overlays for land use planning in 1950. Ian McHarg carried it much further and published “Design with Nature” in 1969. Also in the late 60’s, ESRI (HQ in Redlands) developed a software package, Arcinfo, and GIS was born. Military R & D eventually developed satellite systems for Global Positioning Systems (GPS). GIS moved into the business environment in the early 1990’s. Jim showed several examples, including a routing and scheduling application for a business fleet (see his presentation slides for other examples). The family of spatial technologies also includes RFID, sensors, handheld devices (such as PDAs), and LIDAR (light detection and ranging) for laser 3-D profiles. There are legal and ethical issues with using spatial technologies – including privacy and eligibility. GIS has moved towards web and mobile platforms, and almost everyone is familiar with Google Earth and Yahoo maps. Jim gave many other examples. GIS is starting to be integrated with ERP systems, especially with Oracle ERP, and in the energy (oil) value chain. It is also being used as a strategic business weapon (e.g. at Rand McNally) and it needs to be aligned with the IT strategy. Jim described at some length the use of GIS at Norwich Union. It is coming to the point where most companies should evaluate GIS and its potential. The management issues include cost vs. benefit (ROI). Should the GIS group be part of IT? In-house or outsourced? When should it be integrated into the ERP systems (not yet a smooth process)? Jim’s slides contain much more information and I recommend that you take the time to review them. They are at http://www.slideshare.net/occio .
We asked members to tell us what they are doing with GIS.
Paul Gray, Claremont, complimented Jim for a very comprehensive presentation. Paul’s knowledge is limited but he has reviewed favorably several of Jim’s books. Claremont is starting to get interested and have a few education projects – young Ph.Ds are good as missionaries. So far, it seems that people have problems viewing things spatially.
John Pringle, ex-RCMT, said that he is somewhat familiar with GPS tracking on boats as a component of marine technology. He has been thinking about the privacy implications when you start to link GPS/GIS to social networks.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, can see how this has implications for the transportation industry, tracking trucks and delivery status. She is less certain about its use in student related activities. One issue is what is the ideal background for people who want to go into GIS? Is it a background in IT, or government, or geography? ESRI alumni may be the ideal!
Andy Stameson, ex FileNet, said that they had started to look into these technologies at FileNet. They were trying to link Salesforce.com with GIS to get a better feeling for the ideal territories for sales and service.
Tak Fujii, Olson Company, said that since they are in housing development downtown, they have used GIS for years for mapping purposes. Now that Google Earth is readily available and very useful, they have started to use it in place of more expensive tools. They overlay demographic data and infrastructure data over the physical picture. Google is putting pressure on ESRI.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, recalled that Rockwell had an early contract to build the first constellation of GPS satellites. He remembers meeting Jim Pick years ago and taking him on a tour of Rockwell Semiconductor (which became Conexant). Gallo Winery is a big user of GIS in the vineyard to track application of fertilizers, etc., and in marketing to track selling demographics. Adding an RFID tag to each case is costly (50c)
Andy King, Exemplis Corp., expressed two thoughts – this was a very informative presentation, especially as he has been thinking about how to introduce it to his executives for personal navigation aspects, and to find where books are available. The second was to his Boy Scouts troop in place/addition to the map and compass exercise.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, also had two thoughts. He is working with a small company, which is thinking about going public, and they want to track drill bits, combining positioning and soil characteristics. GIS is also a plus for any CIO to present innovative ideas to his/her management where it might add value.
This was a very good presentation by Jim Pick, supported by a good handout and list of references.
See you on November 13, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 9-11-08
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
September 11, 2008 meeting
Present: Paul Gray, Omar El Sawy, Joel Manfredo, Jeff Reid, Kirk Minami, Randy Farner, Randy Miller, Rich Hoffman, Steve Wallace, Jennifer Curlee, David Mann, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, William Zauner, Jim Sutter, John Pringle, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Kirk Minami, Aviana Global, and Steve Wallace, Hansen Beverage, to their first meeting.
We reminded members about the evening event of September 17th from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. on SaaS, sponsored by SAP and RJT Compuquest.
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: Analytics - Maximizing the ROI from the BI investment
Paul Gray, Professor Emeritus at Claremont Graduate School, defined BI systems as a combination of data gathering, data storage, knowledge management with analysis to evaluate complex internal and competitive information, and present quality results in a timely manner. See slide 5 for the relationship of BI to DSS/EIS, data mining, OLAP, data warehouse, Web 2.0, CRM/DB marketing, and GIS. It is not sufficient to look back at internal performance data, or past competitive results. It is important to provide analysis tools to produce “what if” scenarios and make the analytic tools and results available to many in the organization, not to just a few planners. Paul showed examples of Web 2.0 bashups, combining many sources of data. Web 2.0 user-friendly interface allows for widespread use of such systems. The challenges include data quality, common data definitions and having the right infrastructure. There are many implications for the CIO (see slide 17). CI (competitive intelligence) is a systematic and ethical program for gathering, analyzing and managing external information about your competitors, which can affect your company’s performance. There are many sources of CI, such as government databases, online data, interviews and the media. The problem is not lack of information but the ability to use it effectively. There are many vendors of BI systems (see slide 25). There are many BI managerial issues – it’s about understanding your own position and performance, your customers and your competitors, and disseminating that knowledge to many people in the company. The technologies for BI and CI are getting better, as part of a better DSS capability. Paul attached a list of references, including “Successful Business Intelligence”, by Cindy Howson, and a review of “Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning” by Tom Davenport & Jeanne Harris.
Paul's slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
We asked members to share with us their experiences with BI and Analytics.
Omar El Sawy, USC, thanked Paul for his presentation. He took a stab at defining the difference between BI (focused on presenting the data from various sources) and Analytics (trying to use tools to gain insight from the data). He saw lots of integration between process workflow data and intelligence, which changes the way ROI is viewed as more part of the process. The science of exceptions is becoming better, but there is a lot of skepticism out there on the ROI of analytics.
