Silicon CIO50 2009

Maybe a bit of self promotion here but hey ho!
Very pleased to have been voted in the silicon.com Top 50 CIO's
see link below:-


http://www.legalitprofessionals.com/index.php/news/619-peter-birley-amongst-50-most-influential-and-innovative-uk-cios

I think this is one more example of the power of Social Networking in combination with the more traditional ppromotion of articles and speaking which get your messages out.

Innovation - Getting the Ideas

Having achieved a reasonable core IT service (and most companies these days have probably achieved the 80% rule in this regard - we all have Microsoft Office and dozens of servers don’t we?) how do we differentiate from the competition?

Well we can use quality or price but these are all proven techniques that use buying power or process efficiencies and with some effort we could all go down those routes. What we need is something really different. Of course if you do come up with that something different you will be copied and your advantage may be short lived so you will need to maintain that lead, which can be addictive and expensive.

With that in mind, you need to be sure that any idea you come up with is fully costed with real benefits identified and is not just that ego trip. You need to add value to the client or customer process and be seen by them as an innovator. If it doesn’t add something to the client process then you need to consider if it is worth doing. Remember, everything we do should be to the benefit of the customer.

You may be saying “that’s great but how do you come up with the ideas in the first place?” Not all of us wake up in the middle of the night with a great idea and some of us that do, can’t remember it in the morning!

Innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas and whilst those that are generated may not be all IT related, it will do the CIO no harm to be seen to be leading on innovation.

I don’t have the complete answer to all this but I would like to throw in some thoughts about how to collect those new ideas:-

The Customer Value Chain

Understanding the business process, not just within your company but where it touches the customer, is a great way to start. Map your process into the customer from how they place the order and then, once you have completed your company’s work, what they do with the outcome. Review this process. It may lead you to find that they do things with your service or product that you could do for them at no or little extra cost, saving them time and effort.

Listen to Customers

Listen to customer feedback and look to fulfil their requirements where feasible but don’t just stop there, look beyond. Can you go the extra mile for very little extra effort?

Supplier Input

Ask your more strategic suppliers to provide input to your innovation programme. After all they are working in your marketplace and possibly with your competitors and your customers so they may have a view to the gaps in some of the services, or they may be able to relate the market dissatisfactions which could lead you to new solutions.


The Internal Innovation Portal

Create a web based portal to encourage employees to submit ideas. Create a process for review and feedback and make the process visible to all. Use this portal as the one place where all ideas are captured and managed.

The External Innovation Portal

Even better, give your clients access to an innovation portal so they can feed in ideas. Keep this separate from the internal one and maybe restrict visibility but ensure you feed back to the client. Use as many of their ideas as possible and let them know!

Web 2.0

Consider using the power of web 2.0 to help generate ideas - blogs and wikis either linked to the innovation portal or other vehicle, such as the intranet or specific marketing or departmental web pages. Starting discussions around customer service or new products can get the whole team thinking, which can lead to new ideas.

The External Marketplace

There is a wealth of untapped ideas out in the marketplace. Go to conferences and exhibitions and talk to people and you will be surprised the number of ideas that start to formulate from what is said. Somebody else’s experience or idea will start the thinking on how this could be adapted to your business or may start a new train of thought leading to several ideas.

Having (hopefully) collected lots of ideas, make sure they are put through the internal innovation portal so there is one place where they are recorded and then run a process to prioritise and identify cost, resource and benefits. Discuss them internally and also take the important ones to the customer and get their feedback. This will not only tell you if they will benefit the customer but the customer will see you as an innovator which will put you ahead of your competition. If you also deliver the innovation your street value will increase even further.

Last but not least, try to ensure you do a post review of innovations delivered and in particular the benefit derived. If it helped your company to win more business or increased the bottom line then it is a great advert for more of the same.

Innovation looks like a win-win to me!

10 Steps to Successful IT

We all want Successful IT but how do we get there? Well here are my 10 steps to successful IT which should help provoke some thoughts to create your own steps. Of course 10 is an arbitrary number and there could be more or less steps in order to reach your goal. It will depend on where you are starting from and how you define success. I have put them in order but this is not set in stone, as some will be parallel steps and some dependent on where you are in the maturity model and the size and type of business.

