Peter High
08-27-2015
Excerpt from the Article:
The newly formed organization, Jefferson, encompasses Jefferson Health and Thomas Jefferson University, representing both clinical and academic entities. Under the leadership of president and CEO Dr. Stephen K. Klasko and his four-pillar model of Clinical, Innovation, Academic and Philanthropy focus areas, the people of Jefferson (19,000 strong), provide quality, compassionate clinical care for patients, educate the health professionals of tomorrow and discover new treatments and therapies that will define the future of health care.
Praveen Chopra joined the company as executive vice president and CIO in March of 2014. In May of this year, his responsibilities aggrandized, and his new title is EVP and Chief Information and Transformative Innovative Environment Officer. As Chopra explains to CIO Insight contributor, Peter High, he has overarching executive responsibilities for creating innovation-driven ecosystem towards the organization’s “health is all we do.”
CIO Insight: Your title is Executive Vice President, Chief Information and Transformative Innovative Environment Officer. I am quite confident you are the only one in the world with that exact title. What does it mean, and what is within your purview?
Praveen Chopra: You are right, I may be the only one. Frankly, this is a new role, which certainly highlights the boldness in our vision of reimaging and creating unparalleled value in “health is all we do”—and is a direct reflection of the way Jefferson values technology and innovation in health care. I oversee areas such as technology innovation and consumer experience, data sciences, business partnering and portfolio management in addition to traditional information technology functions. In this role, I see us building a health care organization of the future. This forward-thinking organization leverages the power of the digital enterprise in a fundamentally different way and creates an innovation driven ecosystem. For example, instead of a siloed, facility-centric functionality, we are focusing now on a creating consumer centric model through creative use of technology. How about starting the care and learning experience with patients and students in their pajamas at their homes holding a mobile device!
Overall, this role is about reinvention—how do we constantly look beyond traditional IT capabilities and services for our clients and focus on the creation and use of technologies that will help our patients, students, community and other various affiliates.
CIO Insight: What are some examples of innovations that your team has developed or are working on?
Chopra: Our Telehealth program, known as JeffConnect, is accomplishing those things I just talked about. Today, a patient has ongoing health-care needs but they can’t always physically get to us—so we have created an on-demand platform and app, now available in the Apple and Google Play stores, whereby any patient can go and request a physician appointment. That physician will be quickly available through video conferencing capability. We’ve rolled this out to our employees and have gotten an overwhelmingly positive response. We have also created a program for family members of our patients who are not able to be at the hospital to participate in physician rounds. The program, known as Virtual Rounds, allows a patient’s loved ones to join a video conference and listen to the care team so the experience is personal and convenient.
To read the remainder of the article, please visit CIO Insight
CIO.com discusses how many CIOs find it exhilarating to take on business functions outside of IT. But CIO-plus roles require a new mindset and trusted deputies.
Julia King
08-31-15
Excerpt from the article:
…This expansion of duties has its benefits and practical challenges. IT already is tied to every single part of a business. As a result, technology executives have a keen horizontal perspective of all of a company’s business processes. From that unique perch, they can more readily identify business stumbling blocks and innovate process improvements that increase business value.
“The CIO is one of the few people in an organization who sees all the processes from cradle to grave and truly has an expansive point of view. That lends itself to leading other parts of the organization,” says Peter High, president of CIO advisory firm Metis Strategy and author of the book Implementing World Class IT.
It’s also economically advantageous, especially for small and midsize companies. “Having people do two jobs and not paying them double seems like a good idea to a lot of organizations,” High says.
…
But at the same time, dual-role IT executives need to deeply immerse themselves in additional parts of the business where a whole new set of challenges lie in wait. Incumbent managers and staffers may resist the insertion of an outsider who didn’t grow up in that business function. CIO-plus executives also need to adapt their management and leadership styles to their broader, non-IT constituency.
Not all CIOs are up to these challenges. “Only an executive who is ambitious takes this on,” says High. “This is such a complex set of responsibilities. If they don’t have a desire for additional responsibilities, or haven’t been active enough to suggest that they could do it, it’s not likely that [expanded titles and duties] will be suggested to a passive CIO.”