Joel Manfredo recalled when he was in the leasing business in 1996, he was focused on the long process, from concept to building to leasing and you could be dead before you knew it. He was focused on collapsing the cycle time, and used BI tools to help. He also was interested in analyzing demographic data, using Cognos for reporting, which is invaluable in retail, like Starbucks, although it didn’t seemed to stop them from opening a store on every corner!
Jeff Reid, Toyota Material Handling, said that they used the SAP tool to get at their data. So far they pull together data from 4 of the 7 or 8 processes, and intend to extend it to all the processes. Fundamentally, it’s about getting the right data at the right time to the right people, so that better decisions can be made.
Kirk Minami, Aviana Global, shared with us information about a project he is working on in manufacturing. It is an early warning detection system, analyzing data from customer problem call logs to spot problems with the manufacturing process that might be causing units to fail, and to indicate what early steps can be taken to solve the problems at inception. The payback is huge.
Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, recalled from his experience with the Auto Club and Mercury. They used data mining a lot to analyze data on their Terradata platform, and the results were very good for CA. The Auto Club used a rich array of tools to help them drill down.
Randy Miller remembered fondly his days at Toshiba ABS, where he worked with Steve Wallace’s wife on a BI project using Cognos. In that project, 85% of the sales were made in the last 3 days of the month, and so the reports were produced every hour and studied intensely. The CI tools produced reports on the competition but despite the forecasts, this did not seem to influence change.
Rich Hoffman said that DW and SAS seem to have been around forever. Maybe Analytics is a new wrinkle. In the auto industry they have used BI for many years, tracking things like real time comparison shopping on the web, customer retention, conversion, faster failure diagnosis, repair order tracking, etc. He has noticed of late that they won’t hire the necessary Ph. D’s to do the job properly, and won’t spend the effort to cleanse the data.
Steve Wallace, Hansen Beverage, said that this discussion was very timely as they are going through a maturation cycle, which will affect processes, systems, and their global reach. In the past, they only reacted to BI – now it is part of the equation, and they are developing lots of pockets of CI, which will enrich the reports.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that they have just finished implementing an ERP system, with the help of a consulting company, which they hoped was going to push them into BI, document management, etc. Unfortunately, they have found that they products are only interfaced, not integrated with one another, and data definitions are not consistent. This turns out to be an opportunity to start a new DD project, and to drive that effort deep into the organization.
David Mann, Word & Brown, said that they too are starting a major initiative, including BI. The major challenge is to define the ROI, and this presentation and discussion will help. They are blessed with having12 to 22 years of data to mine
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, thanked Paul for his presentation and said that Paul forgets more about this subject than he will ever know. The focus of their initiative is to present data in a better way, one that adds value to the data, but it’s hard to get people to believe that better information with result in better decision-making. Our executives have a hard time believing that a computer will make a better decision than they can.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that his company is making a significant investment in BI, and in becoming experts with the SAP analytic product and tools. They are aiming to generate real time ROI from the use of these tools.
William Zauner, JAMS, said that his company has a customized BI system. Each of their judges is treated as a mini profit center, and they use analytics to their competitive advantage as part of their recruiting strategy. The next phase is to use Business Objects to do “What if” studies to change the business focus.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said that the Gallo Winery used a host of BI tools, like Cognos, to help them with strategic pricing each weekend. They are in the process of moving to the OutlookSoft product, because of its Excel look and feel. They have also consolidated their BI efforts, and now have a director of BI in IT. He liked Paul’s mashups for CI and is helping start-up companies get a handle on their competitors by tracking contacts on Linkedin, etc. to find out who knows who in the other companies.
John Pringle, RCMT, said that he was the DSS manager in MacDonald Douglas many years ago. He now uses a tool called DIVA to track KPI, performance tracking by sales person, dashboards, charts etc – when you visit John’s office you see them posted all over the walls.
This was a very good session, thanks to Paul’s presentation and excellent handouts.
See you on October 9, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
September 11, 2008 meeting
Present: Paul Gray, Omar El Sawy, Joel Manfredo, Jeff Reid, Kirk Minami, Randy Farner, Randy Miller, Rich Hoffman, Steve Wallace, Jennifer Curlee, David Mann, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, William Zauner, Jim Sutter, John Pringle, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Kirk Minami, Aviana Global, and Steve Wallace, Hansen Beverage, to their first meeting.
We reminded members about the evening event of September 17th from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. on SaaS, sponsored by SAP and RJT Compuquest.
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: Analytics - Maximizing the ROI from the BI investment
Paul Gray, Professor Emeritus at Claremont Graduate School, defined BI systems as a combination of data gathering, data storage, knowledge management with analysis to evaluate complex internal and competitive information, and present quality results in a timely manner. See slide 5 for the relationship of BI to DSS/EIS, data mining, OLAP, data warehouse, Web 2.0, CRM/DB marketing, and GIS. It is not sufficient to look back at internal performance data, or past competitive results. It is important to provide analysis tools to produce “what if” scenarios and make the analytic tools and results available to many in the organization, not to just a few planners. Paul showed examples of Web 2.0 bashups, combining many sources of data. Web 2.0 user-friendly interface allows for widespread use of such systems. The challenges include data quality, common data definitions and having the right infrastructure. There are many implications for the CIO (see slide 17). CI (competitive intelligence) is a systematic and ethical program for gathering, analyzing and managing external information about your competitors, which can affect your company’s performance. There are many sources of CI, such as government databases, online data, interviews and the media. The problem is not lack of information but the ability to use it effectively. There are many vendors of BI systems (see slide 25). There are many BI managerial issues – it’s about understanding your own position and performance, your customers and your competitors, and disseminating that knowledge to many people in the company. The technologies for BI and CI are getting better, as part of a better DSS capability. Paul attached a list of references, including “Successful Business Intelligence”, by Cindy Howson, and a review of “Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning” by Tom Davenport & Jeanne Harris.
Paul's slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
We asked members to share with us their experiences with BI and Analytics.