1. Ensure costs are understood and under control
You can’t achieve anything unless you understand your cost base so this has to be my number one. Once you have analysed the costs and dealt with any discrepancies it is important to keep them under control. A control system for authorising purchases and controlling invoices may be needed. Maintain reliable information on projected versus actual costs and the benefits of any IT investments.
Any linking of technology investments to business performance measurements would be a bonus.

2. The customer focus
Some people may say this should be number one. Don’t just consider your own company requirements but those that reflect the needs of your customer, otherwise it can focus you internally and restricts the vision beyond the walls of the company. The main customer is the company’s customer. It can be challenging to see how improving IT might make your customers more successful and this may require a fundamental shift to become more an integral part of the company’s operations in order to create real value for the ultimate customer.

3. Create and follow a strategy/ plan
Number three follows on from the customer focus and is the creation of a plan so you have a direction. Strategic business and IT systems plans must be grounded in explicit high priority customer needs and must be aligned. Planning, budgeting and execution should be conducted in a seamless fashion with outputs of one process a direct input into another. Most importantly the strategic goals objectives and direction are used to actually manage and evaluate the performance of the organisation.

4. Business engagement
You need to obtain, engage and maintain business buy in and ongoing support. The business should have been working with you on the previous steps so there are no surprises. Make sure you get board approval, communicate directional changes/ issues and keep the board informed. Find your supporters and nurture them. Position yourself as a senior manager to act as a bridge between top executives, line management and your IT professionals. Advise top managers on the worth of major technology decisions and investments. Promote productive relationships between users of technology and IT.

5. Tech Partners/ suppliers
A good supplier strategy can deliver a win-win for both parties. Suppliers can be an asset and a major weapon in your armoury. Treat them with respect. Choose partners that can deliver best in class products and services. Share the vision with them. Make sure they understand the challenges in your industry. Individuals within the suppliers are the real key to your success, so look to build relationships with those people.

6. Manage IT
Number six is about managing IT. Focus on metrics that really drive the performance of the business. Apply best practice where possible. Manage resources and direct scarce resources to high value/ high visibility projects. Support major cost reduction and service improvement efforts. Measure performance of key mission delivery processes and communicate them. It is also often worth carrying out some Benchmarks within your industry to see how you are comparing against your competitors.

7. Be project driven
Create a project portfolio and manage all IT projects as a programme. Manage individual projects as investments; ensuring a sound business case, that benefits are identified and agreed and stakeholders are fully involved. Don’t be afraid to cut your losses and if necessary have an exit strategy if a project is not going to work out. Sometimes difficult to sustain but don’t forget to manage risk and when looking at implementation use change control techniques so there are no surprises for the recipients. Be benefits driven and make sure they are realised. Consider managing large projects using EVM (Earned Value Method). Ambitious and complex projects should be broken down into smaller deliverables.

8. Ensure team working
A motivated, knowledgeable team is a great step to success. Think team! Operate as one team and include any key suppliers in that. Look at ways to motivate and reward the team but most of all engender trust and don’t be afraid to delegate. You can always put some soft controls in to ensure things keep within boundaries.
Communicate so everybody knows what is happening and what is expected of them. You will be surprised how people react to being treated as responsible individuals.

9. Train the team
Ensure that you have the right level of skills available to make things happen. Develop a Skills matrix based on your functional needs and then match your team’s individual skill levels to the matrix. Use this to highlight deficiencies and determine your training program. Consider sending people on relevant conferences and industry group meetings so they are aware of the wider world. Developing your people will pay off.

10. Shout about it
Shout about your success. Let people know what you are doing.
Create a communication plan. Make sure communication is regular and use every opportunity to talk about your achievements in terms of business benefit. In addition consider executive reports/ dashboards, progress reports and web 2.0 tools. Be prepared to give presentations to new starters and at departmental meetings. Consider external reporting and look at case studies for any successful implementations, writing magazine articles and talking at conferences.

