Peter High
10-21-2015
Excerpt from the Article:
NES Rentals is in the business of renting aerial lifts and related high-reach equipment to companies in the commercial and industrial construction businesses. The company is a privately held midsize company with revenues of about $400 million, 1,200 employees and 75 branches operating in the Gulf Coast, South, Southeast, Midwest and the Northeast. NES Rentals buys equipment from OEMs and sells its used equipment at auction every four to five years in order to keep its equipment fresh. The company maintains its own equipment at the branches or dispatches mechanics to job sites to attend to breakdowns.
Ananda Rakhit has been CIO at NES Rentals for more than nine years, after having served as an IT leader at ADP and United Airlines, among other companies. In this interview with CIO Insight contributor Peter High, he shares what he’s learned across his long tenure in IT, his focus on predictive analytics and managing a large, virtual workforce.
CIO Insight: What are some examples of strategic imperatives you are driving for the foreseeable future?
Ananda Rakhit: Pricing, equipment allocation, predictive analytics for maintenance and security of our systems are strategic initiatives for NES IT. After two years of painstaking work, the pricing system has now entered a continuous improvement phase.
The ecosystem for price setting at NES is extensive. A sophisticated analytical engine based on statistical and operations research techniques is at the heart of the system. Past company data including seasonality and industry forecasts are combined with latest data gathered from the field. Utilization data is collected daily by scanning bar codes on each piece of equipment at delivery and pickup. Price sensitivity data is gathered daily via inputs from field sales via a smartphone app. A forecasting model and an optimization model generate prices by branch and by equipment category which are delivered to sales via desktops and iPads. Every morning a newly calculated set of rates based on the latest information shows up in a pricing app to guide sales.
Equipment allocation is another strategic problem we are working on to go beyond spreadsheet analysis. In a nutshell, this problem entails buying the right mix of equipment, allocating them to the branches where it will deliver most to the bottom line, moving them from one branch to another as demand patterns change and identifying the equipment to send to auction. While some modules, such as demand forecasts are common, the mathematical model is more complex than pricing. A decision support system can allow the user to carry out repeated runs by changing input parameters.
We are in the early stages of predictive analytics for maintenance. We are looking at data on mean time between failures of various parts and exploring how we can gather engine performance data via GPS devices. We hope to build a statistical model that could enable our mechanics to make proactive repairs at customer sites before the equipment breaks and customers have to call us. Customer service benefits are obvious but, in addition, managing repairs on a systematic basis instead on-demand basis, would save maintenance dollars.
We have put a large focus to ensure our systems are secure from external threats as well as we have adequate disaster recovery solutions in place. We have upgraded our backup and data retention systems and procedures and are now working towards rapidly recovering our business-critical systems from failure to minimize business impact. We are also developing clear incident response procedures and shielding our systems from potential attacks and breaches which include implementation of secure coding practices
To read the full article, please visit CIO Insight
by Peter High, published on Forbes
10-19-15
Like many executives at Procter & Gamble, Linda Clement-Holmes has had a wide array of responsibilities at the $76 billion Cincinnati, Ohio-based consumer packaged goods company. She has been the chief diversity officer, the senior vice president of global business services, and the global information & decision solutions officer. This is emblematic of the way in which P&G thinks about talent management. Once a rising star has been identified, provide them both depth and breadth of experience. When Clement-Holmes became CIO, she had been groomed for years for this post, and came to it with a much deeper understanding of how value is created within her enterprise than most new CIOs.
Clement-Holmes managed a rare feat for a new CIO, as well, as she was already a board member of a multi-billion dollar public company, Cincinnati Financial Corporation,before she became chief information officer. For those who might wish to follow in her footsteps, she attributes not only the diversity of her experiences within P&G, but also her willingness to spend time on non-profit boards in preparing her for her for-profit board experience. Clement-Holmes goes on to describe the substance of her first IT strategy as CIO, the methods she has used to encourage future female leaders in IT and beyond, and the technology trends that particularly excite her.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 15th interview in the Board-Level CIO series. To read interviews with past interviewees, please visit this link. This is also the 29th interview in the CIO’s First 100 Days series. To read interviews with past interviewees, please visit this link. To read future articles in either series, please click the “Follow” link above and to the left.)
Peter High: You were groomed for this role for some time, and your ascension in many ways is a sign of great continuity between your predecessor and yourself. You had been part of the leadership team that formulated IT strategy before you were CIO, just as you now lead a team doing the same. Given the lead time you have had, how did you use the time to prepare for this role?