To read the remainder of the article, please visit CIO.com
by Peter High, published on Forbes
8-31-15
Meg Whitman has led HP as CEO since September of 2011. In October of last year, she and her fellow board members announced their intent to split the PC and printers business from its enterprise products and services business. The former would be known as HP Inc., and the latter would be known as Hewlett Packard Enterprise. This would amount to the largest technology firm break-up of all time, creating two companies with revenues in excess of $55 billion.
The date of the split (November 1) is fast approaching, and I was curious about her thoughts about how things had progressed between the time of the announcement and now. Our interview was one of the first after the company’s most recent earnings release. Though she acknowledged that the news was mixed, she indicated that enormous progress has been made in breaking up the two companies, and that she is as confident as ever that the breakup is the right move.
We also spoke at length about her career path, her thoughts about increasing the number of women in executive positions at technology firms, what she learned from her time running for governor of California, and a variety of other topics.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 14th interview in the IT Influencers series. To read the prior 13 interviews with Sal Khan, former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Jim Goodnight, Sir James Dyson, and Walt Mossberg, 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: Meg, you recently reported earnings to Wall Street. I wonder, if you could reflect for a moment, were there aspects of what was reported that you feel validate the splitting of HP into Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc.?
Meg Whitman: I think what has been born out is that these are two very different businesses. The printing and PC business has quite a different customer set, different cost structure, and different industry dynamics than the Enterprise business which is more around how customers take their IT infrastructure to the next level, and how they secure their digital assets, and empower a data-driven enterprise. So they are very different businesses, and you can see that borne out in the results of the company this quarter. The Enterprise side of the house did very well. EG [Enterprise Group] had probably the best quarter I have seen since I have been here. Enterprise Services turned the corner, and the printing and PC market did well in a very tough market. I think the focus and the capital structure that each company will have will just allow these two companies to be more nimble, more focused, defining the industry trends, and have better responsiveness and be better partners for our customers. I think it will be borne out that this was the right thing to do.
High: Can you provide a brief overview of the progress made in splitting up the companies? So how have things progressed, and what is left between now and that date?
Whitman: This has been an enormous undertaking as you can imagine, because this is not a typical carve-out of a small company being carved out of a big one. This is the creation of two new Global 50 companies. We announced the separation last October, and starting August 1st we’ve been operating as two separate companies – two IT systems, two separate supply chains, finance systems, sales operations. We are invoicing, receiving payment, and have all the goods flowing through two separate supply chains. And this was a big undertaking. I have to say I am incredibly proud of the HP team because we have to work with more than 3,500 customers and partners to make sure that they were ready, in many countries around the world. I have to say it has gone almost flawlessly. I have not heard any issues at all from partners and customers that have not been resolved in a matter of minutes or hours. Our sales teams have a lot of confidence that this did not disrupt their partners or customers. So we are feeling really good about it.
To read the full article, please visit Forbes
8-24-15
Etihad Aviation Group is the fastest growing airline company on earth. Etihad Airways has grown into a multi-billion dollar behemoth, and the Aviation Group has grown tremendously through its equity investments into the likes of Alitalia, Jet Airways, Air Berlin, Air Serbia, and a host of other airlines.
Robert Webb is the Chief Information Technology Officer of Etihad Aviation Group, and many of the synergies that are believed to be at the heart of making the equity partnerships work will happen through better use of shared systems, technology vendors, and the like. At the same time, Webb has a large vision for enhancing the Group’s guests’ experience through better data analytics among other things.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 26th article in the CIO’s First 100 Days series. To read interviews with CIOs from Microsoft, Starwood, GE, Ecolab, CVS Caremark, and Intel, among many others, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: For those who may not be familiar with Etihad Airways as well as Etihad Aviation Group, please give an overview of each.
Robert Webb: Etihad Airways is the national carrier of the United Arab Emirates, headquartered here in Abu Dhabi, and is the fastest growing airline in the world. It is also a broader business: we have an aviation services company, a catering company, a loyalty company, ground handling, and many additional businesses that are part of the core Etihad Aviation Group business.
