CRM

What is the biggest challenge in getting a job as a first-time CIO? Is it out-competing others who look similar on paper?

I think there is a tremendous amount of competition. Most of the CIO positions out there are usually going through some type of an executive recruiting network. The recruiters I talked to don't usually pull up a set of criteria in a database online. One recruiter I talked to doesn't even recommend candidates putting information into an executive recruiting online database, because most executive recruiters aren't going to use it. They're going to look to the contacts and network of sitting CIOs or deputy CIOs to ask if there is someone on their staff or someone they know.
You became CIO of the World Wildlife Fund at age 37. What helped you most to get that job?

I was recruited for it. I did not approach an executive recruiter for that position; they approached me, at the recommendation of another sitting CIO. I had established my credentials in the private and for-profit sector. I had gotten experience with a variety of technologies at some pretty tier-one organizations: it was Sallie Mae on the financial services side, and PricewaterhouseCoopers on the consulting side. I had gotten all my tickets punched. I got my technical MBA at Johns Hopkins University. I actually took it a step farther. A year after I obtained by graduate degree I started teaching as an adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins -- intentionally.
As a way to increase your network?

Increase my network, increase my exposure. As an adjunct faculty I was giving back to the IT community and the educational community, but at the same time I was greasing the skids for easier access to publications. When someone was looking at my bio and saw I was a director of this, a tech MBA and teach at a graduate level, when I submitted articles I believe they had a little more merit behind them.
What's the biggest mistake you made in plotting your career?

I'm not sure that I made any.
None?

I really don't think that I have. I've gotten consulting experience, I've gotten for-profit experience, I've gotten Big Five experience, I got my tech MBA, I've got publishing experience, I've got my graduate adjunct faculty. The only thing that I would -- I don't know if this is really a mistake. I was about to say, started my graduate work earlier. But Hopkins wouldn't really let me enroll in the program until I had a specific number of years of business experience.
Fifty percent of your experience is in consulting, and you strongly recommend that aspiring CIOs work as consultants. Why?

You've got to get both sides of the fence if you want to be a viable CIO. You have to understand the consulting proposition. You have to know also how to manage consultants and vendors.

Being a consultant makes you a little bit humble. There are many instances where you have to sidestep and put the brakes on what you may know technically or business wise. You may have to deal with a client or a customer that is not that smart or that doesn't know as much as you do, and you've got to figure out creative and diplomatic ways to get that customer on board or eliminate any roadblocks that the customer may be putting up. In the organizations that use consultants regularly, some of the internal employees are a little bit jaded. They're thinking, 'Why did we have to go to the outside, when we could have probably done this on the inside.' Serving in a consulting role gives you far more experience than flat-out IT experience.
Define for us what you call in your book "the IT glasshouse."

I define the glasshouse as the central IT management infrastructure of the past where all decisions, all the systems and all the policies were pretty much made within the IT shop. If you had to classify it as a government, it would be an IT monarchy. Today, I don't believe that works. I am not a fan of 100% decentralized IT, where managers and staff are completely decentralized and put into business units. I am not saying do a 180-degree from the old model. But I do think that today's CIOs need to work more with the business units and customers of their organizations and form better relations to share the risks, responsibilities and project sponsorship, as opposed to assuming the responsibility in IT or forcing a system on a business unit.
There is a lot of talk about letting your business units take responsibility for the technology they use. But how do you do that? Do you get it in writing?

I do. But I don't let them take responsibility for the technology. I let them take responsibility for the business process that drives the solution. So when we are looking at doing a requirement analysis for trying to solve some problem or drive some goal, whether it is increasing revenue or something else, when we put budgeted dollars toward the project, we use an organizational structure that integrates with the project manager in the business unit itself. I bolt on an IT lead and have at least one business VP take accountability as co-executive sponsors. At the end of the day if I don't get signature from a business unit sponsor for a business unit application, I will not press forward. I make the calls for infrastructure, for security, all those good things. That is my job. But if we are looking for a CRM system, for example, to help drive donor management, the CIO should not own that system. IT should be owned by the business unit that is responsible for the revenue.

I have a simple phrase: IT drives technology decisions. The business units drive application business technology.
I thought it was refreshing to read in your book that a CIO should have a solid grounding in technology, because so much of what you hear now is that this position is being taken over by businesspeople.

