Computer Weekly’s excellent video interview with Corus’s CIO, Bruno Laquet, gives an up-to-date view on what it feels like to be a CIO facing a recession. It also shines a light on the debate about whether suppliers should be putting more effort into influencing decision-makers outside of IT, with Bruno’s experiences of doing exactly that.

The video is well worth a look – available here (and it gets to the best bits after about 2 minutes in) – but these are our conclusions/highlights:

Selling with the CIO, not to them

There was a move a few years ago for many IT companies to believe they should stop talking to IT and start talking to the business. It sounds very black and white, but for some companies it really was that simple.

But for every IT supplier bypassing IT and trying to build a case with the business, there’s an IT department that wants to do exactly the same thing. Perhaps if they worked together, they might both stand more of a chance?

Someone like Bruno should be a supplier’s ideal route into the business – and they would certainly appreciate the proof and angles that suppliers have to share. We’ve shared some of his tips for influencing the business at the end of this post.

But it will take quite a shift in mindset for many suppliers to get their marketing approaches ready to help a CIO like Bruno.

Real-life Corus project examples

Take Bruno’s story of a recent million-pound telepresence project. Of course, he had all the vendor benefits to hand (like reductions in travel expenses), but he knew the struggle he would have getting stakeholders to cut their budgets to fund ‘his’ IT project. Instead, he had to find a way to make telepresence fit with a key part of the corporate agenda – fortunately, CO2 reduction was a main objective of the steel company. (Of course, once telepresence was live, travel budget reductions followed swiftly…)

How many suppliers are adjusting their propositions based on the individual situations of the key accounts? And how many are sophisticated enough not to sell ‘to’ the CIO but sell with them? Every communication, every event, every meeting could be an opportunity to help the CIO engage with the business.

The example of a current Corus supply chain project shows just how strong the CIOs desire to play an integral role in the business is

“This supply chain project, without going into too much detail, the way we have been organised in the company is in business units which operate as silos, and there is a limit to how much we could optimise each silo. So we are looking at activities that could bring the business together. So this supply chain project, which IT is key to, is about breaking the barriers between business unit silos. I’m really proud of that, because it is business transformation powered by IT.”

Lessons from the CIO about selling a proposition into the business

How would Bruno suggest going about selling a proposition into the business?

Some of it is fairly obvious:

“Understand what their main agenda, business priorities, KPIs – make sure that my proposition and what I am trying to influence three months on match with this agenda. I’m looking to see if there is anything for him in that proposition.”

Although it does raise the question of how many IT/Services suppliers are really digging into these issues (think CO2 reduction rather than cutting travel expenses – and how for a different company these two could be the other way around).

But there are some important techniques, like the one Bruno describes as “trying not to finish the job”:

“What I do is try not to finish the job – I try to come with propositions that are open so they can put their own ideas into the proposition so that they feel they own it. So there are 2 areas – being prepared, but developing together the solution. Let’s make a proposal – and let them finish the job.”

There’s a fine line between crafting a proposition that has enough detail to spark interest (whether we’re communicating to IT or the business) but which the client can take on and own for themselves.

What does the recession mean for IT’s role and IT spend?

At a tangent to the main discussion, Bruno Laquet’s views on the recession’s impact on the IT department is also very interesting. The clarity of vision and clear purpose come across particularly strongly, as does the importance of showing how well aligned IT is with the 2 main business programmes (one focused on cost reduction, the other on business transformation to support growth in the future):

“We have two big programmes running at the moment [...] the first one is about eliminating costs – and we in IT do a lot to contribute to this. All my IT Supply team is focusing on moving cost out by innovative ideas – we’re not talking about reducing by 5% or 10%; we’re looking at ideas to cut spend by half. So that’s the kind of project we are doing at the moment, fully aligned with this business priority.

“The second programme is about [...] working with the business to help transform the company. We’re very active at the moment in supporting projects for business like creating shared services or the supply chain programme I mentioned.”

Once again, these focus areas give any supplier to Corus a clear idea of how to frame up their offerings for the next year.

But there is definitely a wider point here: How well do you understand your key clients? Do you work with or work around the CIO? How well do you shape propositions for them? Do you have the evidence you need to share with them? How about the initial points of interest that tell them you have something they need to know?