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| Changing complexity of CIO role |
| CIOs want suppliers to be proactive about IT requirements |
Priya Padmanabhan
MUMBAI: Offshore outsourcing of services to third party vendors is creating a new dimension to the way CIOs manage IT.
At the Nasscom session on The New CIO Leader: Setting the Agenda, Delivering Results, Jonathan White, senior vice president, worldwide technology and business innovation, Pfizer Inc., said that CIOs are now having to manage changing cultures due to offshoring. “The challenge is to create accountability for IT when you don’t have the ownership with yourself. It is a challenge to own what you outsource.”
White urged Indian suppliers to go beyond the scope of SLA dictates and proactively provide solutions for problems. “There are many opportunities to use data in non-traditional forms and also standardize applications.”
Applied Materials CIO and group vice president Ron Kifer, spoke of how the company’s shift to offshore has resulted in drastic reductions in operations cost. “Ten months ago, we decided to transform our IT set up and now have reduced IT spend and more of managed IT services. Our in-house IT team is now meaner and leaner and able on focus on other areas like process, service management and vendor management.”
The company has divvied up its IT contract between Wipro for ITO and BPO, and Satyam for managed services, Application development and maintenance and engineering support.
Terry S Kline, global product development information officer and chief information officer, Asia Pacific, General Motors Corporation, highlighted the staggering enormity of managing IT in GM. The company has around 18 plants, 16,000 dealers, 60 million customers and 3200 suppliers.
Kline said that the in addition to the traditional CIO role, the company also has constituted a PIO or Process Information Officer who brings his horizontal knowledge of the processes, products and engineering, within the company and ensures that IT meets business requirements.
Terming GM’s current IT outsourcing model as the third generation outsourcing for the company, he said, “We have shifted from giving contracts to one or two suppliers to now outsourcing to a small number of key suppliers who also have to drive the best practices.”
On the issue that frustrates him about suppliers, he felt that the ability to manage legacy applications was proving a challenge.
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