I just met one the other day. A new CIO from the business unit, and I think he's scared. Think about it. I take the inverse view that businesspeople can do the job. I think it is way off, and I am not shy in stating that. Look, this is a profession that in my case includes 20 years of work experience at some of the best companies in America. I have gotten a top-tier education. If you combine all that together, I am somewhere in the 28-year range of progressive IT skills and experience, managing technology and applying it to business. Now, would you hire someone who came up that track, who had all that experience in IT, to head up your financial organization? I wouldn't.
The flip side is why is it hard for technical people to speak in business terms?

Given the amount of time they work on the technology side versus the amount of time they spend in the business unit side, it is so easy to lapse back into all of the different acronyms and the lingo the technology people use. I'll be honest. I have to force myself to be conscious of the fact that when I am speaking to a nontechnical audience to not be too technical. I have to force myself, today, and I am a sitting CIO with a new book out giving guidance to others on how to follow in my footsteps. It's hard.
Does it have anything to do with the notion that the kind of people attracted to technology are very concrete in their thinking; they simply think in a different way from businesspeople?

Working in the technology area takes an analytical, top-down, logical, process-oriented person. That said, I think at some point in their career they have to force themselves to branch off and submerse themselves in an environment, like an MBA, which makes them recognize the other side of the fence and to think like a business person. The technology field attracts far more the introvert than the extrovert. I probably started out as a pretty strong-typed introvert and became a forced extrovert as a result of going up the ladder.
When did you turn outward?

When I realized that it was absolutely one of the most important skills needed for an IT executive to have excellent communication skills.
How long did it take you to hone your presentation skills?

Oh gosh. I'll give you the answer in the form of advice given to me from one of my mentors. I asked how long it would be before I was completely comfortable giving presentations to an audience I had never met before. The answer was, once you've done your first 100 or so, you'll get the hang of it.
Your book's title is Straight to the Top, and top for you is CIO. Do you ever think there is somewhere else to go once you're a CIO?

Absolutely. I think it is the next-generation track to chief operating officer, and potentially a CEO of a technology company. I can tell that my career aspirations include one or two of these tracks.
You devoted an entire chapter to golf. I found that a bit shocking.

It wasn't the whole chapter. Half of it was about the vendor management function. I talk about the importance of relying on vendors, having a vendor management strategy, in my case reducing the overall number of vendors, and distinguishing between commodity-based vendors and strategic vendors. I consider Dell a commodity-based vendor. I buy stuff from them and put it in. A strategic vendor will actually help me go from Point A to Point B. It might be a CRM vendor. It might be a consulting vendor. And I talk about that whole process of how do you manage and scorecard your vendor and different approaches for doing that. And I ask other CIOs how they do it. So you'll see stuff about outsourcing.

Then, halfway through Chapter 8 is when I start talking about integrating sports to build your relationships and to grow your network and build stronger relationships with your vendors.
But why go out with them at all, especially given the sensitivity about conflict of interest these days?

Well, let me ask you, define conflict of interest.
There are some companies that say don't even go out for a cup of coffee with your vendors, because you don't need to be friends with them or beholden.

That would be the federal government. And you know what? I understand why they do it. But I don't think that a cup of coffee is going to materially make a difference in the decision to purchase goods or services. I think the federal government has just decided to take that track. But I take the issue beyond the level of the CIO. How many CEOs do you know who go out and have dinner with some of their partners and vendors and colleagues? And how many CEOs and presidents do you see on the golf course? I can tell you I played golf in a tournament and John Thompson was there. He is not a CIO. He is the CEO for Symantec.

It doesn't have to be about who pays for what, as I clarified in my book. My guidance to people is, check what your policies are. If there is a no-pay policy, fine, pay for yourself. There are some clear benefits of getting out of the office and spending some time with people, getting to know them. And at the end of the day, because I have a better relationship both professionally and through sports, I have several vendors who I can pick up the phone and say, 'Listen Tom, I need this done, you need to help me out with this.' Now granted, they should be able to do that regardless, as a vendor. But it doesn't work that way. And if you look at the quotes from the vendors in the book, people tend to reciprocate, form partnerships and get more stuff done, cut through the [bull], when they have a better relationship. And I have found that a 30-minute meeting in my office doesn't get me a better relationship with a strategic vendor.
Another piece of advice you give is that a CIO has to think like a chief financial officer. Why?

If you don't start thinking like a CFO, you're going to be reporting to one.
What is so bad about reporting to the CFO?