Linda Clement-Holmes: I had a great mentor in Filippo [Passerini], who did a great job. Like you said, it was not a case where I came in behind somebody who was asked to leave and so forth. He had been CIO for well over ten years. It was much more about understanding more about what we needed to do going forward, and how to lead an organization or an IT function of IT professionals in a way that keeps us moving and relevant as we had been the last ten years.
At P&G because we promote from within, it is not abnormal to have what happened to me happen to anybody because we have a process of senior leadership looking at a regular review of succession planning that includes everything from whether we have a diverse pipeline, and whether our leaders have the right experiences that we need them to have going forward. They do that in conjunction with looking for where the business as the whole needs to go. They do that constantly. It is not a one-time thing. That is what happens when you have a “promote from within” type company.
Every now and then, we may have a specific unique set of skills needed that are in short supply. For example, I just hired our Chief Information Security Officer from the outside because the world changed so much in the last two years when it comes to cyber security. Those skills are not ones that we naturally have internally and have grown up with. In a case like that, we went outside and hired our Vice President for that. Our two legal officers were the same thing. We needed people with specific types of experiences. We will do that when necessary, but for the most part we try to groom and grow our leadership from within the P&G pipeline of talent because we have such strong talent to begin with.
High: The succession planning process involves a lot of grooming, and rounding out one’s skill set before they ascend to new leadership roles. What was the process like for you, and how has it translated to the leaders who are currently targeted for future leadership roles?
To read the full article, please visit Forbes
10-12-15
In early 2015, when Dick Daniels took on the role of Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Kaiser Permanente, he did so on an interim basis. He had been a senior vice president with the company since 2008, and as such, was a known commodity. As he notes in the interview herein, he did not feel pressure as such to focus on quick-wins, or to make dramatic changes to the IT strategy or priorities. Things were not broken, but there were strengths to continue to leverage. One of those is innovation. Kaiser Permanente has a center for innovation, and IT plays a significant role in all aspects of the Center, referred to as the Garfield Center. Daniels highlights the role IT plays, along with the other disciplines that come together to make the Garfield Center effective.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 27th article in the CIO’s First 100 Days series. To read the prior 26 articles with executives from Etihad Aviation Group, Intel, J. Crew, Johnson & Johnson, Deutsche Bank, and General Electric among others, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above and to the left of this article.)
Peter High: Dick, you are the Chief Information Officer of Kaiser Permanente, a health care organization that, no doubt, most are familiar with. Your own rise to that role was an interesting one: You had been with Kaiser Permanente, were offered the role on an interim basis, and ultimately, at the conclusion of the period, were given the permanent job. I wonder, especially in light of that interim period, how you set yourself up – how you organized the work in the first one hundred days of your time in role and whether or not that was impacted by the fact that you were there on an interim basis.
Dick Daniels: Well, certainly I came into the interim role from being the leader of shared services for Kaiser Permanente. Since I had been in IT before, I certainly had an understanding of the organization, and I also understood how IT related to other parts at Kaiser Permanente. When I came into the role, the first thing I wanted to do was just keep a steady hand because the IT organization was already on a good trajectory. I knew all my direct reports already and my intent from the start was just to keep the organization moving forward, look at the strategy that was being implemented, and determine what else needed to get done. The way that I went about doing that was I engaged with my direct reports in getting their perspective, and also doing some “voice of the client” interviews—talking with different business partners and getting their perspective. And once I took all that information in, I sat with my direct reports and we came up with some priorities for the IT organization. I made sure I communicated those priorities to both our business partners as well as the IT staff. Frankly, I think the way I went about that would be consistent with the way I would have approached any new job. It worked out well.
High: Dick, it is interesting that, as you point out, this was not a major transformation. You were not entering into a situation that was a disaster that needed to be fixed. In fact, you had been part of the leadership team that made sure that the IT department was on a solid footing. But, as with any change of leadership, it was an opportunity to fine tune some things, and it is interesting that you went about this “listening tour”, if I can paraphrase what you just described. What were some of the changes, some of the fine tunings that you elected to undertake as a result of what you were hearing?
