The CIO Assistant's Blog

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

I was recently attracted to a discussion on LinkedIn’s CIO Network Forum started by Mark Chillingworth, Editor at IDG Communications. He referred to a CIO-UK article entitled “IT-business alignment is still on the CIO agenda“, with the sub-title “Align with the IT, not the other way around” and the following teaser:

The debate is switching, the business should be aligning with the IT systems available to reduce costs.
Increasingly CIOs are telling CIO UK that they can get their organisation to modify its practices to fit the applications in order to keep costs down. Is this your experience?
Read what Rorie Devine and Ian Dobb, 2 leading CIOs say here: http://www.cio.co.uk/debate/118575/it-business-alignment-is-still-on-the-cio-agenda

Eager to find an example of unconventional thought on Business-IT Alignment, I read through the article and was fairly disappointed with the way the story was reported. Why? Because none of the 2 CIOs in question were saying that “business should be aligning with the IT systems”. In fact, here is what they have said [word for word, with all the typo intact] in reply to the analyst’s question:

CIO-UK: “If you were approached by a fresh-faced, newly-appointed CIO and she asked you for your advice in how to pursue IT-business alignment, what would you say?” 

Dobb: “First, you need to understand the board’s expectations. Are you expected to be a commidity order-taker, a service provider, a business partner or more of an entrprenuerial innovator? Second, make sure you have the right team around you – you need to be able to delegate on detail issues with confidence, so that you don’t have to constantly check that the email is working OK. Third, you need to be proactive and learn how to influence. If you have some good ideas, make sure you are tabling them with business leaders. Be aware of the business and board and their learning styles; some people like numbers, some like pictures. Don’t talk techie, talk business.”

Devine: “First, you have to understand your opportunity and the environment. You have to really take time to understand the context and challenges that the business is facing – what you’re there for. Second, make sure you realise the potential of your team. Communicate well; your people want to see a clear vision and a plan. Third, don’t let one issue (for example your SAP system’s performance) become synonymous with what you do – don’t become a single-issue team. At the same time though it’s important to avoid focusing purely on the big picture – you have to deliver too! Lastly, measure your performance as a team and try to keep getting better and better. If you don’t measure, how do you know you are getting better? It’s vital to choose the right things to measure – things that matter to the business and the strategies and priorities that are in place. We’ve found that it’s really productive to form specific teams to take those key metrics and take responsibility for improving performance in those areas.”

So how did CIO-UK come to the conclusion (that Business should now align to IT)? I have no idea. Throughout the entire article, there is only one place, one single statement made by Devine that remotely related to this idea:

“… The chance of success is far better if you don’t customise. If you take an off-the-shelf package you are buying standards. Focusing on the customer expectation is where you will find competitive advantage – not in the customisation of a packaged application.”

But he was talking about commodity process:

Dobb and Devine were in clear agreement on this: when it comes to application software that encodes business processes, you purchase a package if you want a commodity process; if you want to differentiate the business based on a process, you shouldn’t buy a package.

As discussed in my previous post What Business Would IT Align To?, I deplored the attitude of some IT press to take pleasure in doing IT-bashing by portraying IT Leadership as out of touch with “business”. This time, it reversed the position and I don’t know which one is worse. By blatantly twisting the statements of two good, honest CIOs into some kind of empty victory for IT, they just stoke the fire of indignant protests from both sides. Once again, the CIO’s were made into shortsighted leaders who forced Business into making changes to save a few bucks while potentially curtail or damage its ability to compete in the future.

What do you think? Am I reading it correctly or does my anti-sensajournalism get the better of me? But before answering the questions, please read the entire article. Aside from the title/subtitle/teaser aberration, the advices from Dobb and Devine are solid. And the absence of their “clarification” once again proves my point that IT is a Quiet Bunch.

Postscripts.- Not all press articles are that bad. I found one much to my liking here: The Changing Roles of the CFOs and CIOs. In this Enterprise Management Quarterly article by Andrew Jesse, VP of Professional Services at Basware Corp., he pointed out a number of opportunities “for CFOs and CIOs to become more closely aligned to provide greater business value for their organizations enterprise-wide.” Happy reading again.

          alignment, business, CIO, IT, quiet force