by Peter High, published on Forbes
3-15-2016
Flex is a $26 billion provider of global supply chain solutions. Flex has long been in the business of designing, building, shipping, and serving packaged electronic products for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Flex works in collaboration with companies large and small, and the company’s CIO Gus Shahin’s team has been an integral player in creating the tools and the environment to allow innovation to sprout.
Under Shahin’s guidance, the company ahs developed what it refers to as a Pulse Center, which allows the company to monitor its incredibly complex supply chain, and make better decisions based on up-to-the moment data. This work has led to better inventory management, which is a source of tremendous value for a company like Flex.
Shahin has also helped develop an innovation lab “to allow people in the Bay Area who have ideas, to help them bring those ideas to reality as quickly as possible, as cheaply as possible, and in an effective way,” as he notes in this interview. The combination of these creative outlets have lent insights back to Shahin and his team to ensure that the company remains on the cutting edge.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. To read future interviews like this one, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Gus, please take a moment to describe the Pulse Center at your offices in Milpitas, California?
Gus Shahin: Flex is a supply chain sketch to scale company, and basically everything we do is around supply chain. The only way we can make money is if we manage supply chains for customers effectively and in a efficient way. The pulse center is basically flex digitizing, if you will, the supply chain globally. We have about one hundred factories in forty countries. We manufacture products for companies, from the largest OEMs, like Cisco and others, to startups. And we not only built the products for them but we also manage their entire supply chain: we procure on their behalf, we manufacture, we distribute, we repair, and so on. The Pulse Center gives us a real-time view of our supply chain at any given point in time, in real-time, and it tells us all kinds of information. We get alerts immediately – geopolitical alerts, updates from factories, weather alerts, anything that is happening around the world that could potentially disrupt the supply chain or disrupt the material flowing in the supply chain that could affect our – and just by looking at the screens, we see what is going on in real-time and can alter things and move things around so that we do not disrupt the supply chain for our customers. That is basically the description in a nutshell, but there is a lot in there.
High: One of the fascinating things about digital, generally speaking, is the extent to which it requires cross functional collaboration in ways that are new and more substantial than in the past. There is a new kind of collaboration emerging. Can you talk about the role that IT plays in collaborating across the enterprise?
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Peter High
2-24-2016
Excerpt from the Article:
Gary Wimberly is the CIO and a senior vice president at Express Scripts, a $94 billion pharmacy benefit management company. CIO Insight contributor Peter High recently had the opportunity to tour Express Scripts Technology and Innovation Center in St. Louis with the company’s CIO. In this CIO Insight Q&A, Wimberly explains how data is captured and analyzed, how technology can detect when a potential prescription conflict arises and how to reconcile risk taking with security practices.
Peter High: Gary, we have just done a quick tour of the Technology and Innovation Center and I wonder if you can take a moment to describe the center, but then also peel back the onion a little bit to describe IT’s role in all this?
Gary Wimberly: Here at Express Scripts we have a Technology and Innovation Center and it is really focused around data analytics. We bring resources from teams across all disciplines within IT, so not only IT for the technology we utilize, but our economists, our clinicians, our physicians that really are focused on analyzing all of the data that we capture at Express Scripts—and we have an enormous amount of data. I think we are close to up to 20 petabytes at this point. We utilize that data to identify opportunities to improve health outcomes and eliminate waste in the healthcare space.
High: Can you talk a little bit about the variety of disciplines that are brought together in this effort?
Wimberly: We have IT people, obviously. We have a lot of technology in here: not only from an infrastructure perspective with all the servers, but the amount of software, the tools that we use to do this analytics, to ensure that those are operating and that we are developing the right solutions. A lot of them are self-serve kinds of applications, so our responsibility on those is to make sure that they are available and that they are performing to what the user experience should be.
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12-18-2015
Group Health Cooperative offers care system, care delivery and insurance coverage in order to achieve one goal: affordable, quality health care for all. Founded in 1947, the company now consists of 25 medical centers within Washington and northern Idaho. The company’s focus is on preventive care, combined with medical education, a charitable foundation and a nationally recognized research institute.
Don Lewis is the vice president and CTO at Group Health, and as he discusses with CIO Insight contributor Peter High, technology plays a significant role in ensuring that the company serves its customers while maintaining efficiencies.
CIO Insight: You have focused on turning IT from a cost center to a profit center at Group Health. How have you done so?
Don Lewis: We are working to improve the visibility that other business units have into what is going on within the entire IT environment. The goal is that IT serves as the caretaker for IT systems and applications, and as an advisor and expert collaborator on how technology can help grow the overall business.
While it’s true there are expenses associated with IT, there’s also value. However, that value does not always accrue within IT, which means there isn’t a true revenue side within IT. The value instead is what accrues across the entire business. So we work closely with the other business units to put in place strong business cases that clearly call out where that value accrues. If it’s in the health plan part of our business, the cost may all be within IT, but the value accrues with the health plan, that’s fine because from an overall organization standpoint, that’s what we’re looking for.