Daniels: It was not a big change agenda that I needed to instill. As I went about talking with our business partners, it was clear that they wanted us to build on top of some of the successful accomplishments that we already had. The fact is that the world is changing around us and they wanted to see us get even better, and certainly they wanted to see us deliver solutions even faster. I think it was a recognition that IT is core to the delivery of the mission at Kaiser Permanente. I had a fairly simple strategy at an overall level and that was to strip in production system performance which, by the way, should never be taken for granted. We have seen this week where there were problems with production systems and the impact they can have. I wanted to make sure that we continued to look and see if there were any opportunities to continue to strengthen that.
And then I wanted to focus on delivering new projects because those new projects provide more functionality to our employees internally, as well as our members externally. We look for opportunities to strengthen that and increase our velocity so that we can deliver solutions faster.
Automatic Data Processing (ADP) has long had a history of being a conservative company, and that conservatism has served it well since its founding in 1949. As the company grew beyond $10 billion in revenue in recent years, it recognized that it needed to reinvigorate the company with a new sense of purpose relative to innovation.
The result was the establishment of the ADP Innovation Lab in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. Some 15 miles east of ADP headquarters in Roseland, New Jersey, the Innovation Lab would be staffed differently, encouraged to used different processes, and have a different style of work environment.
Keith Fulton is the Chief Technology Officer of ADP, and the head of the ADP Innovation Lab. In this interview, he discusses the mission of the Lab, the results it has garnered, the impact it has had back at ADP headquarters, and a variety of other topics.
Peter High: Keith Fulton, I thought we would begin with the charter of the ADP Innovation Lab. If you can take a moment and talk about the genesis of the idea: why was it determined that ADP needed one, and why here in New York City?
Keith Fulton: For some time now, we have been focusing on innovation as a company and pushing it in a broad way. But, the management team felt that we needed to accelerate our efforts. So, we set out to create an environment that fosters creativity, is more collaborative and open, and facilitates us bringing innovative products and features to market faster. We actually started our first lab at our headquarters in Roseland, NJ. In order to attract more top talent, we “doubled down” and built our second lab in an area [Chelsea, in the heart of Midtown] where the right skill sets were in a higher concentration. The top media companies are here; it’s an amazing venture capital and startup scene; and the top visual design and creative firms are a subway ride away. Recently, we opened another location in the growing tech corridor in Pasadena, CA.
High: Let’s talk about those special skill sets, special mindsets and even differences in terms of processes they are using relative to the traditional product development (or IT) organization in Roseland. Can you talk a bit about some of those differences?
Fulton: Sure, we will start with skill sets. By interpreting our mission as saying “we want to build consumer-grade applications with best-in-class user experiences,” we arenot thinking about building just another ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] system. Our users are consumers. They expect a high-quality experience, like they get from leading technology companies. So, we set out to hire a different kind of developer, from the very beginning.
10-8-2015
Hudbay Minerals is a Canadian integrated mining company with operations, development properties and exploration activities across the Americas and focuses on the discovery, production and marketing of base and precious metals. The company’s objective is to create sustainable value through increased commodity exposure on a per-share basis by growing long-life deposits, in high-quality and mining-friendly jurisdictions.
Joe AbiDaoud has been CIO of Hudbay for more than five years. He speaks with CIO Insight contributor Peter High about his role in innovation, his input on mergers and acquisitions, the company’s global expansion and a variety topics concerning IT.
CIO Insight: What are some of your strategic IT imperatives for the foreseeable future?
Joe AbiDaoud: We’ve been executing well on our strategy thus far. This has included shifting to cloud and SaaS for many enterprise applications, organizational design based on Gartner’s LEAN model, Single Instance ERP platform, business intelligence-enabled system architecture. What this means from a business perspective is the ability to scale our business effectively. It helps us become a low-cost producer, and drive efficiency and value from our operations.
CIO Insight: You are one of the leaders responsible for innovation. What are some examples of IT-led innovation at HudBay Minerals?
AbiDaoud: HudBay has a great track record for success. I firmly believe success requires innovation. Innovation doesn’t always mean technology but technology can drive innovation. We take a collaborative approach to innovation and work with our stakeholders on ways to transform our business. Some examples include introducing new software capabilities, collaborating on ways to get real-time data into the field through displays and mobile devices; coming up with new ways to improve metal balancing and other operational processes. We look at ways to leverage our ERP to improve our supply chain management. There is a long list and it continues to grow.
CIO Insight: You have also played a key role in mergers and acquisitions activities at the company. Can you describe that role?
