John Crane, former CIO of National Australia Bank, and John Suffolk, former UK government CIO, spoke at our recent Sales & Marketing Forum on the opportunities available to suppliers when an organisation goes through transformational change.
Discussion points included:
The challenges of transformation – what’s the real role of the CIO and their team?
A glimpse behind the scenes – how are major decisions made?
Knowing IT’s place – should you be approaching IT or the wider business?
Inside the IT function — it’s not just about the CIO
Why do they turn to certain suppliers?
Finally, we asked our guest speakers to put their marketing hats on and come up with some ideas and suggestions on how suppliers should engage with CIOs.
The full forum write-up can be read here or viewed below.
John Crane, former CIO of National Australia Bank, spoke at The Marketing Practice’s Sales & Marketing Forum about how suppliers could more effectively reach decision-makers in his position.
The slides give an overview of what suppliers need to know about the role of a CIO in a retail bank, how they work as part of an exec team, how they interact with the rest of the business, and how their department may be structured.
There are also some prompts for suppliers looking for closer sales and marketing relationships with CIOs (including the question of whether the CIO is the right target in the first place…).
Obviously John’s just a market of one, but in some ways this detailed ‘day in the life’ info is more useful than a thousand surveys about key issues/priorities…
Following on from my previous post on Gartner’s predictions for 2011, I was struck by the fact that these surveys can never tell the full story of life as a CIO.
Far from things like ‘implementing and updating business applications’ (Business Priority #6 for 2011), when we talk to CIOs their real priorities tend to be things like ‘keeping my job after that security fiasco’, ‘finding a new job where budget isn’t shrinking each year’, or perhaps more business-centric things like ‘building a leadership team that can support me properly’ or ‘convincing my suppliers to cut their costs again’.
Perhaps someone should pick up David Cameron’s ‘Gross National Happiness’ theme and try to research what really makes CIOs tick and how to make them happy?
But the big trends that this research picks up do offer a couple of interesting angles to marketers:
1. All the business priorities are very optimistic-sounding. But the ‘fear’ equivalents could actually be more useful to us in capturing a decision-maker’s attention. So rather than the carrot of ‘Attracting and retaining new customers’ we would raise the danger of ‘Losing wallet share to new market entrants’. Sounds simple, but putting a bit more ‘provocation’ into the propositions can be more effective than always selling on ‘hope’. It’s definitely an opportunity to stand out from all the vendors who pick up on the priorities and parrot them back to the decision-makers.
2. There will be useful observations to draw by comparing different answers in the full research. Just one example that suggests itself from the summary findings would be that Gartner claim Cloud Computing is advancing faster that previously thought. Cloud Computing and Virtualisation are the top two technology priorities for 2011. The combination of these results (moving faster than expected but still at the top of the priorities) suggests that decision-makers will be on the hunt for detailed information and support to turn the priority into a reality. There will be a lack of success stories readily available to companies looking to go into the Cloud – so client references, site visits, and even case studies/customer interviews will be massively useful. And – picking up on the point above – any fear messages about areas that CIOs might have overlooked or potential causes of project failures will probably be enough to merit their attention (just make sure you have a good antidote to the fear!).
Gartner has just released the findings of its 2011 CIO Agenda survey. Over 2,000 CIOs report on their budgets and business/IT priorities for the year and beyond. The good news: three times as many CIOs are reporting budget increases as a suffering from cuts. And while many budgets are flat, CIOs will be able to take savings from some areas and apply them to investments in others (rather than handing all saved budget back to the CFO).
So what are the investments they’ll be making? Broadly speaking, the summary confirms what you might already expect. Gartner have some hard facts about the move to cloud infrastructure, software and services. Almost half of all CIOs expect to have the majority of IT running in the cloud over the next four years (from just 3% now).
IT Management is an interesting one (the fourth technology management priority). Improving the professionalism of the IT Department and the ability to track performance and results from investments is going to be of increasing importance as IT lays claim to be more business-focused (not to mention as a diverse portfolio of projects and software in the cloud needs a closer management eye). In fact, whatever the proposition, messaging that emphasises how an investment can be managed and ROI tracked will be essential to getting to the top of the pile for Finance sign-off.
In terms of business priorities, operational efficiencies are still important but have been overtaken this year by growth considerations (broadly speaking, 2 of the top 5 business priorities are about improving efficiency, while the other 3 are about creating growth).