Additionally, Etihad Aviation Group has invested in airlines around the world. Recently we made a 49 percent investment in Alitalia, the Italian carrier. We are a 36 percent investor in Air Berlin. We are investors in Jet Airways, Air Seychelles, Air Serbia, Virgin Australia, and Air Lingus, as well as Etihad Regional in Switzerland. So we are an airline group that is made up of a number of different airlines.
High: I know that part of the logic of the equity partnership is a desire to get deeper in terms of what is shared, and I know that technology plays a large role in that. Can you talk a bit about the vision for the relationship in creating stronger ties across this group?
08-18-2015
The Georgia Technology Authority (GTA) manages the delivery of IT infrastructure and managed network services to 1,300 state and local government entities across the state of Georgia. GTA promotes an enterprise approach to managing technology services by establishing statewide policies, standards and guidelines based on industry best practices and federal requirements. GTA develops and manages the state’s official website, which provides information and services from more than 115 state agencies and links to city and county government Websites.
Dean Johnson is the Chief Operating Officer for the GTA. Johnson has co-led the move to privatize infrastructure and managed network services for the state of Georgia since 2008. He is currently leading an effort to evolve the current operating and service delivery models to take full advantage of the strong foundation built over the past six years and apply lessons learned along with today’s industry best practices in outsourcing. CIO Insight contributor Peter High discusses with Johnson how he helped save the state $181 million, how he assisted in laying the groundwork for privatizing certain IT services and his take on big data initiatives.
CIO Insight: How do you work with the CIOs in various jurisdictions across the state?
Dean Johnson: GTA has established several councils and forums, structured specifically to invite CIOs’ input, engage in discussion about solutions and offer information about available services. We meet regularly with agency CIOs and have found that building and maintaining positive working relationships with the customers we serve and understanding their business needs to be one of the keys to our success.
CIO Insight: You also helped spearhead the creation of Georgia Enterprise Technology Services, saving the state $181 million in the process. What was the idea behind this?
Johnson: A comprehensive assessment by an independent third party in 2007 documented alarming shortcomings in the state’s ability to comply with IT best practices, refresh aging equipment and software, and address growing threats from hackers and cyber-criminals. In addition, GTA and other state agencies found themselves unable to compete with the private sector in recruiting and retaining knowledgeable and experienced technicians. The third-party assessment recommended outsourcing daily operations to private-sector service providers.
GTA went to the market in 2008 to source IT infrastructure services and managed network services on behalf of the state of Georgia. The Georgia Enterprise Technology Services (GETS) program sought to transform the state’s IT operations into a modern day, well-run IT enterprise by turning to private-sector leaders in technology service delivery.
8-17-15
Marina Levinson has had a distinguished career as a CIO at multiple companies in Silicon Valley including NetApp and Palm. When she left the former company in September of 2011, she started a company that helped venture capitalists establish CIO advisory boards, among other things. As she became more involved with VCs, she discovered that it was a field of interest.
In April of 2014, Levinson joined Benhamou Global Ventures as a partner. She brings the experience of a practitioner and a former buyer of technology, which has been invaluable to the company’s portfolio of enterprise technology start-ups.
Levinson has serves on the boards of a number of companies, including Ellie Mae, for which she is the Chair of the Technology Advisory Board. Levinson’s path is highly unusual, but she believes that others will soon follow in her footsteps, as technology opportunities in the form of innovation and issues in the form of cybersecurity concerns dominate the agendas of boards far and wide.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 22nd article in the Beyond CIO series. To read interviews with past interviewees from American Express, HP, Aetna, AllState, and Schneider National, please visit this link. To read future interviews in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Marina, some know you as the former Chief Information Officer of NetApp, where you spent nearly six and a half years, or as CIO of Palm for another six years before that. But, it is been awhile since you have been a full-time CIO. A lot of your time has been spent in recent years in a variety of ways in the venture capital realm, capped off with your joining Benhamou Global Ventures as a partner. Could you talk a about that career path that you have taken from CIO to VC, how those opportunities presented themselves to you, and how it occurred to you to pursue that career path, which is quite an unusual one for a former CIO?
