Peter High
06-03-2015
Excerpt from the Article: The Advisory Board Company is a leading provider of insight-driven technology, research and services to more than 230,000 leaders at 5,200 member organizations across health care and higher education. Dan Holohan joined the company nearly three and a half years ago to oversee the Enterprise Technologies organization while setting direction for member-facing product technologies, enterprise data management and the implementation of social, mobile and collaboration solutions to help the firm’s predominantly Millennial workforce work smarter, faster and better. He has led the introduction of employee productivity, business unit and corporate shared application services and infrastructure. Holohan discusses his passion for IT and how he approaches his work with CIO Insight contributor Peter High.
CIO Insight: Dan, when you joined The Advisory Board Company roughly three years and a half years ago, you inherited a relatively small team in need of development and a portfolio of processes and technologies in need of modernization. What were the first things you addressed and why?
Dan Holohan: After I joined, my early assessment revolved around three primary areas: the capability of our internal network, the management of our data and the delivery of internal software.
My initial focus was to ensure that internal traffic flowed reliably and external Internet bandwidth was robust, redundant and fast. Within the first 90 days, the entire DC office network was completely replaced including the core backbone, all switches and wireless access points which, for the ensuing three years, has resulted in eliminating the serious service interruptions that the firm was used to experiencing.
Next, I noticed the emphasis that was being placed on managing the complex datasets and data flows that were being used by our internal tools and member facing products. I created a new group, Enterprise Data Management (EDM), charged with maintaining the quality, reliability and integrity of firmwide data and data technology platforms.
Lastly, internal stakeholders were dependent on our development team for providing solutions which kept the workforce productive and engaged. The challenge was prioritizing the intake and making sure that we were working on the most important things. I was able to convince six of the most senior leaders in the firm that we needed their input and the Prioritization Steering Committee was born. As a result, investments were made on this development team and we delivered a plethora of upgrades and enhancements in support of our growing business including cloud-based tools for HR, Finance and Member Support functions. One notable achievement was delivering the “360 Degree View of the Member” where nine disparate client systems were migrated to our Salesforce platform enabling staff to interact with all aspects of the member relationship from one place. My development team won the “2013 Breaking the Mold Award” at Dreamforce for their innovative uses of the Salesforce platform.
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