McKinsey’s recent interview with Shell CIO Alan Matula gives some real food for thought in evaluating how you approach major enterprises (and hold on to them once you have them…)
When you consider that Matula is talking about IT transformation that has been going on for a decade (and is now looking for payback over at least 15 years from, for example, a new standardised HR system), it becomes clear why the long-term approach is the only one to take.
He talks through the different phases of the transformation, and what comes across most strongly is a ruthless focus on reaching a successful outcome. When it comes to selecting suppliers, it’s clear that only those most able to sign up to the corporate vision have been selected:
“We started with the idea that we wanted 70 percent of our spending to be external. Of that, we wanted 80 percent to be focused on the top 11 suppliers. We put those 11 into three groups: First, there are the foundation suppliers, those in which we make long-term bets—Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. Then there’s the infrastructure group, with three bundles—AT&T, HP, and T-Systems—for networks, end-user computing, and hosting of storage, respectively. And finally we have four application services suppliers—Accenture, IBM, Logica, and Wipro. What we’re doing differently is bringing all 11 of them together to work as a collective.”
It will be interesting to revisit the performance of this collaborative approach after a couple of years working. Shell is already noticing that traditional product/service divisions between suppliers are breaking down (movements like cloud computing and shifting to pay per performance models are exacerbating this at the higher level).
Matula’s closing comments illustrate 3 of his most significant priorities. Being able to measure the impact that IT has on the business. Having the skilled people available to manage relationships (internally and with key suppliers). And finally, avoiding failure at all costs – risk aversion is still top of the list.
“IT is more important and intense to the enterprise than ever before, and that essentially requires an ongoing effort to transform IT; there is always another phase. To support that mental model, the first thing is to never lose the perspective that you’re here to make the business more productive and more competitive. Our catchphrase, “business at the center,” keeps us grounded. Our position today is a reflection of the tight integration that we have with the business, combined with the efforts of key support functions like HR, finance, and procurement.
A second thing is that you’re only as good as the talent that you have. For instance, in the robust sourcing of infrastructure and applications we have put in place, the people at the interface are very important. They manage the critical supplier relationships with CEOs and top executives at these firms, and they have the technical know-how to help guide the suppliers.
Finally, if you don’t have the basics right, you won’t have any credibility. It only takes one bad “go live” on a project or a flaw in your basic delivery capabilities to set you back very quickly.”
Admittedly, the last few days may well have been a bit out of the norm at the BBC, but CIO UK has a couple of interesting articles about the priorities of Tiffany Hall, BBC CIO.
The first article is a brief ‘day in the life‘ – the kind of piece that’s always worth bearing in mind in planning techniques that could realistically fit within a decision-maker’s daily routine. It’s interesting to see further proof of our own research into the challenges of persuading senior contacts to attend events. We found that senior decision-makers receive an average of one invite every day but only attend 5 in a whole year – meaning that the content, topic and invitation process has to be spot-on. Tiffany seems to be at around the average for invitations but above average for attendance!
“Evening I have been invited to more work dinners since I started this job than the entire rest of my career. I could be dining out every night of the week.”
The second, longer, article goes into more details around current BBC IT challenges and priorities. It discusses some of 2010’s headline issues of information management, standardisation and consumerisation of IT, and also references some of the ‘day to day’ projects that seem to be rising up CIO agendas this year:
“We have reached the stage in the lifecycle of our legacy business systems when we are having a good, long, hard look at that and seeing whether now is the time to divert some of our priorities back into the business systems infrastructure…This hasn’t been a great focus for my predecessors over the last few years, simply because of where the BBC’s priorities were. I am getting a very clear steer from my stakeholders out there in the BBC business that, much as they want to put the money into costume dramas and all the rest of it, we do need some better back-office functions. Traditional back-office stuff around Outlook, when are we going to Windows 7… all of that stuff is very much on the radar.”
CIO UK has released an updated list of the 100 top spenders on IT in the UK – available here. The DWP, MOD, Shell, Tesco and the Department of Health top the list, while RBS has slipped out of the top 5 and Lloyds out of the top 10.