Marina Levinson: It is unusual. I think it is a very attractive career path for technologists, including CIOs. It is interesting that not that many CIOs decide to pursue this career path, but in order for you to understand how I got there, let me give you a little background on myself. You already mentioned my tenure as CIOs of Palm and NetApp. Before becoming CIO of Palm, I was actually a senior IT executive at 3Com. I was there for more than 12 years, and when 3Com decided to spin off Palm, I got an opportunity to be their first CIO. As far as my tenure at both 3Com and Palm, I worked for Eric Benhamou, who was CEO and Chairman of 3Com, and Chairman of Palm, and when I left Palm to go to NetApp, we continued our relationship and stayed in touch. So when I decided to leave NetApp to start my own technology advisory business “CIO Advisory Group”, Eric became one of my clients.
The focus for my advisory group was to bring together CIOs, VCs, Private Equity, and their portfolio companies to have this ability to exchange ideas for mutual benefit. Obviously, for VCs, Private Equity, and their portfolio companies, it is important to understand how CIOs think. The kind of buying decisions they are making and the kind of strategies they have open the opportunity for them to present portfolio companies that can find early adopters of their technologies. From the CIO’s perspective, being exposed to new technology innovation, especially now when there is this tremendous shift from old technology to a new technology world, is a great opportunity to understand where technology is going. VCs clearly are forward looking, and they are investing in things that will be big in the next 12, 18, or 24 months, and that is a great opportunity for CIOs to understand that and include some of those interesting trends and ideas in their long term strategies.
So, I worked with a number of VCs, and I am still advising Andreessen Horowitz. I have been a part of that organization for almost three years, again helping them with the CIO outreach organization, advising their portfolio companies, and helping them understand how to be more aggressive in selling to senior IT decision makers, whether it is CIOs or their direct reports. I have been working with Eric for about a year, and he has been pleased with some of the contributions that I have made. I actually was really interested in how investment decisions are made (I have been on the other side so many times being sold to), trying to decide what to invest in, and whether those technologies will be sellable, but kind of an interesting perspective to see those 2 sides of the same coin. So, when Eric raised his second fund about a year and a half ago, he offered for me to join him as a partner, and I did in April of last year. I have been a full-time partner with him for a little more than a year. The fund is very much focused on enterprise IT, which is my bread and butter; I understand it quite well. We focus on investing in companies in the areas of cyber-security, cloud, mobile, and new datacenter (software-defined datacenter), and that is kind of our umbrella of investment. It has been a terrific ride. I have learned a lot.
8-11-15
Health Care Service Corporation is the largest customer owned health insurer in the U.S. and the fourth largest overall, operating through the Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in five states: Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Most are more familiar with Blue Cross Blue Shield than with HCSC, and they do go to market as Blue Cross Blue Shield in those five states. Like so many healthcare companies, HCSC is a company that has had a lot of change exacted upon it, whether through state and federal regulation, the changing practices and needs of customers, or dynamics of the competitive landscape.
Steve Betts joined the company as the senior vice president and chief information officer, responsible for all aspects of technology. He is as a part of the senior leadership, responsible for reflecting the impact that technology is having and will increasingly have in the future of healthcare and HCSC. His role as an outsider to the industry but a long-time user of it has been to his advantage as he has contemplated customer experience enhancing innovations, as he notes in my interview herein.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 25th article in the CIO’s First 100 Days series. To read interviews with CIOs from Microsoft, Starwood, GE, Ecolab, CVS Caremark, and Intel, among many others, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Yours is an industry that has been in tremendous flux, whether it is the Affordable Care Act or state level regulations across the various states in which you operate. Each of these can have profound impacts on technology. This was a new industry for you, having come from Aon, where you were Global CIO. How did you prepare for this new opportunity, the industry, the degree of flux, and how did that reflect itself in the first plans you made for your team?