Omar El Sawy, USC, thanked Paul for his presentation. He took a stab at defining the difference between BI (focused on presenting the data from various sources) and Analytics (trying to use tools to gain insight from the data). He saw lots of integration between process workflow data and intelligence, which changes the way ROI is viewed as more part of the process. The science of exceptions is becoming better, but there is a lot of skepticism out there on the ROI of analytics.
Joel Manfredo recalled when he was in the leasing business in 1996, he was focused on the long process, from concept to building to leasing and you could be dead before you knew it. He was focused on collapsing the cycle time, and used BI tools to help. He also was interested in analyzing demographic data, using Cognos for reporting, which is invaluable in retail, like Starbucks, although it didn’t seemed to stop them from opening a store on every corner!
Jeff Reid, Toyota Material Handling, said that they used the SAP tool to get at their data. So far they pull together data from 4 of the 7 or 8 processes, and intend to extend it to all the processes. Fundamentally, it’s about getting the right data at the right time to the right people, so that better decisions can be made.
Kirk Minami, Aviana Global, shared with us information about a project he is working on in manufacturing. It is an early warning detection system, analyzing data from customer problem call logs to spot problems with the manufacturing process that might be causing units to fail, and to indicate what early steps can be taken to solve the problems at inception. The payback is huge.
Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, recalled from his experience with the Auto Club and Mercury. They used data mining a lot to analyze data on their Terradata platform, and the results were very good for CA. The Auto Club used a rich array of tools to help them drill down.
Randy Miller remembered fondly his days at Toshiba ABS, where he worked with Steve Wallace’s wife on a BI project using Cognos. In that project, 85% of the sales were made in the last 3 days of the month, and so the reports were produced every hour and studied intensely. The CI tools produced reports on the competition but despite the forecasts, this did not seem to influence change.
Rich Hoffman said that DW and SAS seem to have been around forever. Maybe Analytics is a new wrinkle. In the auto industry they have used BI for many years, tracking things like real time comparison shopping on the web, customer retention, conversion, faster failure diagnosis, repair order tracking, etc. He has noticed of late that they won’t hire the necessary Ph. D’s to do the job properly, and won’t spend the effort to cleanse the data.
Steve Wallace, Hansen Beverage, said that this discussion was very timely as they are going through a maturation cycle, which will affect processes, systems, and their global reach. In the past, they only reacted to BI – now it is part of the equation, and they are developing lots of pockets of CI, which will enrich the reports.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that they have just finished implementing an ERP system, with the help of a consulting company, which they hoped was going to push them into BI, document management, etc. Unfortunately, they have found that they products are only interfaced, not integrated with one another, and data definitions are not consistent. This turns out to be an opportunity to start a new DD project, and to drive that effort deep into the organization.
David Mann, Word & Brown, said that they too are starting a major initiative, including BI. The major challenge is to define the ROI, and this presentation and discussion will help. They are blessed with having12 to 22 years of data to mine
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, thanked Paul for his presentation and said that Paul forgets more about this subject than he will ever know. The focus of their initiative is to present data in a better way, one that adds value to the data, but it’s hard to get people to believe that better information with result in better decision-making. Our executives have a hard time believing that a computer will make a better decision than they can.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that his company is making a significant investment in BI, and in becoming experts with the SAP analytic product and tools. They are aiming to generate real time ROI from the use of these tools.
William Zauner, JAMS, said that his company has a customized BI system. Each of their judges is treated as a mini profit center, and they use analytics to their competitive advantage as part of their recruiting strategy. The next phase is to use Business Objects to do “What if” studies to change the business focus.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said that the Gallo Winery used a host of BI tools, like Cognos, to help them with strategic pricing each weekend. They are in the process of moving to the OutlookSoft product, because of its Excel look and feel. They have also consolidated their BI efforts, and now have a director of BI in IT. He liked Paul’s mashups for CI and is helping start-up companies get a handle on their competitors by tracking contacts on Linkedin, etc. to find out who knows who in the other companies.
John Pringle, RCMT, said that he was the DSS manager in MacDonald Douglas many years ago. He now uses a tool called DIVA to track KPI, performance tracking by sales person, dashboards, charts etc – when you visit John’s office you see them posted all over the walls.
This was a very good session, thanks to Paul’s presentation and excellent handouts.
See you on October 9, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 8-14-08
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
August 14, 2008 meeting
Present: Mike Allen, Joel Manfredo, Larry Godec, Tina Haines, Bob Houghton, Randy Farner, Jeff Hecht, Mitch Morris, Carmella Cassetta, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Mike Allen, The Irvin Company, as our guest speaker, and new member Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, to her first meeting.
We reminded members to reserve the evening of September 17th from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. for the SaaS special event, sponsored by SAP and RJT Compuquest.
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: IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
Joel Manfredo, ex-CIO at the Irvine Company (TIC), introduced Michael Allen, Director of Process Excellence, and described the context for the ITIL initiative at TIC – poor change control. Mike described ITIL as a framework of 11 common sense, service oriented principles – it is the What, rather than the How. Created by the British Government in the ‘80s to address inefficiencies with providing IT services, it is now at Version 3, which was released in June 2007. There are 5 core books entitled: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement. ITIL Service Strategy is about the practice of service management, principles, strategy, economics (IT financial management, ROI, service portfolio management, demand management), organization culture, technology and operations. ITIL Service Design is about service design principles and processes – service catalogue management, service level management, capacity management, availability management, service continuity management, information security management, supplier management, application management, data and information management, requirements engineering, and design considerations (organization, process and tools). ITIL Service Transition is about transition principles and processes – transition planning and support, change management, asset and configuration management, release and deployment management, validation and testing, evaluation and knowledge management. ITIL Service Operation is about principles and processes - event management, incident management, request fulfillment, problem management, access management, monitor and control domain management. It is also about functions like service desk, technical management, IT operations management, and application management. ITIL Continual Service Improvement processes include the 7-step improvement process, service reporting, measurement, ROI for CSI, and SLA management. To operate IT like a business, it behooves you to embrace ITIL principles to provide reliable, available and serviceable IT services and infrastructure. It leverages Deming’s PDCA model. Widely accepted in Europe, it is quickly moving into the US market. Mike recommended starting with one aspect of your IT operations that needs improvement. TIC started with change management to add structure to a somewhat chaotic environment by dedicating resources in 2004, and the metrics show the value. Mike’s handout lists what they have done – self-assessment, 5-year plan, incident and problem management, configuration management and IT service continuity. I recommend that you read his entire handout to get a better sense of all that they have accomplished. The slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
We asked members to share with us their experiences with ITIL.