It’s hard to draw significant suprising trends from the list – public sector largely moving up the list, banks still near the top but slightly down, sectors like construction and retail taking a hit…
Where the list is particularly interesting is in the detailed profiles of each organisation’s IT strategy/performance/existing infrastructure. There are also some specific examples of popular projects for the year:
“Many were considering overhauling their communications networks to support either voice over IP or unified communications. Upgrading Microsoft Office and operating systems was also high on the list of tasks, as were improvements to e-commerce and customer management systems.”
It’s valuable information; now the question becomes how you best use this insight to support decisions/activities focused on these organisations. (You might also ask, assuming all the compeition will be targeting the top 100, how you get hold of the names of the organisations that came 100-150 on the table…)
IBM has released a research piece “The Evolving Role of the CIO” alongside its transcripts of interviews with leading UK CIOs, which I mentioned in yesterday’s post. Some useful trends are highlighted by the white paper. Two of the major areas of interest are the changing nature of the role’s reporting line: the majority of CIOs – 42% of them - report to the CEO, with only 14% now reporting to the CFO. And the longevity of the average CIO is pointing up their increasing role in long-term planning: it is normal for CIOs to remain in their post for 6 years (research by Allan Alter, April 06), which is twice as long as the average CEO.
However, when looking to communicate with, and ultimately build relationships with, this particular beast a few points made in the white paper really resonated:
“The CIO is an idea position to take increasing business responsibility and control.”
“It’s one of the most dynamic and creative roles in a modern company.”
“CIOs are on the way to becoming tomorrow’s CEO”
“Key skills of today’s CIO include the ability to translate Board requirements into solutions. He needs to talk the language of the Board and the investors.”
“All innovation in our industry will be technology-led or technology facilitated.”
All of the above suggest that while the CIO no longer has to “sell the IT philosophy”, he or she is expected to be able to lead people, lead technologically and have acute business acumen. As Acergy’s CIO says in the report “tomorrow’s CIO must have the proficiency to be heir apparent to any senior executive position.” It stands to reason therefore, that the CIO of now and the future will want access to people and content that will satisfy their needs to contribute at the boardroom table.
The white paper suggests that the CIO will need to “understand the possibilities of the future” – any communications programme aiming to paint that picture more clearly for the CIO is at a distinct advantage.
To supplement its recent white paper on the evolving role of the CIO, IBM has just launched a series of downloadable CIO interviews as PDFs. As it’s a feature of their UK site all these interviews are with UK based CIOs; certainly in my experience, it’s fairly rare to get UK information this freely available, as many previous CIO series are largely US-based.
Interviews are, among others, with the CIOs/CTOs of Waitrose, Wincanton, Network Rail, Dundee City Council, O2 and HSBC. They are downloadable as separate PDFs and provide good insight into the challenges in each of these accounts. We’ll be commenting on the umbrella “Evolving Role of the CIO” report in our next post.
Recent research by ITSMA (the IT Services Marketing Assoc.) has looked into the C-suite’s use of social media and been surprised by the findings.
Writing on his blog, ITSMA spokesman Chris Koch said that ITSMA’s annual survey of buyers of complex IT solutions (entitled How Customers Choose Solution Providers, 2009: The Importance of Personalization, Epiphanies, and Social Media), “shows that the door to the C-suite is opening up”. You can download a free summary of the research here but the full piece costs.
The research Chris quotes found that usage of social media among IT and business buyers of technology rose 50% over last year. Now 55% of respondents said they use social media as part of the technology buying process in 2009 versus just 37% in 2008.
The research also found that C-suite executives used social media more than their lower-level buying peers. Just 15% of CEOs and directors said they did not use any form of social media at all, while 34% of manager/directors and 26% of VPs/Assistant vice presidents said they do not use it.
Commenting on these findings, Chris says “This has big implications for marketers. It means that social media is taking hold within your biggest, most valuable accounts at the highest levels. Sounds like a business case for investment to me.”
My stance on this would be that any social media strategy has to be woven into a wider business case for C-level contact.
Are C-suite execs using LinkedIn or Facebook to keep in touch with peers and ask for advice – yes, they are. Are they making decisions solely on the basis of this information? Our experience suggests that’s simply not the case. Designing a business case for social media investment on a standalone basis is pretty risky – you are in danger of embarking on a non-integrated programme that very likely cannot survive without supporting communications. Think instead, what do you want to say to these execs, and how can social media be used to best effect in the series of communications you’re going create over the long-term.