We focus on having those conversations with the business leaders and demonstrating the value technology delivers to the entire organization. We know technologies we implement generally have significant business value, but we haven’t always been good at capturing that. Now we have a more formalized process to do just that.
CIO Insight: You have also focused on more tightly aligning IT strategy to business strategy. What methods have you employed to do so?
Chobani is the No. 1 Greek yogurt in the United States. Founded in 2005 by Turkish immigrant Hamdi Ulukaya, the company now has more than 1,200 employees. One year ago, Jindra Zitek was promoted to the position of interim-CIO at the company. He had been vice president of sales, marketing, business analytics and employee solutions within IT. Within a few months, he dropped the interim part of his title. As he discusses with CIO Insight contributor, Peter High, as CIO, he is responsible for Chobani’s global IT strategy, delivery and support—namely technical services including network operations, help desk and cyber-security; applications, starting with the company’s ERP and other functional tools, as well as company-wide collaboration and productivity tools.
CIO Insight: You do not have a traditional educational background for a CIO, as you studied finance and economics as an undergraduate at the London School of Economics, and you received an MBA from Columbia University. You then worked as a consultant with McKinsey. How did your background in finance and as a consultant help you in your current role and how did you develop your technical skills?
Jindra Zitek: I believe my non-technical background in finance and consulting and project implementation experience from McKinsey actually helps me be an effective IT leader and partner for the business. At McKinsey, I specialized in business transformations, turnarounds and growth strategies. Across a number of industries (automotive, energy, health care, telecommunications), I experienced how technology and applications help businesses and individual functions unlock value—for example through increasing efficiency and consistency of business processes, or delivering insights and functionality that would otherwise not be possible (or with significant manual effort only). Being a business leader first enables me to identify where IT can deliver value and effectively communicate it to my business partners and then align on joint business/IT strategy and funding. My finance and McKinsey background drives me to look for clear benefits in each IT project at Chobani, and once we kick off a new project I ensure that we have clear accountability on both the IT and business side and measurable benefits milestones. As a rule, all of our projects have business sponsors to make sure we work on initiatives that matter to the business.
I am able to focus on the value to the business and prioritization thanks to our very strong IT leadership team who I focus on technical and applications-specific knowledge and skills. While I have not worked in IT directly previously, my relationship with IT and hardware goes back to my early teenage years when I started working part time at my dad’s business back in the Czech Republic-reverse logistics and repairs for end-user devices (printers, PCs, cell phones, cameras etc). In my current role, I am making sure that I leverage both McKinsey and TPG [private equity investor into Chobani] network of IT professionals.
CIO Insight: When you first took on the role of CIO, how did you organize yourself in the early days of this period? Were there changes to the IT strategy, to the organization structure, to processes, or to technologies that you implemented?
12-08-2015
Hunter Douglas is a global manufacturer of window coverings and architectural products. The company operates in more than 100 countries. The company has a reputation for developing innovative, high quality, proprietary products that can be found in millions of homes and commercial buildings. The company operates as a highly decentralized, global federation of small and medium-sized companies that manufacture and market similar products.
Rob Meilen has been North American CIO for more than four years. In this interview, he speaks with CIO Insight contributor Peter High about his strategic priorities, the decentralized nature of IT, his pursuit of mobile apps, his team’s path to innovation, and a variety of other topics.
CIO Insight: Please describe some of your strategic priorities for the foreseeable future.
Rob Meilen: Hunter Douglas North America is focused on maintaining our innovative product leadership, enhancing the experience of our customers, operating more efficiently. We are part of a recently created, executive IT steering committee to guide our project portfolio to match business and IT priorities. Our IT priorities include business process re-engineering and ERP optimization, customer-facing applications, improving master data management and partnering with product development teams on next generation window coverings.
CIO Insight: Your company is based in the Netherlands. How do you interface with the global IT team?
Meilen: Our company operates in a decentralized, federated model. I lead the HD North American IT organization. There are IT teams in other regions: Europe, Latin America, Asia and Austria. These teams operate largely independently and will periodically consult with each other. We do not have a global CIO or IT organization.
There is a periodic exchange of ideas among the CEOs and CFOs of each global region (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia). These exchanges generally focus on product and supply chain topics. When the group sees technology opportunities, they will spur discussion between regional IT teams.
CIO Insight: Your team gets involved in mobile apps and the web, and therefore, you have reason to think about user experience and customer facing technology. What perceptions do you have about the changing demands of customers? What do they expect now when they interact with digital channels like the ones you provide?
12-7-2015
Ron Ross is a Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, a non-regulatory agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST’s mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.
