The CIO Assistant's Blog

I am happy to announce that the CIO Assistant’s Blog now officially becomes Tao of IT. This is an attempt to merge the blog (with a specific target audience of CIO’s) and the website (with the larger theme of balanced living – Tao of Living) into a single entity. This change is part of the evolution of my journey on the Web, from a rather exclusive and personal blog to a more inclusive public source of inspiration and assistance.

Within the new Tao of IT, you will see a brand new Services section and an enhanced Resources section. As for the Blog itself, it will be expanded to cover a wider range of topics delving in a more balanced view of life (i.e. beyond the professional interests of IT Leadership and Management).

There will also be more participation from other guests. The first guest post (The Evolution of One by Faith Fuqua-Jarvis) has received the second highest number of views, attesting to the quality of the post and the popularity of the concept. A second guest post will appear soon and will become a regular feature of the site.

Thank you for your continued readership. Any suggestions to make this Tao of IT site your enjoyable source of reference and entertainment are greatly appreciated. Please come to the new website and leave a comment there or write to us directly.

         

This summer, Coca-Cola launches a new product. No, it’s not another new Coke to compete or cannibalize the Coke “Classic”. It’s a Coke vending machine. It’s called the Freestyle.

So what’s exciting about that? According to Coca-Cola press release it’s the “next generation fountain beverage dispenser“. What is remarkable is that it represents a rare breakthrough in market research and product development (for more details, see Mary Hayes Weier’s article in InformationWeek). What is even more remarkable, to me, was the successful collaboration between the IT department and other business functions to produce a complete and comprehensive business product/tool, not just a supporting application as usual. This collaboration perfectly illustrates the 3 practical Alignment actions that I have suggested in my previous post Business-IT, Aligned? Let’s take a look at them:

Apparently, Coca-Cola’s IT did it this time in collaboration with R&D. The remarkable fact, according to Bob Evans at InformationWeek, is that this is the first time ever that these 2 teams worked closely on a project, “a shocking revelation when you consider that Coca-Cola company has been around for about a century.” Undoubtedly, Coca-Cola’s CIO must spent considerable time with the head of R&D to come to a meeting of the minds about who’s responsible for what to ensure that neither gap nor duplication occurred in the work of both parties.

2. The “Wow” Factor – “IT people, at least those who worked for me in the past, are proud of their work but they are even prouder if that work is recognized, either explicitly by a Thank You note or implicitly by sharing the spotlight with another team. Find your “WOW” examples. Carefully select those that scream Alignment. Make they hugely visible.”

There is no finer example of the “Wow” factor than this Freestyle dispenser. It’s a multi-function machine that can serve the customers on demand, while acting as a data collection device to feed inventory management, product development and customer preference analysis. Mary Hayes Weier called it “Coke’s front-line robotic army for business intelligence”. It deploys multiple technologies, ranging from Microsoft’s Windows CE and System Center Configuration Manager for Mobile Devices, to SAP’s Point-of-Sales Management and Business Warehouse, to RFID readers and sensors, to Verizon’s virtual private wireless network. It took four years to make it works.

I suspect that many hours or weeks of these 4 years were spent at the intersection between technologies, not just information ones. There is nothing uncertain about its “Wow” factor and its visibility. And Coca-Cola’s IT is sharing the spotlight with R&D for this innovative product.

3. Make Alignment your Guiding Principle – “Sprinkle your talks, your plans, your reports, your blogs and tweets (if you are the social media-savvy type) with Alignment terminology.”

Less known to the public is the collaborative process that Coca-Cola used in this product development. It’s called the Common Innovation Framework. Let’s hear from InformationWeek who profiled Coca-Cola’s CIO, Jean-Michel Arès in its Global CIO 50 list:

“Arès has led a push to let employees collaborating among themselves as well as with bottlers and customers. And this effort has become central to Coke’s broader effort to remake its business.
For internal collaboration, the company has implemented what it calls the Common Innovation Framework, a system that combines project management and business intelligence capabilities. The framework lets operating units in 50 countries search for and borrow approaches used in developing and marketing any of 2,800 beverages that Coke produces. When a product like Coke Zero launches in the United States, the next countries doing rollouts can then borrow what worked.”

Collaboration. Common. These are Alignment terms that were sprinkled in all Coca-Cola IT talks, across 50 countries. Successfully creating an innovative product out of that is called “walking the talk”.

Do you have another example of successful Business-IT Alignment? How about your own? Please share with us.

Photo by Timo Elliott - Freestyle is a trademark of Coca-Cola

          alignment, business, CIO, Coca-Cola, IT, product development, R&D

Readers of this blog are now familiar with my stance on the Business-IT Alignment issue: that it would take an engagement from both sides and on a level-playing field. This is perhaps the biggest challenge facing the CIOs. Notwithstanding the constant struggle by the CIOs in the executive boardroom, the IT press coverage sometimes doesn’t help by portraying them as really out of touch with Business. Whether this type of reporting is done on purpose – for business reason – or not, I leave it to your judgment.

In the last post (Business-IT Alignment, A Twisted Tale), I’ve told you about an article by the CIO-UK magazine, reporting that Business should “Align with the IT, not the other way around“. This time, it’s about an article by Forrester Research, an influential technology and market research company that provides “pragmatic advice to global leaders in business and technology“.

The article was written by George F. Colony in his The Counterintuitive CEO Blog, with the title CIOs to CEOs: “Stay out of tech.” It was the results of a dinner discussion with 15 CIOs on the question of “How do you raise the tech IQ of your CEO?” You can read the entire article and the comments here, including mine which I reprint here:

“I find it unfortunate that your article raises some misinterpretations by a few. Your question was “How do you raise the tech IQ of your CEO?” (implying that it is a good thing to have).

The answer from the CIOs, and I quote here Bob Gregg, one of the participants, was “I recall our orientation was the CEO needs the ability to comprehend how IT can transform their business, make wise IT investment decisions, and drive business technology implementation.”

To me, that does not require a high Tech IQ, it required a high Business IQ. That also does not say “CEOs: stay out of tech.” as the title of the article suggested.

I would like to here from the other 14 CIOs. Otherwise, it looks like they are being used again as fodder for some controversial discussion, as suggested in my post at: http://tao-of-living.com/2009/07/business-it-alignment-a-twisted-tale/.”

I understand that it’s not easy to distil into less than 300 words the essence of 15 presumably opinionated voices, especially if expressed over a dinner party in Las Vegas. But to jump from a response that the CEOs don’t need to have a high Tech IQ to the conclusion that the CEOs should stay of Tech all together is a pretty strong leap to me.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have the highest respect for Forrester Research, and for George Colony. I don’t envy their difficult and sometimes ungrateful tasks of finding and reporting controversial subjects. However, I find the article title was just a bit too strong. Who in his/her right mind would suggest such a thing? It carries a connotation that CIOs are (again) a bunch of out-of-touch individuals. Maybe some are, I have encountered a few myself, but the majority are not. I presume that the 15 participants to the discussion form part of the latter.

The disquieting fact is that it’s now over a month since the time that the article was published (June 5, 2009), and there was only one “clarification” made by one participant. Where were the other 14? Did they agree with Forrester’s reported statement that CEO’s should “stay out of tech.”? Again, I hope that the explanation is nothing more than the fact that they have other battles to fight than spending time to write a clarification, albeit an important one in my opinion.

Postcripts.- To continue with my “balanced” view, I am happy to find an example of reporting about positive  IT Leadership. This time, it’s about Coca-Cola’s new Freestyle dispenser. I will write about it in an upcoming post.

          alignment, business, CIO, CxO