Latest Episode
9/17/2018
By Peter High. Published on Forbes
Seasoned technology executive Stephen Gold has joined Hudson’s Bay Company as the Chief Technology Officer and Chief Digital Operations Officer. In that role, he is responsible for leading the technology and digital strategy for the company, with a focus on aligning the end-to-end customer experience through data and digital innovation across the enterprise and HBC’s brands in North America. With his appointment to this role, HBC is aligning its digital operations and technical teams under a single Center of Excellence.
HBC CEO Helena Foulkes noted, “Steve is a seasoned technology and digital leader, who has a deep understanding of the retail market and has a proven track record of delivering large-scale technology initiatives that positively impact business outcomes. Steve is attuned to the customer-centric approach we are driving across all our business touchpoints, and his ability to blend technical complexities with consumer-friendly solutions furthers HBC’s commitment to seamless experiences for our customers.”
To read the full article, please visit Forbes.
09/18/17
By Peter High, published on Forbes
Pegasystems has experienced tremendous success in recent years. The stock is up more than 100 percent in the past year, and enterprises are increasingly adopting the company’s software for customer engagement and operational excellence. It is tempting to think of the company as a start-up, perhaps run by a 20-something entrepreneur in the Bay Area. In fact, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company was founded by 61 year old Alan Trefler in 1983.
In many ways, Pegasystems has bucked the trend of a lot of software companies. Trefler did not accept venture capital early in the company’s tenure, and in so doing, he was able to dictate the pace of growth and mature the company in a way that has been sustainable. Likewise, though the company has been on the target of acquisition planning for several companies, including Salesforce, Trefler considers having an “exit strategy” as anathema to growing a successful company for the long term.
Trefler recently wrote a book, “Build for Change,” which highlights his philosophy and his advice for company’s, who he believes need to evolve with customers as the latter’s needs change or face extinction. He shares insights on all of the above and more in my interview.
Peter High: Alan, you have been in the software industry for multiple decades. You founded Pegasystems, in 1983. During your long tenure as a founder CEO in the software industry, you have seen many trends and competitors come and go. In fact, your own competitive set has evolved from your origins as a case management solution provider to a customer relationship management and business process management software company. Please share your perspective on how the software industry has evolved and where it is going.
Alan Trefler: Prior to starting Pegasystems, I worked for large New York banks as a systems integrator. Computers were getting faster, but we were still working in ways that seemed both grossly inefficient and not amenable to real customer success and happiness. I knew there had to be a better way to handle certain types of customer engagement and customer service issues. We came up with the idea of creating an infrastructure for managing work. Sometimes that is referred to as case management, sometimes it is referred to as business process management. I like the term digital process automation, which Forrester recently came out with. Digital process automation captures how companies become digital, connect to their customers, connect across channels, and bring together those intelligences, along with automation capabilities, into their software.
In the last several years, we have developed a CRM suite for Sales, Service, and Marketing that is built in digital process automation technology. It gives our customers an out-of-the-box application for service and has the power to execute effectively on the environments they want to, whether that is a Pega Cloud we service for our clients or a private cloud they might use in the future.
High: Pegasystems operates in a thriving field. How do you differentiate your organization?
To read the full article, please visit Forbes
by Peter High, published on Forbes
9-27-2016
Martha Heller is a long-time writer about the information technology function and the chief information officer community. She has long been a contributor to CIO.com, and she also is the President of Heller Search Associates, an executive search company placing CIOs and other technology leaders.
In her book, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT, Heller provides perspectives on how CIOs must operate in an era where technology is pervasive across the enterprise. She advises them to be bold, to seize the opportunity to lead the digital agenda, for example. As the title suggests, she admonishes those technology leaders who see a separation between IT and the business.
Heller provides examples of changing operating models, new talent development approaches, and the engagement of external partners. She also provides a list of the top ten skills and behaviors that CIOs need to pursue to be successful in this new era.
Peter High: Martha, how did the topic of this book project occur to you?