Because historically, CIOs who report to CFOs are doing so because the CFO is not comfortable with their financial management skills, or the CIOs need to be reined in on their cost controls. The other research that I found is that CIOs who reported in to the CFO spent overall less percent of the company's revenue than those that didn't. A CFO's job is internal controls, audit, cost containment, financial management and reporting. I don't think that is the best creative place to put a potential innovator and catalyst, such as the CIO, who interfaces with just about everybody. There is no other executive that touches every other point of the organization.

Let us know what you think about the story; email: Linda Tucci, Senior News Writer

Gregory Smith, author of "Straight to the Top: Becoming a World-Class CIO" and CIO of the World Wildlife Fund, talks about his carefully plotted route to the executive ranks and offers some tips for aspiring CIOs.

Is business and IT alignment an issue at Avnet?

When I started doing this two years ago, I said to the team, 'I want to be clear on this, there are no IT problems, there are only business problems.' The last thing in the world I want is the latest whiz-bang technology. That's not what we're about. What I basically said was 'No toys.' The difference between a toy and a technology is whether we're doing it purely for the sake of the fun of the technology or we're doing it to solve a business problem.
Is that something you've seen IT departments get lost in -- or indulge in?

Oh, sure. I think that's normal and natural because IT people, by their very nature -- the good ones -- are curious. They're puzzle solvers, they love new technologies. So the fun of understanding all of that is to play with new technologies. You have to do that. That's called incubation, experimentation, etc. But you can't lose track of the fact that we don't need everyone with a BlackBerry on their belt. What we need is everybody communicating better.
Are you seen as the bad guy?

Yes, I'm always the bad guy; that's my role. I'm the discipline process that makes sure we keep it all in check. But I am more the guide than anything else. The easiest way I can say it to you is I have the license to ask all the dumb questions, and when I understand it, then I'm confident that we're going in the right direction.
What would your IT department say was its biggest headache or challenge this year? A lot of CIOs I've spoken with recently have named business intelligence projects, for example.

I'm going to put it in a different perspective. From my point of view, I think business intelligence is critical, but it's had a lot more hype than delivery. So we've ended up with all kinds of tools, some of which we've bought and then ultimately threw away. I don't want that kind of BI. CRM, same thing. When I ran the business, the salesforce yelled, 'CRM, CRM, we've got to have CRM.' So we built CRM. They didn't put the data in the system. If you don't put the data in the system, you've wasted everybody's time and money. So I don't want that kind of CRM. What I really want is practical solutions to the business problems that people face every day.
What's a good example of that technology?

We have something on the computer side we call Channel Connection. Channel Connection really is a set of computerized tools, Web-based, that allow our customers to have access to easier quoting, faster delivery of information, transportation, product data -- you name it and they've got access to it on their desktop, through a Web-based interface. It's a very, very, powerful tool.
Are you able to communicate with your CTO? Are you speaking the same language?

No, it's funny. I say to [CTO Bill Chapman] all the time, 'OK, now say that in English.' We do communicate very well. But obviously, he's four layers deep in the details beyond which I either am interested in or understand, take your pick. But the bottom line is that at the end of the day, he completely not only understands but buys into the notion that it has to be an ROI, it has to be a solution. I want to give Bill a lot of credit for that.
In July 2003, Ed Kamins took over the CIO role at Phoenix-based Avnet Inc., a Fortune 500 marketer, distributor and reseller of electronic components and computers. Using his marketing and engineering background, Kamins focused on reinventing the IT department to focus on the bottom line, contributing to Avnet's revenue growth over the past nine years from $5 billion to $11 billion per year.

What are the top three priorities for 2005?

The first one would definitely be to completely understand business needs and how IT can support them and provide leadership. We're here to figure out how to make the business work better. The second trend would involve some level of compliance. And the third one would be to stabilize the mess we created ourselves in our Web infrastructures and to sort out and run things more efficiently and effectively.
You talk a lot about the importance of IT people understanding the business. Were you hired for your business experience?

Yes, I was hired for that. George [George Colony, Forrester's CEO] has even told me that. He wants someone with business savvy. I was a management consultant for 15 years before I got into IT.

And I know technology better than most CIOs. My focus is always on driving and moving the business forward.

