Its all about competence and attitude

It's all about competence and attitude

Mike Webb, CIO of Aricent articulates on the role of modern CIO and IT innuendoes that Aricent religiously follows

Friday, April 25, 2008

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CHENNAI, INDIA: Days of putting forth an optimally functional IT infrastructure have gone. Today, the worry is not just about devising an infrastructure but also making sure that the individual solutions were amalgamated in order to generate a standardized IT. The quicker this step is undertaken, the better it is for the organization not just to function well but to upscale its operations even on unknown terrain.

Aricent, a provider of telecommunications software faced a similar situation: to seamlessly integrate various workings into one single standard entity and without upsetting the ongoing services. Mike Webb, vice president and CIO of Aricent shares how his company went about this exercise in an exclusive interaction with Prasad Ramasubramanian from CyberMedia News.

While there is an increased awareness towards IT being an integral part in a business process, do you think that CIOs are being recognized as critical players in the executive table?

I think this differs from company to company, but any company that hasn't realized the value generation potential that effective use of technology can contribute to a company's success is making a serious mistake. We need to make a distinction here between the "executive" table and the "operations" table, meaning the chief operating officers staff. Far fewer CIO's have made it to the executive table, where overall company strategy is discussed. One of the realities of the situation is that many CIOs don't deserve to be at either table simply because they aren't strong enough or contribute enough.

My advice to any CIO complaining that they can't get a place at the right table to be an effective CIO is to start looking for a new job because they will be replaced soon. One misconception that I often hear is that the importance of a CIO can be determined by where they report in the organization, I disagree - you can be a lousy CIO reporting to a CEO, and a great CIO reporting to anybody else.

It's all a question of competence and attitude. At Aricent, I report to the chief financial officer, we have a great relationship and it works well, but I don't think it would change anything if I reported elsewhere.

What are key components which need to be kept in mind when the IT solutions are being deployed?

I'm assuming that this question refers to the implementation phase of application projects. The most important component of this is to prepare the function that will be using the application and having their buy-in and leadership. By this, I mean, not simply the training aspects but also that they are prepared generally for the application and process changes; have fully understood and are committed in terms of the time and resources required to make an implementation successful. From an IT perspective it means having an excellent release process through to delivery and support. Another major consideration for a global company such as ours that is growing significantly is the repeatability of the implementation experience in order to improve cost efficiency as the company grows.

When Aricent began integrating its entities, how did you go about platforming the IT infrastructure to form a standardized infrastructure?

The first thing to do is to establish a globally based organization and then empower them to make the decisions necessary to get global consistency. We have separated our operational infrastructure teams from the corporate group who set the standards. That corporate group is decentralized geographically which additionally helps on ensuring compliance across different sites. We were fortunate in a way because we separated from a parent company and that allowed us to establish the new infrastructure as a single project with their support.

Could you talk on the standard solutions that are being deployed in Aricent currently and certain key implementations Aricent has undertaken during recent times?

There are many but I'll single out a few. On the infrastructure side, we have recently moved the company from Notes to Exchange, implemented a new Sharepoint-based collaboration and intranet platform, a full VOIP solution, standardized conferencing, and an ongoing program to consolidate and simplify our server environments. On the application side, we are continuing to roll out SAP as the core financial system for the company to cover all of our new sites with some financial consolidation tools using Hyperion and Essbase. We have also standardized our systems and processes across the company from initial customer contact through service delivery, which provides considerable value to improving our planning processes and enhances customer experience.

You have rendered your services in organizations such as Hewlett Packard, Symantec etc. How unique is the deployment of solutions happening at Aricent vis-à-vis the rest of the companies?

My roles in both HP and Symantec were more of a marketing and general management nature, and weren't directly related to IT. Until a year ago I was the CIO of Flextronics, the global leader of electronics manufacturing, and although the purpose of Flextronics is very different from that of Aricent, one being focused more at materials and supply chain management whilst Aricent is more focused on human capital resource management, some of the same basic concepts for Information Technology apply. But the focus on applications is obviously very different. Some of these concepts include thinking globally in every aspect of IT, ensuring limitless scalability, flexibility, rapid implementation, consistency, world class systems, and above all a relentless effort to providing extraordinary value, alignment, and competitive advantage to the company in pursuit of its objectives.

©CyberMedia News

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