Mitch Morris, IAMPO, told us that his environment is still very immature with respect to IT. He is evaluating ERP systems with the intention of replacing custom software. He is also trying to educate both management and users in the need for IT policies and procedures. In past positions, he has implemented many ITIL concepts.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said before listening to the presentation, he would have said that they did nothing with ITIL. He now realizes that they do a lot in areas like demand management. The need for availability is increasing, and they need predictable procedures to handle change management. The business is still very immature, as it grows from 200 to 1000 employees, and they tend to be sloppy about a lot of things. But the business is starting to be more demanding so his first step will be to do a self-assessment.
Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, said that at the Auto Club and Mercury, they have implemented many ITIL procedures in name, but not in spirit. Problems keep reoccurring, and there is little route cause analysis. What he likes about ITIL is that it gives you a checklist of processes and procedures that one should implement to run IT as a business.
Bob Houghton, DDI, said that at Western Digital, with 26,000 all over the world, the need for such a process was recognized so that they could communicate the cost of poor IT practices. Implementing IT services based on the ITIL model brought the cost of IT per drive down from 26 cents to 6 cents. At DDI, they are coming out of bankruptcy, and had just failed a SOX audit in change control. They had to use ITIL to get some structure.
Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, initial reaction to ITIL was “what’s in a name”. But since she has been working with her new division in the last 18 months, mostly in the UK, she has came to see that ITIL is very much accepted as a body of work which is supportable. Their problem today is that they are in a very profitable aerospace industry, and have tended to become lazy. So it is good to have a foundation for providing IT services. ITIL is in demand by both the government and their customers. She complimented Mike and TIC for doing a really good job of relating process maturity to the business.
Larry Godec, First American, is a big fan of ITIL. They have implemented many ITIL concepts and find that it is an excellent foundation for IT service provisioning. With the demand for high availability, it has become absolutely necessary to control changes, and manage demand. Unfortunately, with the budget cuts due the real estate crunch, he has had to reassign his ITIL full time resource. He is contemplating bringing him back to do another assessment.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that they are not ITIL compliant. It would seem to him for this to be critically important for all CIOs to know how compliant they were to the ITIL principles in all aspects of providing IT services. If they don’t know, then they need to do at least do a self-audit, if not hire a company to do one, like TIC did.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, said the first thing they did was address change management. They were able to show $ savings from implementing ITIL principles. When she joined Corinthian Colleges, they had multiple years of failed SOX audits. After implementing change management, they have moved to address incident management. Listening to Mike, she realizes that there is another whole level that they need to address. They are at best at 50-60% of where they should be.
This was a very good session, thanks to Mike’s presentation and a very lively discussion.
See you on September 11, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260
August 14, 2008 meeting
Present: Mike Allen, Joel Manfredo, Larry Godec, Tina Haines, Bob Houghton, Randy Farner, Jeff Hecht, Mitch Morris, Carmella Cassetta, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips
We welcomed Mike Allen, The Irvin Company, as our guest speaker, and new member Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, to her first meeting.
We reminded members to reserve the evening of September 17th from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. for the SaaS special event, sponsored by SAP and RJT Compuquest.
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: IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
Joel Manfredo, ex-CIO at the Irvine Company (TIC), introduced Michael Allen, Director of Process Excellence, and described the context for the ITIL initiative at TIC – poor change control. Mike described ITIL as a framework of 11 common sense, service oriented principles – it is the What, rather than the How. Created by the British Government in the ‘80s to address inefficiencies with providing IT services, it is now at Version 3, which was released in June 2007. There are 5 core books entitled: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation, and Continual Service Improvement. ITIL Service Strategy is about the practice of service management, principles, strategy, economics (IT financial management, ROI, service portfolio management, demand management), organization culture, technology and operations. ITIL Service Design is about service design principles and processes – service catalogue management, service level management, capacity management, availability management, service continuity management, information security management, supplier management, application management, data and information management, requirements engineering, and design considerations (organization, process and tools). ITIL Service Transition is about transition principles and processes – transition planning and support, change management, asset and configuration management, release and deployment management, validation and testing, evaluation and knowledge management. ITIL Service Operation is about principles and processes - event management, incident management, request fulfillment, problem management, access management, monitor and control domain management. It is also about functions like service desk, technical management, IT operations management, and application management. ITIL Continual Service Improvement processes include the 7-step improvement process, service reporting, measurement, ROI for CSI, and SLA management. To operate IT like a business, it behooves you to embrace ITIL principles to provide reliable, available and serviceable IT services and infrastructure. It leverages Deming’s PDCA model. Widely accepted in Europe, it is quickly moving into the US market. Mike recommended starting with one aspect of your IT operations that needs improvement. TIC started with change management to add structure to a somewhat chaotic environment by dedicating resources in 2004, and the metrics show the value. Mike’s handout lists what they have done – self-assessment, 5-year plan, incident and problem management, configuration management and IT service continuity. I recommend that you read his entire handout to get a better sense of all that they have accomplished. The slides are at: http://www.slideshare.net/occio
We asked members to share with us their experiences with ITIL.
Mitch Morris, IAMPO, told us that his environment is still very immature with respect to IT. He is evaluating ERP systems with the intention of replacing custom software. He is also trying to educate both management and users in the need for IT policies and procedures. In past positions, he has implemented many ITIL concepts.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said before listening to the presentation, he would have said that they did nothing with ITIL. He now realizes that they do a lot in areas like demand management. The need for availability is increasing, and they need predictable procedures to handle change management. The business is still very immature, as it grows from 200 to 1000 employees, and they tend to be sloppy about a lot of things. But the business is starting to be more demanding so his first step will be to do a self-assessment.
Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, said that at the Auto Club and Mercury, they have implemented many ITIL procedures in name, but not in spirit. Problems keep reoccurring, and there is little route cause analysis. What he likes about ITIL is that it gives you a checklist of processes and procedures that one should implement to run IT as a business.
Bob Houghton, DDI, said that at Western Digital, with 26,000 all over the world, the need for such a process was recognized so that they could communicate the cost of poor IT practices. Implementing IT services based on the ITIL model brought the cost of IT per drive down from 26 cents to 6 cents. At DDI, they are coming out of bankruptcy, and had just failed a SOX audit in change control. They had to use ITIL to get some structure.
Tina Haines, Meggitt Electronics, initial reaction to ITIL was “what’s in a name”. But since she has been working with her new division in the last 18 months, mostly in the UK, she has came to see that ITIL is very much accepted as a body of work which is supportable. Their problem today is that they are in a very profitable aerospace industry, and have tended to become lazy. So it is good to have a foundation for providing IT services. ITIL is in demand by both the government and their customers. She complimented Mike and TIC for doing a really good job of relating process maturity to the business.
Larry Godec, First American, is a big fan of ITIL. They have implemented many ITIL concepts and find that it is an excellent foundation for IT service provisioning. With the demand for high availability, it has become absolutely necessary to control changes, and manage demand. Unfortunately, with the budget cuts due the real estate crunch, he has had to reassign his ITIL full time resource. He is contemplating bringing him back to do another assessment.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, said that they are not ITIL compliant. It would seem to him for this to be critically important for all CIOs to know how compliant they were to the ITIL principles in all aspects of providing IT services. If they don’t know, then they need to do at least do a self-audit, if not hire a company to do one, like TIC did.
Carmella Cassetta, Corinthian Colleges, said the first thing they did was address change management. They were able to show $ savings from implementing ITIL principles. When she joined Corinthian Colleges, they had multiple years of failed SOX audits. After implementing change management, they have moved to address incident management. Listening to Mike, she realizes that there is another whole level that they need to address. They are at best at 50-60% of where they should be.
This was a very good session, thanks to Mike’s presentation and a very lively discussion.
See you on September 11, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260
Monday, July 21, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 6-12-08
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
June 12, 2008 meeting
Present: Larry Godec, Jeff Reid, William Zauner, Tak Fujii, Randy Farner, Rich Hoffman, Jim Sutter, Jennifer Curlee, Joe Cracchiolo, Subbu Murthy, Sean Brown, Jeff Hecht, David Mann, John Pringle, Dave Phillips
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: Business Continuity Program
When Larry Godec, First American, worked at Nissan, he put together a BCP for them following 9/11. When he joined First American, he built on those ideas to put together an Emergency Response (ER), Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity (BC) program, in response to the Florida hurricanes, which wiped some of their offices in FL off the map. The ER ensures the safety of employees and the security of facilities. The DR restores the technology infrastructure following an event. The BC ensures the preservation of revenue through continuity of operations following an event. They have about 1400 offices in the US, and they have organized the program by region. Each region (now 10) has a business line continuity officer (BLCO), whose function includes documentation of BP flows, identifying recovery teams, each with fully defined tasks, recording all critical contact data, posts all material on the unit’s Sharepoint page, and facilitates annual review of plans and tabletop testing. The corporate office role (in Corporate Security) is to integrated plans, train BLCOs, perform periodic assessments and report to executive management. Read Larry’s handout to get a more complete feel for the four phases involved in the planning process. An event is defined as 40% workforce shortage, technology and facility unavailable, and critical vendor failure. The plan requires that you define objectives and the command process, identity recovery teams and detailed tasks, define the communications strategy and complete documentation. Larry’s handout shows samples, templates and storage. They use LDRPS, a system by Strohl, to manage the plan.
We asked the members to describe their BC plan, if any, and to highlight the most important problem they had in dealing with this issue.
Jeff Reid, Toyota Material Handling, said that they do not yet have a BC plan. Their problem is a lack of organizational maturity. Formed in 2003 and built for speed, they have too many other things to fix first, such as developing an IT governance approach, and a DR approach. At Western Digital they had both a DR and BC plan. At Conexant they had developed a BC plan, but when Jazz was spun off, it changed everything. That highlights the major challenge – trying to stay current with all the business changes.
William Zauner, JAMS, said that they do have a DR and BC plan and had a building in downtown NY, which was affected by the 9/11 attacks. However, they have found that the small problems cause most of the BC events. Recently on the same day, they had a bomb scare which shut down their DC office, and a fire, which affected their backup office in Boston. What they have found to be critical are the people, judges and phone systems, not the computer systems and infrastructure.
Tak Fujii, Olson Company, they are a small company but do have a BC and DR plan in place as the owner put a lot of emphasis on them. However, only the DR system is kept up-to-date. The BC has not been tested for 4 years, people have changed and contact data is out of date. Thus the IT department becomes the BC resource, by default.
Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, agreed with Tak that the IT group used to be the default group – no one in the business seemed to care. Things changed at the Auto Club after the Houston hurricane. They developed an emergency response team, with joint ownership by the business, HR and IT.
Rich Hoffman, ex-HISNA, said that plans are great but in the end, it’s the people who are the most important element. He mentioned a talk given by the CIO of the city of New Orleans, who said that when Katrina hit all their plans were rendered ineffective. It soon became survival first, food and water second, and everything else a distant third. At Yamaha, they did some planning but never put it into the job description, and so no one was made responsible. At Hyundai, when the roof fell in, they had to keep people out, and didn’t have an 800 # for employees to call to find out the latest status.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, agreed with my opening comments that BC seems to be a great opportunity for the CIO to show business acumen and executive potential. He mentioned how Dave Kepler at Dow Chemical is now Chief of Business Sustainability, responsible for not only IT but for all Dow’s Green activities and raw material availability. At Rockwell’s auto parts company, which was contracted to provide sunroofs to VW in 35 seconds after receiving the order, BC has a totally different meaning. In IT they had a back-up data center in Dallas until changes in the world political climate (when the Berlin Wall came down) caused a major business reduction. They eventually phased out the back-up center and went with Sunguard.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that BC has all sorts of implications for a manufacturing company. They have started on a BC project, headed by a retired business executive. IT is working on a DR plan first. They store all documents on Iron Mountain. Their defined event is a 7.9 earthquake.
