by Peter High, published on Forbes
3-2-2015
Federico Florez Gutierrez is the Chief Information and Innovation Officer, and he is also the Global Purchasing Chairman at Ferrovial, an $8 billion Spanish company involved in the design, construction, financing, operation and maintenance of transport and commercial infrastructures. In his current role he is responsible for IT, innovation, and is the chairman of the purchasing committee at the company. From Flores Gutierrez’s perspective, it is natural that IT leaders should take on responsibilities in areas that have not historically been under IT’s control, as information and technology now are dramatic sources of innovation for any company. IT has a hand in driving both revenue augmentation and cost efficiency. As a result, he believes more IT executives will follow in his footsteps to become a CIO-plus.
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Peter High: Please describe your responsibilities as chief information and innovation officer of Ferrovial.
Federico Florez Gutierrez: As CIO, I am responsible for managing IT within the company trying to provide the best value to the business. During last six years, we have looked for synergies, integrating the infrastructures communications. We externalized them changing the cost from fixed to variable, and looking for cost reduction. We developed vertical applications for the core business process and use SaaS for non-core applications in a cloud based. We centralized the purchasing function of IT and the IT security.
As Innovation Officer, I am the person responsible at the Executive Committee to lead innovation. That means, to coordinate this function in Ferrovial. We developed a methodology to implement it in the whole company in an open innovation model, looking for projects of business innovation which have impact in the P&L, and we launch projects for business challenges.
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