To be a successful CIO and successful business leader

I was reading an article: Customer Data Should Drive IT Decisions on CIO.com by Michelle McKenna. Michelle is a senior vice president and CIO at Universal Orlando Resort in Orlando. Michelle writes in this article on how she could devise the strategy of her company based on the customer data. Incidentally she used the IT to capture and analyze the data. I did mention in my earlier blog about IT’s relevancy in customer relationship management.

It is very apparent from this case in point that, a CIO can become a transformation agent of a company & be a successful business leader in doing so.

Having an affair with a customer

Last week I happened to visit a mall & happened to overhear the conversation over the counter – “Find out who is the customer contact and see whether you can have an affair with her”. A senior colleague was suggesting a junior – who was trying to break an ice with a customer.

It sounded very funny to me. However, when went through deeply, it made sense. What teenagers/people do when they are in love? They try to find out every minute detail of the person they are in love with. He/she want to know what the other person’s likes/dislikes, hobbies, interests and what not? They approach the other person very carefully and treat them very important.

You know what? If we apply these principles or even 10% of these principles with our customers, our day is done. We get ideas to serve them better. When we serve them better, they obviously feel good and naturally come back to us. That is all what is relationship is about.

In the business language, having an affair with the customer is building good customer relationship. You might ask a question, what is IT has to do with customer relationship? My answer is most of it. You can capture all your customer information through the IT systems. They can help you get the single view of the customer, interests and what not? You can leverage IT to gather information and monitor the relationship. Here you go..

Reactive vs. Proactive IT

In most of the organizations today, business always drives what IT has to do. Business is always under the impression that IT solutions are costly and time consuming. To address the short term need, business always asks for the tactical /quick fix from the IT folks. Most of the time, IT department bends to the pressure. So, IT has been reacting to the business needs and trying to meet the ends.

One of the Management consulting firm partner comments on this game of alignment as –“ IT has a list of things it’s working on, perhaps with some subjective connection to business objectives, and a hurried business agrees that, yes, this is the right list.”

Question is how IT can be proactive & influence business? IT can get overall picture of the landscape of software, hardware, processes. If it focuses on improving the business processes / business efficiency, it can proactively suggest changes to business. Quantify the benefits in terms of response time, strategic business benefit, competitive advantage etc. Ask for business endorsement for these initiatives.

Forrester suggests “Business Focused Enterprise Architecture” for strategically aligning IT & business. According to this process, IT needs to
Ø Identify key outcomes
Ø Analyze outcome drivers
Ø Develop & propose concepts
Ø Incorporate into planning
Ø Build into “To be” architecture.

IT can become a strategic partner to the organization, only if it becomes proactive in its approach.

Business Transformation

Ralph Szygenda, CIO of General Motors states in the Wall Street Journal article, “My job is to use IT to transform the business.” He estimates that his cost-cutting has added $5 billion to GM’s bottom line over the past decade. He used IT to eliminate the redundant efforts/processes in the Car design and other processes.

In any organization, the IT can play a role of transformation agent by aligning business and IT. Most of the time, the business processes across LOBs/functions will be working in silos. IT can look at the bigger picture and integrate/optimize the resources across organization. So, CTOs and CIOs play an important role to use the IT effectively and efficiently.

Business process management (BPM) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) enable organizations to optimize their processes and IT infrastructure. These technologies also enable companies to be agile to new business requirements. So, it is very important for CXOs to look at technology as a strategic tool rather than tactical requirement.

Customer experience

How has been your experience as a customer to a good service provider? Or how do you feel when you use a good product? WOW!!
How did you feel when you went through a bad experience as a customer either consuming a service or product? “What a pain!!”

Yes, I did feel the same way.. When you come across something innovative either as a service or product, you do feel that “WOW-What an experience?” So the key to success is to make the customer feel the “WOW” with you or your product more often..

How do you make these feelings happen? There is only one way for it. Think through the customer. Go through his experience. Understand what are his pains are? Address it.It is so simple. Yet difficult to attain because, there are so many different types of them to address.

Are we listening enough?

Each one of us who are playing in the market is selling either some product or service or both. Who do you think is the expert of your offerings? Is it the sales people who are selling to customer, is it the assembler who is in the shop floor, is it the designer who is drawing on the board? Is it the marketing person who analyses what the customer needs are? Who is it who is the expert of your offerings?

If you have chosen anyone from the above list then according to me you need to think through.. In my opinion the person who is the expert of your offering is the consumer/customer. Go and ask him what is the fault of your offering.. He would come up with at least 3-4 points..

Do you wonder why it so? Question is Are we listening enough?..

Change is inevitable..

According to IBM's Global CEO study 2008, the CEOs of fortune 1000 companies are anticipating enormous change. As everyone aware change is inevitable. Changing demographics, changing customer needs, changing customer awareness, globalization, competition and many more other factors affect the market dynamics and hence a corporation/business entity.

If a business has to be successful the leadership team (CXOs) have to hear the unheard and change the course of action. It is very important to look at the strategic value of any initiative than just looking at tactical benefit. The organizations which keep looking at the tactical benefits than the strategic ones will ultimately loose out to the competition. We have so many examples of market leaders loosing out to the competition.

Innovation and change should be the mantra of CXOs to attain & retain the market leadership.