AbiDaoud: As I mentioned earlier one of our key strategies was to create/develop an IT environment that was conducive to growth; one that could scale effectively in either direction and respond quickly to business changes, and support our business strategy. The cloud was and is a big part of that. We have the ability to enter new geographies with very little IT infrastructure, low cost and quickly. When it comes to M&A, we take part in a collective integration team that consists of all functions.
10-6-15
Gartner’s Symposium/ITxpo is this week in Orlando. Today, David Cearley, Vice President and Gartner Fellow, released the company’s “Top Ten Strategic Technology Trends for 2016.” They emphasize the Internet of Things, and smart devices talking to each other, getting smarter and more useful as they do. Through it all, the evolution of digital business is clearly at the heart of what is covered. Here is a summary of the trends:
1. The Device Mesh
A variety of other trends have led to an increased number of sensors embedded in many technologies and devices that we use personally and professionally. They become smarter as they gather more data on our daily patterns. Gartner predicts that these sensors, which tend to work in silos today will increasingly work in concert, leading to even greater insights about our daily patterns.
2. Ambient User Experience
Gartner refers to these devices and sensors’ ability to gather more contextual data as described above as AMbient UX. The challenge will be with application design, anticipating this level of device synchronicity and collaboration, for lack of better framing. Gartner posits that the devices and sensors will become so smart that they will be able to organize our lives without our even noticing that they are doing so.
3. 3D-printing Materials
Though not a new trend, 3D-printing has caught its stride now that companies like Tesla are using it to build engine parts, and SpaceX is using it to create rocket parts. Better applications of the technology to biological material and food will follow, according to Gartner.
To read the full article, and see the rest of the list of Gartner’s top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2016, please visit Forbes
The United States Tennis Association (USTA) is the governing body for United States tennis. It includes over 700,000 members. It also runs the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York, best known as the site of the US Open, which recently concluded.
For over 13 years, Larry Bonfante has run technology for the United States Tennis Association as its Chief Information Officer. When Bonfante joined, IT was not critical to the work of the USTA, and its flagship event was not necessarily viewed as being powered by IT. Today, all of that has changed. Players (both professional and amateur), employees, and fans all view information as critical ingredient in their experience with the USTA. As Bonfante notes herein, there is a lot that goes into planning the technology for the most highly attended annual sporting event in the world
Peter High: Congratulations on a tremendous US Open, Larry. Can you provide an overview of your responsibilities at the USTA as CIO?
Larry Bonfante: I’m responsible for running all technology for the US Open which is the most highly attended annual sporting event in the world. I’m also accountable for supplying solutions and technology support for our 17 section offices and our 4 national offices. We also provide online services that allow our more than 700K players and members register for and participate in our tennis programs. In addition to my role as CIO, I lead our corporate culture change initiative and run our Learning & Leadership Development function.
High: You have been at the USTA for more than 13 and a half years. Can you reflect on how the role of technology has changed across that time?
Bonfante: When I first got here IT had no role in supporting the US Open. Now every aspect of the event from ticket scanning, to concessions point of sales, to tournament scheduling to the water fountains outside Arthur Ashe stadium are run by technology. Today consumers have more computing power available on their iPhones than we had on our corporate systems when I started 30 years ago. That allows us the opportunity to leverage technology to create a deeper more personal level of engagement with our players, members and fans.
Today, Gerri Martin-Flickinger has been named the first ever Chief Technology Officer of Starbucks. She will start work at the Seattle-based coffee behemoth on November 2. Martin-Flickinger ends a successful tenure as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Adobe, where, as was detailed in this column, she helped usher in the company’s pivot to the cloud.
“Gerri is a technologist at heart and has a 30-year track record of leveraging technology-based solutions to drive business value. As we continue to shape our global technology agenda at Starbucks, we needed leadership talent with deep experience in cloud, big data analytics, mobile and security to take us to the next level. As we searched for that leader, Gerri stood out as someone who has years of experience in Silicon Valley and brings deep management and technical expertise to help us navigate the future,” said Kevin Johnson, Starbucks president and chief operating officer.
Martin-Flickinger will report to Johnson and serve as a member of Starbucks senior leadership team. As chief technology officer, Martin-Flickinger will lead the company’s IT organization, and will champion the next phase of innovation and growth for Starbucks.
Prior to her time at Adobe, Martin-Flickinger held a variety of posts including holding the Chief Information Officer post at VeriSign, Network Associates, and McAfee Associates. Prior to that, she held senior technology roles at Chevron Corporation.