Predictions 2009

Here are my musings on IT predictions for next year.
2009 will be a more difficult year with investment being curtailed in line with the recessional indications. This means that efficiency will remain the big thing although there will be some investment in technology other than for efficiency in order to position organisations for the end of the recession. Security will remain high on the agenda particularly for or in dealing with the public sector and so will risk and compliance issues.
This means on the cost/efficiency side companies will continue with the virtualisation to reduce the number of servers and the associated costs, software licence costs will come under spotlight, as will the old chestnut of outsourcing although to the enlightened this can be counter productive unless the technology department is very large.
We may see business process outsourcing and shared services grow as a number of organisations have already put their toe in the water with these types of service.
New areas such as SAAS (software as a service) and cloud computing (Servers on demand) could be on the agenda but think it is still a bit early for these as total solutions and more for specific applications. For smaller companies a full SAAS service with all applications delivered over the internet and paid for on a flexible usage basis could be attractive and a number of vendors are now starting to offer this facility.
Security requirements will see more encryption technologies being deployed at hardware level, for instance laptops being encrypted and software such as emails being encrypted. End point security will become more important with companies looking to close down USB and other entry points to the network.
The less paper environment which can reduce cost and offers a greener approach is back on the agenda with lots of organisations looking at this but it won’t be without pain as many people still like paper and its flexibility. It will put pressure on storage as more documents are scanned and we will see an increase in storage demands over 2009 and beyond as a result.
The push for efficiency and reduced office space will see home and mobile working continue to grow and with voice recognition improving every year we will see this creeping into the work place and eventually being available on mobile devices to create and control email without having to type!
Other areas that I predict are further use, at business level, of Collaboration and social networking and the continued move to Unified Communications to enable flexibility as people move around and to bring together all forms of communication.
Vista will still struggle with companies putting this off and maybe starting to think about jumping over it to Windows 7. Open source may get more attention as a cost saving measure but am still feeling that most companies wont take the plunge.
So an interesting year with reduced or static budgets and as a result companies looking to make quick wins using relatively fast to market technologies such as Sharepoint.The enlightened (and cash rich) may continue to invest ready for the upturn!
As with all predictiosn who knows!

Selling the IT Vision

IT is now an integral part of any business and can be aligned with a business’ success.

This success is not necessarily in sales terms, although a system offering competitive advantage to a client relationship could create just that, but generally more in efficiency and support.

The opposite is also true in that an IT disaster could bring down a business.

All this establishes that IT is important to the business - but does everybody in your organisation understand and support that? Do people in the business know where IT is going?

We as CIOs and IT leaders need to find a way to let the business know what IT is doing and why.

From an IT point of view it is often difficult selling this ‘vision’. In particular it can be hard to overcome the language barrier when communicating with the business so conversations can be held at the right level to engage colleagues across the organisation.

With this in mind and struggling myself to find a solution, I carried out a survey with a few colleagues to get some advice about what has worked for them.

From that research the following key considerations in creating an IT vision came out:

• Base the decisions for what is included in the IT vision on hard business facts and metrics
• Understand the challenges the business faces and link the IT vision to them
• Involve the business in the creation of the IT vision
• Get business sponsorship of the vision as early as possible
• Avoid discussion of technology and concentrate on business outcomes and events
• Keep the timeframe within a 12-36 month period
• Quantify the impact of adoption of particular programmes or technologies in terms of cost, risk and benefit
• Avoid terminology in explaining the vision
• Consider a range of options and communicate these
• Summarise with a high level road map for IT


These considerations told me the creation of the vision is the important part, in which the business must be fully engaged and which must reflect the business position. It confirms what many people have been talking about - I guess we have known for ages that IT must be aligned to the business if it is to be successful.

Following these considerations gives us an aligned vision with business involvement, support and sponsorship and therefore a solid foundation. But it is important the vision is communicated to the many not just the few.

Here are some areas for consideration in communicating the vision across your organisation.

For the content of your communication:

• Create an elevator speech
• Create a business-like presentation using Flash (not just PowerPoint) to make it interesting and interactive
• Remember the points from creation (avoid terminology/ concentrate on outcomes)

For delivering the vision:

• Involve a business sponsor in the delivery to show support
• Go on road shows
• Hold one-to-one meetings with key players - keep your pitch succinct
• Speak at departmental meetings
• Send out emails with your presentation
• Create a web 2.0 portal for your colleagues to view
• Start a poster campaign around the office
• Set up an ‘IT vision booth’ in a common area such as the office cafe or canteen

Whichever path is chosen we need to remember that the IT vision is a living programme and not a one-off delivery - and therefore needs regular communication to let people know how it is going. It should also be reviewed at least annually.

One final point in having done all this is: did it work?

