Der CIO muss Stratege sein

From tactician to strategist

The point of real change in how I viewed my role and that of technology, however, came when I became involved in a visionary project to develop customer relationship systems for Bristol-Myers. Working closely with our global director of sales force effectiveness, I had the opportunity to really sit down and think about how IT could make a strategic difference to the company. That experience changed my focus and role from being operational or tactical - where you´re thinking only about the next project and the delivery of services against agreed measures - to a strategist role where I was looking at the value of data in the customer relationship and the value of the information asset to the enterprise.

The environment I entered at Galderma was one that definitely needed help. In some ways, I´m still not sure that the people who interviewed me knew what their technology problems were, or what the business and IT strategy should be. They turned to me to create the glue for the company that would allow us to communicate and work as an efficient, fully profitable enterprise.

As soon as I arrived, I saw a clear opportunity to put in place a central strategy and instill an understanding of why such a strategy was important. With 28 ERPERP packages, we probably had a system from every vendor you can think of. Virtually every location had a different one, and that made it nearly impossible to centrally manage and use data effectivly. Alles zu ERP auf CIO.de

We couldn´t afford to invest in a massive infrastructure replacement without approval from the business leaders who owned the country-specific systems. Getting that approval became the initial thrust of the IT strategy. I could tell our employees that a single system is important, but I had to get people throughout the company to understand why, to see the value of a single system and to want to fund such a project.

The message I focused on was that data is an asset that when not managed properly becomes a millstone rather than something of value. I had to make it clear to those in the business units that unmanaged data rapidly spirals into something that everyone has to spend all their time translating and administrating, which means that there isn´t time for anyone to focus on delivering shareholder value. That was something they could take in.