Steve Betts: That is really one of the things that attracted me to the opportunity here at HCSC. When you look at healthcare and the changes that are occurring, there are many dimensions that are coupled with the technology trends. I feel there is a new opportunity for technology to make an impact and with HCSC’s dynamic approach and position at the forefront of a lot of the changes, I really thought that was a great combination.
The first major trend is, across healthcare, shifting to a consumer-centric industry. I look at it as really becoming a more connected value chain as customers become informed and involved in making buying decisions. Compared to what has traditionally been more of a group-centric model with employers really being the key interaction point for plans like ours and employees dealing through the employer. That shift to a consumer-centric model has driven a number of changes that are fueled by technology. The first is the member-centric solutions that we need to provide, like the importance of the digital channel. Providing the right information at the right time throughout the customer’s journey from enrollment through care management, claims and so forth is absolutely critical. That is an area that we have focused on and we will continue to focus there.
There are many types of choices that our consumers want in this more consumer driven market, like deductible plans, different network configurations, and other different products. When you look back at over the last 20 years, you had an HMO, a PPO, and a couple of minor variations. Going forward, there will be more different types of products that are linked to different types of networks. They drive an incredible level of change and a need for agility and speed to market within the industry.
The last piece I will touch on is data. Data has always been important, but again, as you look at the changing dynamics and putting the member at the center of how we look at things, building those insights on data both within our walls and coupled with broader information across the value chain is becoming increasingly important, particularly as the types of relationships that we have with our providers develop things like value based care.
8-10-15
There are many examples of companies that have had a difficult time competing with digital native organizations. One-time stalwarts like Circuit City and Blockbuster are no more, but Amazon and Netflix are thriving in their place. The postal service in many countries have been hit hard by competition, whether it is through digital channels like email, or through more nimble and innovative competitors like FedEx. The US Postal Service lost roughly $5.5 billion last year, for example.
In light of this, the revolution happening at Singapore Post is all the more impressive. Recognizing that its traditional business was shrinking, the company’s leaders came to the conclusion that it needed to invest in e-commerce and digital business in order to sustain its business. Ramesh Narayanaswamy is the chief information officer of Singapore Post, and he is one of the leaders spearheading the change happening at Singapore Post. In this interview, he describes the way in which the e-commerce operation was set up, the different approaches the group has taken to hiring, different processes that have been leveraged, and the like.
(To read more stories like this one, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Please describe your roles as CIO at Singapore Post.
Ramesh Narayanaswamy: Our company has a CEO for e-commerce named Marcelo Wesseler. He runs the whole e-commerce business. Dr. Bernard Leong runs our digital business. My role as CIO is to provide governance, architecture, development capabilities. There is a need for balance between doing things fast, while recognizing the change management activities necessary to move an established business like Singapore Post forward to modernity. This is not a new age company that was born digital.
We must balance between changing process, using the existing process, but then adding the right technology and automation as we transform. In many ways, we have to facilitate flexibility because often new products and services require new processes. This is an area of great joy to me because it requires that our team think creatively and to foster flexibility. So from a central perspective, the entire delivery mechanism is where I spend a lot of time with e-commerce folks, with digital folks and with the whole other line of business that we run– logistics, mail, property, the corporate IT itself.
To a certain extent I feel technology is everyone’s job in the organization—it is not restricted to just the CIO and the IT team. I think the CIO is responsible for ensuring that it is done correctly and that it is built for sustainability. Customers expect something every two months, every three months, so how do we ensure we are planning appropriately? How do we set up the APIs appropriately? The CIO needs to be at the center of these conversations, collaborating with others across the company, providing the environment for innovation.
High: It strikes me in many ways the CIO role, as you define it, is like an integrator and a networker of sorts– constantly remaining abreast of the needs and changes suggested by all parts of the business—while also understanding what technology changes are happening inside and outside of the company that are relevant to helping the organization get to its destination more readily. Is that a fair synopsis, would you say?
08-10-2015
The mission of Word & Brown is to simplify access to better health insurance choices. Privately held for 30 years by entrepreneurs John Word and Rusty Brown, the organization connects businesses to industry-leading solutions in every area of health insurance and employee benefits.