Martha Heller: I had published a number of CIO interviews for my blog on CIO.com, about how the role of IT had changed over the last five years; it was clear that IT now permeates nearly everything a company does. Regardless of industry, IT has moved much closer to (if not directly in) the revenue stream of the company. I also saw a continuing divide between IT and its business partners, where IT was accountable for IT innovation, investment decisions, development, delivery, adoption and support. A question occurred to me: When technology is the business, shouldn’t accountability for these activities be shared across the company? So, I started asking CIOs primarily of large companies, “How are you changing your IT operating model to support the changing role of IT?” From these discussions, I learned that many CIOs are dramatically re-conceptualizing the role of IT, and I saw enough patterns in what they were doing, that I decided to write a book.
High: Each of the chapters centers around an insight and then a vignette or two from leading CIOs to personify the idea. Did the insights develop organically as you had your regular conversations with CIOs, or did you write down the insights in a structured way and then seek the flesh to fill out that skeleton, so to speak?
7-11-2016
Mike Macrie was in the inaugural class of the Forbes CIO Innovation Award. Learning about his remarkable story as a revenue-driving chief information officer of the $15 billion agricultural-cooperative was fascinating. I recently spent more time with him in his office just north of St. Paul, Minnesota, and learned more about his remarkable rise.
Macrie became CIO of Land O’Lakes in his mid-30s, and his progressive use of technology befits someone of his young age. He has embraced digital technologies both as a means to render the operation more efficient, but also to aid farmers, as he details in this interview. In this wide ranging interview, he highlights his priorities, and the trends he thinks will drive ongoing innovation at his company and in the industry more broadly.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of my conversation with Mike Macrie, please click this link.)
Peter High: Mike, your CEO, Christopher Policinski mentioned that the digital transformation of the business “Demonstrates Land O’Lakes leadership and is helping to build the farm of the future with cutting edge concepts and technologies”. Can you tell us a bit about the methods you are using and the roles that IT is playing in that digitization.
Mike Macrie: In our IT organization here at Land O’Lakes we are working with our business leaders and everyone out in the field to help our membership-which is farmers and agricultural retailers-transform the way they think about technology. Everything from operations to the way they trade, and deal with their customer. It effects every aspect of everything they do, and many aspects of everything we do here. The one that’s the most exciting though, is how technology is transforming what happens on the farm. I think we are just at the beginning of that, but at Land O’Lakes we want to be a leader in that space. We believe we help farmers with decisions in agriculture-in the way they grow, make decisions in planting, and make decisions in environmental questions. We believe that technology is going to radically change the way they make those decisions in the future and we want to be in the forefront of that
High: You mentioned a variety of constituents here, you have growers, agricultural retailers and your colleagues. Can you talk about the process of leading them through some of the changes you are describing?
4-27-2016
Of those CIOs who work at multi-billion dollar, publicly traded companies, the list is in excess of 15 executives at least according to research done by Henry L. Schuck and Rob Liander of DiscoverOrg. It is noteworthy that the average across the top ten is $3,372,977. This about $100,000 higher than the top ten from a list I put together from based on 2012 compensation figures.
A few interesting characteristics pop out upon reviewing this list more thoroughly. First, half of the ten CIOs have additional responsibilities:
It is not surprising that those CIOs who have taken on a broader set of responsibilities would be compensated at a higher level. Moreover, the path to get these additional responsibilities were through extraordinary work done while “only” being a CIO prior to accruing additional responsibilities.
It is also noteworthy that eight of the ten report to the CEOs of their businesses. These CIOs do not require any translation of the CEO’s imperatives through another executive. They are treated as true members of the executive team, and are present when corporate strategy is created. At the Forbes CIO Summit in 2014, FedEx founder and CEO, Fred Smith indicated that there is not a single strategic imperative that is approved that does not go through his CIO Rob Carter, as an example.
10-6-15
Today, Gerri Martin-Flickinger has been named the first ever Chief Technology Officer of Starbucks. She will start work at the Seattle-based coffee behemoth on November 2. Martin-Flickinger ends a successful tenure as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Adobe, where, as was detailed in this column, she helped usher in the company’s pivot to the cloud.
“Gerri is a technologist at heart and has a 30-year track record of leveraging technology-based solutions to drive business value. As we continue to shape our global technology agenda at Starbucks, we needed leadership talent with deep experience in cloud, big data analytics, mobile and security to take us to the next level. As we searched for that leader, Gerri stood out as someone who has years of experience in Silicon Valley and brings deep management and technical expertise to help us navigate the future,” said Kevin Johnson, Starbucks president and chief operating officer.
