CIO Talk Radio Blog

3 Ways of Rethinking IT to deliver more choice, faster, on a bigger scale

In conversation, Jim Fortner (VP of IT Development & Operations, Global Business Services, P&G), Gregory Simpson (CTO, GE), and John Dick (CIO, Western Union) all make it clear, IT is no longer an enabler, but a true business partner at their enterprises.  (See:  Rethinking IT to deliver Choice, Speed, and Scale)

"There is a new paradigm of leadership ... a real strong business orientation in IT staff folks with strong executive management skills, business skills, understand the process, so it is retooling the organization to readily step up to the challenge. ...business telling us we have such a tremendous opportunity to take on more scope and more work. They are looking for us to come back with more choices and strategies. (Jim Fortner, P&G)

"The new normal has become the now normal." The historical review of yearlong metrics and benchmarks is dying. The new metrics are about "What do we need to do about that ...blinking red light right now." (Michel Janssen, CRO, the Hackett Group) "The idea of the new is really important. Things are happening so fast that relying on year old numbers is not doing it. The more you can get ... these things in real time, even if not a perfect real time, the better you are, and "whether or not you have the perfect bench mark if you have a metric that works, you can trend that over time and looking at the trends can be very valuable. ...If it is a metric that works for you and you are measuring yourself against yourself that is a believable trend."  (George Westerman, Research Scientist at the CISR, MIT, SLOAN School)