Joe Cracchiolo, FluidMaster, said that they built a BC/DR plan 5 years ago. It has become an IT responsibility. Their event envisions that most of the current staff will be engaged in saving their own family unit. Their major problem was how to build a plan for someone from the outside to execute. Another fact is that the technology has changed significantly since they first built a plan, and through the years, the IT challenge is not as significant. Being out of action for 12 hours is not a real problem, but it can affect customer confidence.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that they do have DR (plan and tested), using Sunguard as a last resort. They don’t have a BC plan. They have tried to think through 3 scenarios – HQ gone, Data Center gone, and both gone. There is a difference between some availability, and a complete disaster. In the end, it’s the people who will make the difference.
Subbu Murthy, USourceIT, said that 90% of disasters need a DR plan, not a BC plan. The changes in technology allow for shared services, and building a DR will be much cheaper. A lot of it is common sense, and paying attention to the potential problem goes a long way to solving it. It should be a regular agenda item, not an annual event. He favors using scenario planning.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, agreed with the CIO from New Orleans. When real disaster hits, it’s survival first, then food and water. A massive event is unlikely, so plan to recover from smaller events that will happen.
John Pringle, RCMT, said that they do have a BC plan, which was as a result of becoming SOC compliant. They are a regional office, and rely on corporate for back up. Their major need is to have an ability to print checks. They back up their Oracle clients with Sunguard. They devised a 3-tiered approach for each client and all their clients opted for level 1!
This was a great topic, and a lively discussion. Thank you, Larry, for a great introduction and handout.
June 12, 2008 meeting
Present: Larry Godec, Jeff Reid, William Zauner, Tak Fujii, Randy Farner, Rich Hoffman, Jim Sutter, Jennifer Curlee, Joe Cracchiolo, Subbu Murthy, Sean Brown, Jeff Hecht, David Mann, John Pringle, Dave Phillips
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: Business Continuity Program
When Larry Godec, First American, worked at Nissan, he put together a BCP for them following 9/11. When he joined First American, he built on those ideas to put together an Emergency Response (ER), Disaster Recovery (DR) and Business Continuity (BC) program, in response to the Florida hurricanes, which wiped some of their offices in FL off the map. The ER ensures the safety of employees and the security of facilities. The DR restores the technology infrastructure following an event. The BC ensures the preservation of revenue through continuity of operations following an event. They have about 1400 offices in the US, and they have organized the program by region. Each region (now 10) has a business line continuity officer (BLCO), whose function includes documentation of BP flows, identifying recovery teams, each with fully defined tasks, recording all critical contact data, posts all material on the unit’s Sharepoint page, and facilitates annual review of plans and tabletop testing. The corporate office role (in Corporate Security) is to integrated plans, train BLCOs, perform periodic assessments and report to executive management. Read Larry’s handout to get a more complete feel for the four phases involved in the planning process. An event is defined as 40% workforce shortage, technology and facility unavailable, and critical vendor failure. The plan requires that you define objectives and the command process, identity recovery teams and detailed tasks, define the communications strategy and complete documentation. Larry’s handout shows samples, templates and storage. They use LDRPS, a system by Strohl, to manage the plan.
We asked the members to describe their BC plan, if any, and to highlight the most important problem they had in dealing with this issue.
Jeff Reid, Toyota Material Handling, said that they do not yet have a BC plan. Their problem is a lack of organizational maturity. Formed in 2003 and built for speed, they have too many other things to fix first, such as developing an IT governance approach, and a DR approach. At Western Digital they had both a DR and BC plan. At Conexant they had developed a BC plan, but when Jazz was spun off, it changed everything. That highlights the major challenge – trying to stay current with all the business changes.
William Zauner, JAMS, said that they do have a DR and BC plan and had a building in downtown NY, which was affected by the 9/11 attacks. However, they have found that the small problems cause most of the BC events. Recently on the same day, they had a bomb scare which shut down their DC office, and a fire, which affected their backup office in Boston. What they have found to be critical are the people, judges and phone systems, not the computer systems and infrastructure.
Tak Fujii, Olson Company, they are a small company but do have a BC and DR plan in place as the owner put a lot of emphasis on them. However, only the DR system is kept up-to-date. The BC has not been tested for 4 years, people have changed and contact data is out of date. Thus the IT department becomes the BC resource, by default.
Randy Farner, Vitreous Solutions, agreed with Tak that the IT group used to be the default group – no one in the business seemed to care. Things changed at the Auto Club after the Houston hurricane. They developed an emergency response team, with joint ownership by the business, HR and IT.
Rich Hoffman, ex-HISNA, said that plans are great but in the end, it’s the people who are the most important element. He mentioned a talk given by the CIO of the city of New Orleans, who said that when Katrina hit all their plans were rendered ineffective. It soon became survival first, food and water second, and everything else a distant third. At Yamaha, they did some planning but never put it into the job description, and so no one was made responsible. At Hyundai, when the roof fell in, they had to keep people out, and didn’t have an 800 # for employees to call to find out the latest status.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, agreed with my opening comments that BC seems to be a great opportunity for the CIO to show business acumen and executive potential. He mentioned how Dave Kepler at Dow Chemical is now Chief of Business Sustainability, responsible for not only IT but for all Dow’s Green activities and raw material availability. At Rockwell’s auto parts company, which was contracted to provide sunroofs to VW in 35 seconds after receiving the order, BC has a totally different meaning. In IT they had a back-up data center in Dallas until changes in the world political climate (when the Berlin Wall came down) caused a major business reduction. They eventually phased out the back-up center and went with Sunguard.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that BC has all sorts of implications for a manufacturing company. They have started on a BC project, headed by a retired business executive. IT is working on a DR plan first. They store all documents on Iron Mountain. Their defined event is a 7.9 earthquake.