Martin-Flickinger will report to Johnson and serve as a member of Starbucks senior leadership team. As chief technology officer, Martin-Flickinger will lead the company’s IT organization, and will champion the next phase of innovation and growth for Starbucks.
Prior to her time at Adobe, Martin-Flickinger held a variety of posts including holding the Chief Information Officer post at VeriSign, Network Associates, and McAfee Associates. Prior to that, she held senior technology roles at Chevron Corporation.
Peter High
9-17-2015
Excerpt from the Article:
Allianz Global Assistance is a leader in assistance services, travel insurance and medical health insurance for travelers or ex-patriots. “Assistance” refers to roadside assistance, but it also refers to repatriation services for people who have issues while they are traveling. As Chief Operating Officer of the Americas, Jay Levine notes in this interview with CIO Insight contributor, Peter High, how the assistance label is so meaningful to the company’s mission.
Levine has been a CIO several times over, and joined Allianz Global Assistance as CIO of the Americas before rising to his current role. Levine reflects on his journey and the lessons it might provide on those who might follow in his footsteps.
CIO Insight: Can you talk a bit about your responsibility as COO? What is under your purview, Jay?
Jay Levine: I am the Chief Operations Officer for the Americas zone, which includes Canada, Mexico, the U.S., and I share responsibility for Brazil. These zones all have standalone business units serving the products I just described. There are a number of areas of interest starting with organizational management, serving as a PMO. We are responsible for the claims area, the assistance area and travel services, which includes the call center. We also have a financial services group where we do TPA services for specialty products that we provide on behalf of a credit card company. Finally, I oversee administrative services to do staff planning, reporting analytics and budgeting across the business units for which I am accountable.
CIO Insight: Talk about the process transitioning from CIO to COO, especially how the opportunity presented itself to you and what it is about your experiences as CIO that made you ready for this set of responsibilities.
Levine: I certainly aspired to move beyond the CIO role over the last 10 years. I came up through the software ranks as you mentioned as CTO. The more mature I got into my career, the more involvement with the business beyond the technology became more interesting to me. So it was an aspiration of mine and I was unsure whether I would fulfill it as I moved into the last third of my career.
One of my colleagues, the COO, moved out of the company to a great opportunity, at a time when I was fulfilling both the zone CIO role and overseeing a business transformation in Paris. The former COO and I shared the same boss, so when this happened, I threw my hat into the ring. Obviously my boss felt I was qualified and I had attributes he wanted to see more of in the operations area. It is such a technology-driven operation that he was looking for someone with a technology background. I knew the infrastructure, the domain from a business point of view and I had a burning desire to be closer to customers.
To read the remainder of the article, please visit CIO Insight
6-1-2015
Serge Leduc has been the chief information officer of Canadian National Railway for roughly a year and a half. In that time, he has engaged in a transformation of the function, and has facilitated the implementation of the technology to enable the Internet of Things at the railway. This is one of several changes he is enacting that he discusses in the interview below that describe how he and his team are making the railway more reliable and safer.
Among other insights of note, he highlights his time as a consultant to developing an analytical mindset and problem solver’s mentality. He has attempted to instill this same thinking in his team.
(To listen to an unabridged version of this interview, please click this link. This 22nd article in the CIO’s First 100 Days series. To read the prior 21, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Serge, please describe your role and your plans for the foreseeable future at Canadian National.
Serge Leduc: As CIO I am responsible for IT operations of the company. This is a 24-by-7 operation because CN is not a passenger transport, it’s just freight. We have a network across North America, covering Canada from East to West, and covering the United States from North to South. We are moving $250 billion worth of goods across North America, and our operations rely heavily on information systems for the back-office operation, as well as the front-office functions including the Internet of Things. CN has invested in technology over the years to make sure that we have a safe operation. There has been a lot of investment in business intelligence, operational systems, and investment to support our growth. Our business model has evolved significantly over the years, moving to a greater customer service focus in order to improve the first and last line of our operations. A lot of investment has been made in our company in order to support this.
High: You mentioned the network you have put together across Canada and within the US. That network must include various trucking companies for the first mile and last mile, some of whom are also competitors of yours – a bit of “coopetition” that is inherent to your industry. As you think about the systems integration and the data integration that is necessary to make sure that you are serving customers well, it seems like quite a complex web in order to get that right. Can you talk a bit about your approach to sorting out the tracking of goods and ensuring that the data is shared across this ecosystem that you’ve built?