To find out, you could ask colleagues to relate the vision back to you. But I think you will know if it’s working. When the general credibility of IT rises and the business starts getting involved in strategic discussions at an early stage, you will know you have arrived.

Models, Frameworks, and Best Practices

I have been looking at IT governance and best practice process in particular. There are a considerable number of these models, frameworks, and best practices that are applicable to IT. Some of them seem to overlap but several are different and used for different things.
At first glance it does appear quite frightening as there are so many, thereby creating confusion and conflict.
In my research I have probably only found a few of the total that exist:-

• Maturity Models (someone identified over 30 of these)
• ITIL
• ISO
• SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley)
• COBIT
• Government legislation (i.e. Data Protection)

So what do we do about them if anything? Some may be mandatory such as Sarbanes-Oxley depending on your industry and geographical trading areas.

Well, from my point of view I think it is important to have good processes within IT and we are going down the ITIL route which seems like it will given us a set of best practice processes across the IT spectrum. It could also eventually lead us to a quality standard such as ISO 9001 which would please the marketing people but may not add much more to our IT governance.

Outside of that it is worth looking at some of the ISO standards particularly the security one ISO 27001. Even if compliance is too much going someway down that route would deliver benefits.

Beyond that you start to get into maturity models which are all based on 5 levels of maturity and whilst I can see some benefits in defining where we are against these levels for the various maturity models, think we will get the others done first and then review.

Be interested in what other people think.

In this time of potential economic downturn what is the role of the CIO?

As you would expect I don’t think there is a specific answer other than it depends?
In some businesses where the impact may be higher due to reduced sales then the emphasis for the CIO will be on cost reduction whilst others even in a downturn may be investing, in preparation for an upturn in the future. In that case some prudence may still be expected and all non essentials projects cut back just leaving the new investment. Of course some businesses prosper in a downturn and are not impacted.
The position of the business is key and the CIO needs to be close to what is happening so that they can feel any pain and be able to react early. The role of the CIO should be of a business leader and it is an opportunity to show support for the cause and be proactive rather than wait for the edicts to come from above. Early intervention might even remove later difficulties or loss of the wrong projects. IT is often viewed as a money drain and there is not a great perception or realisation of the cost of keeping it running or Business as Usual so being proactive and showing what can and can’t be done and why, could be the answer.
So lets assume CIO’s are going to be proactive, where do they start? Although we are going to talk about savings, that is not the only answer and it may be that there are initiatives that support or enhance the sales or services that would increase revenue, so bringing these to market early could be a winner. The company is probably looking for quick answers and not something that will happen in 12 months time although that may be welcome as a second tier.
CIO’s should also be wary that they don’t do something they may regret later. Making a quick decision on cost cutting without considering the impact could cost twice as much later or even lose a competitive position.
The CIO therefore needs to identify savings, when they can be achieved, the impact and risk of carrying them out. Conversation would need to be had internally as some of the savings identified may impact another director or head of a department who could resist and react badly to the proposal. It doesn’t mean it should not go ahead in the proposal but the reason for rejection would need to be noted.
If IT is outsourced then the CIO may have some contractual issues but it is still worth talking to the supplier to see what they think can be achieved. It should be in their interest to help in the good and the bad times. Even in that situation there may be projects which don’t fall under the terms of the contract and therefore candidates for this exercise.
Because of the diverse nature of companies and their IT set up, it is not possible in this article to be specific on cost savings and there are plenty of articles where that has been done but as a help I would like to offer up a number of words that hopefully will help to get an exercise underway.

The sentence could start, “What can I ……” and the words are:-

Cancel, Centralise, Consolidate, Delay, Downsize, Find, Offshore, Outsource, Reduce, Renegotiate, Standardise.

One of those words which may need a little more explanation is “what can I find?” This is more about hidden costs and thinking where these may be. Hidden costs are often costs that were introduced several years ago and since that time there have been changes and the current costs do not now reflected those changes. One example would be maintenance of software licences where there may be less people using the system than initially purchased but the supplier has not been told and therefore the annual maintenance is based on the original number. There are a number of similar scenarios in this arena which are all worthy of investigation.

Once completed the CIO would present his findings to the board with appropriate recommendations and because of the proactive nature and affinity with what is happening in the business this exercise should increase his value in the eyes of fellow directors.

The final and perhaps the most important ongoing role will be managing the expectations of his team particularly the morale if projects are stopped or delayed.