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After leading ADP’s Global HR and Payroll Outsourcing divisions, Mike Capone, the current CIO and a Corporate Vice President, understands the importance of business-IT synergy and IT-led innovation at the firm.
by Peter High, published on Forbes.com
07-08-2013
It is an exciting time to be tapped into the chief information officer community by virtue of the top-tier leaders who are doing extraordinary things from that post. I have extensively covered the topic of the CIO-plus in a series in Forbes that can be found here.
Mike Capone has many attributes that are common among executives who have been asked to take on additional responsibilities to their CIO roles, a phenomenon that I refer to as the CIO-plus. Capone’s undergraduate degree is in computer science. He has an MBA. He spent time in IT early in his career, but also had experience outside of IT prior to returning as the first-ever Global CIO of ADP.
The nature and seniority of that experience clearly sets him apart. He made a name for himself at ADP as the general manager of the company’s Global Human Resources and Payroll Outsourcing Business, a division that serves large multinational corporations. It is this operating experience and profit and loss responsibility that is often missing among CIOs, and it often proves detrimental to those who would like to add responsibilities to their CIO responsibilities, or for those who might be interested in risking beyond CIO. (For more articles in my series on CIOs who have risen beyond that role, visit this link)
Asked why he thought to make the move to the CIO post after running a division of the company, Capone noted that he recognized the power of the role from an early age, as his father was once the CIO of J.C. Penney. Therefore, Mike is one of the only father/son CIO-pairs.
It should come as no surprise that Capone has thought of the CIO role differently as a result of having been a leader of one of ADP’s businesses. He fostered synergies and reduced the cost of IT across the business units by identifying more that could be done commonly. He also created an imperative for IT to be a source of innovation for the company. On that front, he invested significantly in innovation activities during the depths of the economic malaise, recognizing that it was important to continue to build the IT organization’s innovation capabilities to prepare for sunnier days ahead. He created an innovation lab in IT, and holds an annual conference of ADP’s top IT executives from around the world where new ideas are showcased, and the next generation of innovations is developed…
To read the full article, please visit Forbes.com
To watch the interview video, please click here.
To explore the recent Beyond CIO Series articles, please click here.
To explore the recent CIO-plus Series articles, please click here.
To explore the Technovation Column library, please click here.