Joe Cracchiolo, FluidMaster, said that they built a BC/DR plan 5 years ago. It has become an IT responsibility. Their event envisions that most of the current staff will be engaged in saving their own family unit. Their major problem was how to build a plan for someone from the outside to execute. Another fact is that the technology has changed significantly since they first built a plan, and through the years, the IT challenge is not as significant. Being out of action for 12 hours is not a real problem, but it can affect customer confidence.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that they do have DR (plan and tested), using Sunguard as a last resort. They don’t have a BC plan. They have tried to think through 3 scenarios – HQ gone, Data Center gone, and both gone. There is a difference between some availability, and a complete disaster. In the end, it’s the people who will make the difference.
Subbu Murthy, USourceIT, said that 90% of disasters need a DR plan, not a BC plan. The changes in technology allow for shared services, and building a DR will be much cheaper. A lot of it is common sense, and paying attention to the potential problem goes a long way to solving it. It should be a regular agenda item, not an annual event. He favors using scenario planning.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, agreed with the CIO from New Orleans. When real disaster hits, it’s survival first, then food and water. A massive event is unlikely, so plan to recover from smaller events that will happen.
John Pringle, RCMT, said that they do have a BC plan, which was as a result of becoming SOC compliant. They are a regional office, and rely on corporate for back up. Their major need is to have an ability to print checks. They back up their Oracle clients with Sunguard. They devised a 3-tiered approach for each client and all their clients opted for level 1!
This was a great topic, and a lively discussion. Thank you, Larry, for a great introduction and handout.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 5-8-08
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
May 8, 2008 meeting
Present: Rich Hoffman, Paul Gray, Andy King, Rich Cormier, Joel Manfredo, Randy Miller, Jim Sutter, Joe Cracchiolo, Mitch Morris, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Subbu Murthy, John Pringle, Dave Phillips
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: Virtual workers – does it matter where you work from?
Rich Hoffman, ex-HISNA, was going to present his introduction remotely to see if it affected the quality of the presentation and subsequent discussion. But in the end, he arrived in person to present his list of questions to the group (see attached). The 1st few questions are about how many employees are virtual today (even if you exclude field and service personnel)? It’s hard to find a definitive answer but, according to Joel Manfredo, IBM is 40% virtual, and has saved $350M in office rental from workstation hotelling. SUN is almost too successful, and many of their staff do not want to go in to the office as almost no one is there, except 1st year employees who are not allowed to telecommute. What kind of jobs can be/should be done from home? Jobs that are measurable, independent, unsupervised (like claims processing, contract administration, Helpdesk), that don’t involve much face time with customers. What companies are using virtual departments? Does it depend on where they are located? London used to have 30% of all UK office workers commuting to downtown locations, so they had to disperse for logistic reasons. Prudential had a central office downtown LA but the neighborhood changed and they ended up with two locations in the valley. Does working from home come naturally to boomers? No. To Gen X? Yes – they even text each other in the same office! How do you get virtual workers to care about the company? They won’t unless they are treated right – see John Pringle’s comments from last week. Paul Gray found that they can’t work offsite all the time – they need to spend some time together. Rich expressed the opinion that only customer facing jobs had to be onsite – business analysts, client principles, process specialists/owners. Other jobs such as operations/production environment could be done offsite, but in 1st world countries, if you are concerned about downtime or business continuity (see Larry Godec’s topic next month). Rich handed out a Virtual Workplace Do’s and Don’ts from Business Week, which is very good. In summary:
Do’s: Get good gear; encourage small talk; help them stop; create office space for when they come in to the office; set goals.
Don’ts: neglect training; assume it’s a fit for all employees; lose track of people; forget face time.
We asked each member to talk to his/her approach re virtual workers.
Paul Gray, Claremont (Emeritus), co-wrote the 1st book on this topic with Jack Nilles years ago. They found that people could work at home/telecommute a lot of the time but not all the time. Whether a company was successful or not depended whether the management was for or against it. They found that to be successful at universities, it had to be interactive. He did it successfully at Stanford in the 60’s, but no one would go for it at Claremont.
Andy King, SitOnIt Seating, said that it depended on the culture. If you can define the deliverables, then it can be successful. You have to have the right mix, because it is not fun being the employees in the office fielding all the questions when most of the other employees are telecommuting.
Rich Cormier, Edwards Lifesciences, said that it could work depending on the job. They have used telecommuting centers, and have warehouses offsite. To get some of the community interfacing and human connecting, people from different companies would get together.
Joel Manfredo said that he was a member of the Lotus learning space council. They had no issues with telecommuting people staying engaged. Companies like SUN and GSA are deep into it. They have characterized each job, and each person, as suitable or not. Productivity for the right job and person goes up.
Randy Miller, Toshiba ABS, said that they did not have a formal policy regarding telecommuting – informally, it depended on the person and the position. They would allow it to keep the knowledge of the employee. When they conducted an employment engagement study, they found the virtual worker to be very demanding.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said that the general trend was to become more virtual. The Winery is very traditional and discourages telecommuting. At Rockwell, they tried telecommuting but insisted that everyone had to be in the office on Mon. and Fri. and during “core” hours. He found that at USC, the trend was against it as they were very team and relationship oriented. That doesn’t seem to matter at UCI.
Mitch Morris, IAMPO, said that telecommuting works for those who want it, depending on the company and culture. There is still the question of how best to manage those who are virtual. IAMPO has a policy against telecommuting.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that when they were a small company, everybody came in to work. Since 9/11 they have grown at 60% and have 6 facilities. Manufacturing is done onsite. IT employees are working remotely, and at odd hours. They use tools like “Go to Meeting” to keep in touch.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that their HR is very much against telecommuting. He has no problems with individuals working at home. He took some classes on TV and it worked out well. He encourages employees to do the same. Working remotely works for certain kinds of jobs, but no all. He wonders how individuals become managers if all their experience is being a virtual employee.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, finds that certain administrative functions can be done remotely, but they operate as a team to respond to client needs, and they find that having everyone in the office most of the time works better for them.