When Allen Fazio joined the company in May of 2014, as Fazio tells CIO Insight contributor, Peter High, the team had a lot of talent, but it was not a high performing team. He embarked on a major transformation that continues today, and Fazio has helped technology bring value to the enterprise.
CIO Insight: What role does IT play in driving Word & Brown’s business?
Allen Fazio: As with many successful 30-year-old organizations, at The Word & Brown Companies, IT plays a critical role on several fronts: transforming current operations by providing technology solutions to streamline operations, move traditional products and services to a Web/mobile consumption model, and manage higher transaction volume at marginal cost; modernizing the legacy systems that have been the backbone to the success of the business; reducing technology operating costs; and leveraging the technology portfolio to gain greater levels of value from technology assets.
CIO Insight: You are not a “back-office only” CIO. Across your career, you have focused on delivering customer-facing technologies, as well as helping to run the operation of the company. How have you inspired your teams to follow your lead to become more cognizant of customer needs?
8-04-15
DNA sequencing has been an area of focus of many of the biggest brains in science for multiple decades. The National Institutes of Health, among others, invested billions of dollars in this area of scientific discovery. As a result, the first genome – DNA – has become less mysterious and better understood. The importance of the second genome, which is the bacteria that each of us has throughout our bodies is less well publicized, but a growing number of companies have chosen this as a domain of focus as the impact of the microbiome (the term that describes the trillions of bacteria each of us has in and on our bodies) on our health becomes clearer.
A leader in this growing field is a Bay Area-based company called Second Genome, suitably enough. Peter DiLaura is the CEO of the company. In this interview, DiLaura, who is a veteran in the healthcare space, defines the microbiome, its impact on our health, how issues with it can lead to disease, and the mission of his company to help develop cures for those diseases. DiLaura and his team are leveraging data science combined with traditional science in order to develop remedies. As he notes, the key to such discovery is to create an environment where people with various areas of expertise (hard science, computer science, data science, traditional business, etc.) can come together to more rapidly develop effective remedies.
Peter High: Could you define the microbiome, as it is a term gaining some traction, but is still quite foreign to most people, just as it is essential for all people?
Peter DiLaura: The microbiome is the term that is used to describe the estimated 100 trillion bacteria that we have living in and on our bodies. We now understand that nearly every biological system in our body is in some way influenced by this bacterial community. It represents three to five pounds of our mass. The hundred trillion bacteria is a huge community that is a connective tissue on most surfaces of our body: It includes our skin; it includes our airway; and it includes our gastrointestinal system, among others.
What we now appreciate is that this bacterial community plays an important part in regulating our health: the way we deal with infections, the way we process our nutrition, the way our immune system develops. We have been conditioned to think of bacteria as bad for us, we think about it in a pathogenic way. For many of us, thinking about a hundred trillion bacteria living in our bodies kind of grosses us out. We generally have been focused on antibacterial wipes and taking antibiotics and getting rid of bacteria, but we now are beginning to realize that our bacterial community, our microbiome, plays a critical role in our health and wellness.
We are essentially (although probably not completely) sterile in utero, and we are colonized by bacteria when we travel through the vaginal canal. And then our nutritional sources give us another bacterial community, and our contact with people and the environment around us further develops this bacterial community. Over the course of our first three or four years of our lives, we build this ecology that is a part of our bodies. This is a developmental path that has evolved with us since the dawn of humanity. We require our microbiome to survive, and it is essential for our health.
However, if you take the roughly last 70 years of Western society, we have changed the way that we are colonized. Kids delivered via C-section have a different bacterial community than those delivered vaginally. We have also changed our nutritional sources: breast-fed infants have a different microbiome than formula-fed infants, and a high fat diet produces a different microbiome than a low fat diet. When you take antibiotics, which we do all the time both through medicine and through our food supply, there is a huge impact on the microbiome. We are just now discovering that these changes are having a pretty profound effect on our health and wellness.
High: How much overlap is there between any two individuals microbiome? Is it above 50 percent? Is it below? How diverse would you say the individual microbiome is from individual to individual?