Leduc: That’s a very good question. The company has invested a lot in real-time tracking systems in order to track where our locomotives are, and the overall state of the network. Now we’re trying to extend that to our entire mode of business, including our partners in the trucking business. All the investment over the last 20 to 25 years in the industry targeted the rail portion of the business, but now with the growth that we are seeing in inter-modal and supply chain solutions, which include all the services that we can provide to our customers in order to have an end-to-end service offering, we will need to invest even more in that space in order to cover the full integration of the services that we are providing to our customers.
05-28-2015
Hogan Lovells is a global legal practice that helps corporations, financial institutions and government entities with their critical business and legal issues both globally and locally. It is among the top 10 largest law firms in the world, with more than 2,500 attorneys operating out of more than 40 offices in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and the United States.
Yet until three years ago, the firm had never had a global CIO. Mike Lucas was elevated to that role from the position of CTO, and in the process has helped drive tremendous change through better use of technology for purposes of collaboration, knowledge sharing and management, among other initiatives. Here, he describes his journey to CIO Insight contributor, Peter High.
CIO Insight: You are the first ever Global CIO of Hogan Lovells. What spurred the need to develop this role?
Mike Lucas: It started with the need for a global strategy. A natural outflow from developing that strategy was recognizing the need for a global realignment of the technology function. That work required a global leader; hence the global CIO role was born. The primary mission at the time was to streamline decision-making and unify the technology function globally.
CIO Insight: When you were named Global CIO, you needed to pull together a very diverse team that resides across multiple countries. What steps did you to take to be sure the right people were in the right roles, and ensure they were motivated to stay?
Lucas: It was most important to strive for balance in team composition, to recognize previous accomplishments, and to form a diverse team with global scope and responsibility. Reinforcing an already present focus on ‘customer first’ service, and establishing good IT governance were key drivers.
We place a great deal of emphasis on proper governance and transparency to the business. The next step was to permeate this approach down the organizational stack so that everyone understood and aligned with our global mission to deliver the very best service to our lawyers.
05-07-2015
Excerpt from the Article: When Jeff Bezos purchased the Washington Post for $250 million in 2013, the portion of the company that was not purchased was rebranded as Graham Holdings. Its holdings include Kaplan, Slate, multiple television stations, CableOne, and Graham Media Group (which is the former Post-Newsweek Stations), among others. Yuvinder Kochar has been chief technology officer of the company pre- and post-divestiture, having held that role for more than 12 years. In this interview with CIO Insight contributor Peter High, Kochar talks about the changes afoot at Graham Holdings, his own methods of managing IT, and his thoughts about the future of technology.
CIO Insight: You were the CTO of the Washington Post Companies until that organization was split up. Jeff Bezos purchased the Post, and the other part of the organization is called Graham Holdings. What makes up Graham Holdings?
Yuvinder Kochar: Graham Holdings Company (GHC) is a diversified firm whose principal businesses include Kaplan (educational services), Graham Media Group (television broadcasting), CableOne (cable systems), Slate and Trove (news media), Celtic and Residential Healthcare, Social Code (social marketing technology and services) and a couple of manufacturing companies. We are a public company with operating revenues of $3.5 billion in 2014.
Since the divestiture of the Washington Post in 2013, GHC has acquired several health care and manufacturing businesses. In the most recent annual report, Don Graham (our CEO) very succinctly answered the question, “What kinds of businesses do we want to buy?” Businesses we can understand. Businesses with a proven record of profitability and a management team that wants to continue to run the company after selling it to us. And businesses that aren’t too capital intensive.
CIO Insight: Graham Holdings is diversifying quickly, going beyond education and media into health care and manufacturing investments. How do you think about technology in such a diversified group of businesses?
Yuvinder Kochar:My strategic thinking about technology at GHC derives from the way we manage our businesses: Our diverse businesses share common goals and values, but each has its own identity, workplace culture and management responsible for its operations. To allow maximum flexibility to our businesses to respond to market changes, we do not try to consolidate and centralize functions across our businesses. To read the remainder of the article, please visit CIO Insight