Ross’ role at NIST is in the information technology laboratory, where he leads the Federal Information Security Management Act Implementation Project. He is also the principal architect of the NIST Risk Management Framework, and leads the joint taskforce between the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and the Committee on National Security Systems that developed the Unified Information Security Framework for the federal government. To my mind, he has one of the clearest and most comprehensive approaches to data security, a topic we drill down into great depth in this article. Last week at a Forbes CIO dinner in Washington, DC that I co-hosted with Forbes Managing Editor, multiple government and private sector CIOs noted how influential Ross has been on their approaches to cybersecurity. For that reason, I’m particularly excited to share some of his biggest ideas.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this article in podcast form, please click this link. This is the 15th article in the “IT Influencers” series. To read past interviews with Meg Whitman, Sal Khan, Sebastian Thrun, Sir James Dyson, Jim Goodnight, and Walt Mossberg among others, please click this link. To read future articles in this series, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: For those who may not be familiar, I thought we would begin with a description of your organizations, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, as well as your role in it.
Ron Ross: NIST is an organization that is part of the Department of Commerce. We are one of several bureaus within the department. NIST has three thousand scientists and engineers that work across many different laboratories, from chemistry to physics. The division that I am in – the Computer Security division – is part of the Information Technology Laboratory. We work on standards and guidelines and work closely with industry to collaborate so that the standards and guidelines that we produce are implementable and cost-effective. It is a collaborative way to do business.
High: You have talked about how our appetite for advanced technology is far exceeding our ability to protect it. I wonder if you could talk a bit about the paradigm shift that is happening, the drivers behind that appetite and what makes today different from years past.
Ross: I think what makes the world so much different today is that we are literally living through a transformation from a fully paper-based world to a digital world. Technology is moving forward at such a rapid pace. Every day we see new things with tablets, smartphones, and the Internet of Things. We are driven to the technology because it is so powerful and affordable. When you have those two things, consumers are going to buy a lot of it.
It is an exciting time to be alive because the things that we are seeing computers do today, were not anticipated five or ten years ago. It is great to be a part of this digital revolution, but with that comes some other things that can be troubling. That is where the information security part of the problem comes in.
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.
3-9-2015
Since the days of the industrial revolution, cities have been the engines of economic growth. The revolution was effective in developing prosperity for many countries, but the development was not always “smart,” sacrificing health conditions, for instance, for greater productivity.
Now with greater use of technology, a number of cities are accumulating data, delivering innovation, and enhancing lives of citizens. Juniper Research recently compiled its list of top-five “smart cities.” The author of the study, Steffen Sorrell, focuses on two “overreaching” benefits of smart cities: sustainability and efficiency. To that end, he identified five essential components of a smart city.
The people who live in cities are driven economic performers who are seeking to take advantage of technologies to further their personal and collective opportunities. Cities provide them these opportunities and in doing so draw many like-minded parties into their midst. With this drive and an increase in active participants, there are downsides. Most notably, energy consumption, waste and congestion. In this day and age people are increasingly concerned with climate change and awareness of limited resources all while demanding more efficiencies and technological development.
Citizens are not the only factors to consider in the evolution of cities into smart cities. Governmental and commercial entities are going to play increasingly important roles in development and implementation of technologies that pace the way to the smart city.
2-16-2015
India is a fascinating place for anyone who is interested in technology. The number of major technology firms is growing just as the number of companies around the world who work with Indian technology resources grows along with them.
I have spent the past week in Mumbai, and at every turn, I’ve been asking people about the technology they use, the companies they admire, and the state of India today. Last week, I had lunch with an IT leader at a major Indian airline. We met in a conference room in her building. I had a take-out biryani, and she dined on a lunch out of four identical silver tins called tiffin boxes. I asked her about her lunch not realizing that I was on the cusp of learning about the most fascinating logistics organization I had ever heard of.
That morning, as she began her commute to work, a cook in her home prepared her lunch for her. Her cook knows her taste, and prepares her favorite dishes each day of the work week. The dishes, in her case typically made of vegetarian thali, were dished into four identical tiffin boxes. At 9:30, a delivery man, called a dabbawala, which translates to “one who carries the box”, knocked on the door, and picked up the four tins. He would collect similar tins around my friend’s neighborhood, often climbing stairs to get to apartments in high buildings. He would do this even during monsoon season. It is more than likely that he is illiterate, as 85 percent of the dabbawala workforce is. The boxes that the tins are put into, called dabbas, are marked with different numbers, letters, and colors. These designate the point of origin and the destination of each dabba, including the trains and stations that will be used along the journey.
ATK CIO Says Metrics-Driven IT Paves the Way for Innovation
by John Gallant, published on CIO.com
09-15-2014
As CIO for ATK, Jeff Kubacki has instituted a rigorous benchmarking approach aimed at delivering world-class IT at continually improving cost. Kubacki has built a strong rapport with his CEO and other business leaders because he runs IT operations like a business and speaks the results-centered language of his peers at ATK.
In this installment of the IDG Enterprise CIO Interview Series, Kubacki talked with Chief Content Officer John Gallant about the realities of moving to a metrics-driven IT operation and how it has paved the way to more trust and visibility for IT. Furthermore, this discipline has freed IT to focus more on the innovations that are fueling the $5 billion diversified company’s growth.
To read the full article, please visit CIO.com