10-5-15
Mondelez International is a $34 billion consumer packaged goods company that was formed in 2012 from what used to be Kraft Foods. Mark Dajani was Mondelez International’s first chief information officer. Though he continues to have this role, his responsibilities have grown to include process ownership (his current title is Chief Information and Process Officer) and Real Estate. He also has significant digital and innovation responsibilities. Ultimately, Dajani sees himself on a path to becoming Chief Change Officer, as embracing and facilitating change are at the heart of all that he does.
His augmentation of skills has in part been due to his ability to simplify IT. He does so by eliminating the bottom ten percent of technology each year. In so doing, he ensures that old, unsupported technology is not the norm, and that there are fewer instances of redundant solutions. This is a laudable goal no matter if one wishes to take on more responsibilities or not.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 24th article in the CIO-plus series. To read past stories with CIO-pluses from Proctor & Gamble, Marsh & McLennan, the San Francisco Giants, Walgreens, and McKesson, among others, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above and to the left.)
Peter High: Take a moment to describe the business of Mondelez International?
Mark Dajani: We formally launched it in 2012, when we spun off the Kraft Foods Company. Our products are all over the world. We are the largest chocolate company in the world. We are the number one or number two position in every brand that we have, whether it is Oreo, Nabisco, Cadbury, Trident, etc. It is a phenomenal portfolio that people enjoy every day. We have over a hundred thousand employees in almost every nook and cranny of the world.
High: Can you talk a bit about your role as Chief Information and Process Officer?
Dajani: Something I just took on recently is the Real Estate portion for this company. People might wonder why a CIO might have Real Estate for the company. I asked for these additional responsibilities because I feel that our job is to provide computing experiences for our employees. I like to spend a lot of my time also in providing a better work experience for our employees. Real Estate and facilities have to be an integrated portion of what we do for our employees. I would like to bring Real Estate and technology together to help our employees be even more productive.
10-2-2015
Conair is a leading manufacturer and marketer of professional and consumer products. After more than 50 years in business it has grown into a multibillion dollar consumer packaged goods company with operations in more than 25 countries. The company operates in multiple product categories with 24 major brands, including Conair, Cuisinart, Waring, Rusk, Scunci and BaByliss.
Jon Harding has been CIO of Conair for more than 11 years. Over that span, he has taken a leadership role in mergers & acquisitions, partnered creatively with marketing to develop systems to serve existing customers better and acquire new ones, built an ecosystem of partners to facilitate innovation, all while managing a diverse, global team. He speaks about these challenges and more with CIO Insight contributor Peter High.
CIO Insight: Conair has grown substantially in your 11 years with the company. As it has acquired businesses, IT has been a key integrator of those businesses. How do you plan for the integration of a business?
Jon Harding: I plan for the integration of an acquisition as early as possible by getting involved in the due diligence process. During this early planning phase I work to make sure I understand the strategic (longer-term) objectives in making the acquisition as well as the tactical (short-term) objectives of quickly integrating the acquisition. To meet these business objectives, we then compare our standard set of core business applications (SAP) and global infrastructure standards to the current processes and systems of the new business unit. We assume all processes will change to the Conair standard processes enabled by our SAP solutions and focus in on any exceptions due to unique aspects of the new business, whether trade-driven, product-driven or statutory (especially important in overseas acquisitions).
CIO Insight: How much of a blueprint is there and to what degree does it vary, acquisition by acquisition?
Harding: Our blueprint is to vary our standard operating model only to meet mandatory local needs, whether trade-driven, product-driven or statutory.
CIO Insight: You have collaborated with your colleagues in marketing in the past few years to use information to serve existing customers better, and to acquire more customers. What shape has this partnership taken, and what are examples of some ideas you have introduced?
Harding: Traditionally here in Conair like in many consumer goods companies, IT focused on supply chain, finance and other “back office” processes. With the advent of many software-as-a-service solutions for all sorts of data analysis and business decision-making problems, I saw opportunities to improve the level of information availability for my colleagues in marketing and sales. Improvements, both in how quickly data can be transformed into usable analytics and in the availability of actionable information. The partnership with marketing has been built on working together on the evaluation and implementation of robust solutions for marketing’s data problems. IT has been the catalyst by providing funding and expertise in managing solution vendors. Marketing has provided subject matter expertise and all of the hands-on execution of these projects.