Subbu Murthy, USourceIT, said it depends on the 4 Cs – the culture (trusting that the worker will perform); communication (ability of the worker and manager, and tools); cost (balancing the savings in office space vs. cost of network, etc.); and collaboration skills.
John Pringle, RCMT, agreed in depends on the culture but he warned that employers would have to become more flexible because unemployment is less than 2%. We will have to do more of this, rather than less. At RCMT, 80% of their Oracle practice is done remotely. In the past, it was for cost reduction reasons. In the future, it will be to accommodate human capital flexibility demands.
See you on June 12, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260.
May 8, 2008 meeting
Present: Rich Hoffman, Paul Gray, Andy King, Rich Cormier, Joel Manfredo, Randy Miller, Jim Sutter, Joe Cracchiolo, Mitch Morris, Jennifer Curlee, Jeff Hecht, Sean Brown, Subbu Murthy, John Pringle, Dave Phillips
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: Virtual workers – does it matter where you work from?
Rich Hoffman, ex-HISNA, was going to present his introduction remotely to see if it affected the quality of the presentation and subsequent discussion. But in the end, he arrived in person to present his list of questions to the group (see attached). The 1st few questions are about how many employees are virtual today (even if you exclude field and service personnel)? It’s hard to find a definitive answer but, according to Joel Manfredo, IBM is 40% virtual, and has saved $350M in office rental from workstation hotelling. SUN is almost too successful, and many of their staff do not want to go in to the office as almost no one is there, except 1st year employees who are not allowed to telecommute. What kind of jobs can be/should be done from home? Jobs that are measurable, independent, unsupervised (like claims processing, contract administration, Helpdesk), that don’t involve much face time with customers. What companies are using virtual departments? Does it depend on where they are located? London used to have 30% of all UK office workers commuting to downtown locations, so they had to disperse for logistic reasons. Prudential had a central office downtown LA but the neighborhood changed and they ended up with two locations in the valley. Does working from home come naturally to boomers? No. To Gen X? Yes – they even text each other in the same office! How do you get virtual workers to care about the company? They won’t unless they are treated right – see John Pringle’s comments from last week. Paul Gray found that they can’t work offsite all the time – they need to spend some time together. Rich expressed the opinion that only customer facing jobs had to be onsite – business analysts, client principles, process specialists/owners. Other jobs such as operations/production environment could be done offsite, but in 1st world countries, if you are concerned about downtime or business continuity (see Larry Godec’s topic next month). Rich handed out a Virtual Workplace Do’s and Don’ts from Business Week, which is very good. In summary:
Do’s: Get good gear; encourage small talk; help them stop; create office space for when they come in to the office; set goals.
Don’ts: neglect training; assume it’s a fit for all employees; lose track of people; forget face time.
We asked each member to talk to his/her approach re virtual workers.
Paul Gray, Claremont (Emeritus), co-wrote the 1st book on this topic with Jack Nilles years ago. They found that people could work at home/telecommute a lot of the time but not all the time. Whether a company was successful or not depended whether the management was for or against it. They found that to be successful at universities, it had to be interactive. He did it successfully at Stanford in the 60’s, but no one would go for it at Claremont.
Andy King, SitOnIt Seating, said that it depended on the culture. If you can define the deliverables, then it can be successful. You have to have the right mix, because it is not fun being the employees in the office fielding all the questions when most of the other employees are telecommuting.
Rich Cormier, Edwards Lifesciences, said that it could work depending on the job. They have used telecommuting centers, and have warehouses offsite. To get some of the community interfacing and human connecting, people from different companies would get together.
Joel Manfredo said that he was a member of the Lotus learning space council. They had no issues with telecommuting people staying engaged. Companies like SUN and GSA are deep into it. They have characterized each job, and each person, as suitable or not. Productivity for the right job and person goes up.
Randy Miller, Toshiba ABS, said that they did not have a formal policy regarding telecommuting – informally, it depended on the person and the position. They would allow it to keep the knowledge of the employee. When they conducted an employment engagement study, they found the virtual worker to be very demanding.
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group, said that the general trend was to become more virtual. The Winery is very traditional and discourages telecommuting. At Rockwell, they tried telecommuting but insisted that everyone had to be in the office on Mon. and Fri. and during “core” hours. He found that at USC, the trend was against it as they were very team and relationship oriented. That doesn’t seem to matter at UCI.
Mitch Morris, IAMPO, said that telecommuting works for those who want it, depending on the company and culture. There is still the question of how best to manage those who are virtual. IAMPO has a policy against telecommuting.
Jennifer Curlee, Surefire, said that when they were a small company, everybody came in to work. Since 9/11 they have grown at 60% and have 6 facilities. Manufacturing is done onsite. IT employees are working remotely, and at odd hours. They use tools like “Go to Meeting” to keep in touch.
Jeff Hecht, Word & Brown, said that their HR is very much against telecommuting. He has no problems with individuals working at home. He took some classes on TV and it worked out well. He encourages employees to do the same. Working remotely works for certain kinds of jobs, but no all. He wonders how individuals become managers if all their experience is being a virtual employee.
Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, finds that certain administrative functions can be done remotely, but they operate as a team to respond to client needs, and they find that having everyone in the office most of the time works better for them.
Subbu Murthy, USourceIT, said it depends on the 4 Cs – the culture (trusting that the worker will perform); communication (ability of the worker and manager, and tools); cost (balancing the savings in office space vs. cost of network, etc.); and collaboration skills.
John Pringle, RCMT, agreed in depends on the culture but he warned that employers would have to become more flexible because unemployment is less than 2%. We will have to do more of this, rather than less. At RCMT, 80% of their Oracle practice is done remotely. In the past, it was for cost reduction reasons. In the future, it will be to accommodate human capital flexibility demands.
See you on June 12, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260.
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