I also work very closely with all the other executives at Forrester. We meet on a regular and even ad hoc basis. I've only been here two and half months, and I feel the only way to learn the business is to roll up my sleeves and dive right in to it. I've even gone on some sales and client calls. There's no better way than walking in their [the business unit executives] shoes to feel their pain and completely understand the business.
You've also been charged with handling Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for the IT organization. Is this an IT or business initiative?

Compliance is definitely a major business initiative at Forrester. We are a relatively small public company. Compliance isn't anything new; the new part is that it's now legislated. Compliance requirements have been in place in large companies for years. At smaller companies, we just didn't have formal processes documented like larger companies.

So now we're just taking the time to document processes and cross our t's and dot our i's.
You were quoted you as saying you'd like to "help ensure that the company's IT strategy more closely mirrors advice the company gives externally to clients." Can you elaborate on this?

In my new position, I wear a few hats. George [Colony] asked me to look at our research and make sure it's relevant to our target audience. I used to belong to that audience [Fortune 500 CIOs]. So I faithfully read all the research we write and try to give it a QA check.

In cases where it applies to a company of our size, I try to leverage the knowledge we offer others and apply it to our own internal projects and processes.
When you were CIO at Callisma, you said your biggest success at the time was "building high-performance IT management teams that are passionate to build great systems." Is this still one of your top priorities?

Definitely. Unfortunately, I can't do much of this alone. I need people who are passionate about their work. I've inherited a fairly good team here.

But we're also looking outside to bring in a few people, to replace some turnover. We currently have a staff of 28 people in IT and I plan to hire approximately six more people in the near future -- in our operations, help desk, applications development and Web site development groups. The rest of my staffing needs will be augmented by external resources, as necessary.
Colony has said that today's Internet is "dumb, boring and isolated." Have you been directed to set up systems for a better, more interactive Internet?

I'm actively pursuing it [the X Internet]. A lot has to do with organic IT and organic business. Many other companies have the same vision, but just call it something else [instead of X Internet]. Basically, it's all about making technology more flexible and responsive to the business; costing less money and creating shorter cycle times to achieve the needs of the business.

This is definitely a journey - not a one-time event. One way to get us to that vision is to re-architect a solution. Much of the future Web will be driven by the extended Internet -- a connection of the physical world with the Web world.

You'll see a lot of use of Wi-Fi to connect everything and everyone. Our business isn't the same as a consumer goods service -- where they just want to track things to see if they're selling. We want to look at how our research is used after it leaves our Web site. We're looking to implement underlying technology for the X Internet. With that in mind, we plan to make our Web site as interesting, active and useful as possible.
Forrester said IT budgets have finally loosened up this year. Did that happen in your group? If so, how will you spend it?

Our budget did increase. We're spending the additional money this year to increase staffing and to complete a few large projects. We have five major initiatives for the remainder of this year.

Throughout each of these, we will extensively leverage Forrester's own research and advice that we provide to our clients, and apply it to our own internal systems and processes.

We are building a complete data warehouse/BI [business intelligence] reporting solution. On the heels of a recently completed major upgrade to our Siebel CRM system, we are implementing continuous customer management processes, in which we will use data cleansing tools to improve the quality of our data in Siebel -- and revise access controls, change processes and re-architect interfaces to keep the data clean.

We will redesign our entire outbound e-mail marketing process with our customers, consolidate four existing systems into one, and more tightly integrate that with Siebel.

Following a recently completed project to improve search and browse, we are investing to further improve our external customer facing Web site. Lastly, we have a number of infrastructure and internal IT projects in the works, including new e-mail systems, network and server infrastructure refreshes.
Tell me more about your BI/reporting solution.

Our data warehouse will include data from our Siebel CRM, PeopleSoft Finance and HR, and customer-facing Web site. We plan to deliver, on an incremental basis, a complete set of Web-delivered self-service reports to serve all of our operating and corporate groups.

Based on recommendations from our own Forrester analysts, we are also creating an active dashboard that presents data that are leading indicators of major business drivers.

For example, we will be looking at the frequency with which our research is downloaded or read on our Web site, which we have found to be a leading indicator of customer renewal rates. Active dashboards, those based on leading indicators, will allow us to take preventative actions, rather than just letting us look in the rear view mirror at what transpired last month.
George Orlov took over the role of CIO/CTO at Forrester Research in late December. He is in the unusual position of having to guarantee that the company's IT strategy reflects the advice and research the firm provides to its clients. In an interview with SearchCIO, Orlov discussed his 2005 priorities and his plans to stay connected with the business side of the house.

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