IT Execs Take Different Paths to Align With Business Units

Computerworld - HENDERSON, Nev. -- Speaking before a group of senior IT executives last week, James Woolwine, CIO at Majestic Insurance Co., outlined a governance model that gives the insurer's business units the power to set his technology priorities. He then asked for questions. But there was silence.
Surprised, Woolwine challenged his audience: "I'm telling you that you should cede control of your business. You should be yelling at me."
But there was a reason why no one took issue with Woolwine's comments at the CIO 2004 Summit, which was held here by London-based Marcus Evans Ltd. IT managers interviewed at the conference said they all share the same goal: aligning IT with the business side. And, they explained, the approach used by San Francisco-based Majestic Insurance wasn't criticized because of the widespread recognition that there's no single way to accomplish that goal.
For instance, Andres Carvallo, CIO at Austin Energy, said he thinks that a key to IT/business alignment is a very strong leadership style on his part. In dealing with the different business units that fight for IT dollars, Carvallo said his in-your-face approach is to tell business executives that they will be more successful if they work with him.
The Austin-based utility company has steering committees that meet to help set IT strategy, but Carvallo said he also uses a heavily customized software tool to evaluate projects on a scale of 1 to 5. He analyzes a project's cost, its compliance with internal IT standards and its potential impact on customer satisfaction and business processes -- all against the backdrop of how it aligns with Austin Energy's strategic direction.
Bruce Petro, chief technology officer at AG Interactive, the Internet business unit of American Greetings Corp. in Cleveland, said he encourages experimentation and wants to hire IT professionals from other industries to stimulate new ways of thinking and avoid the "inbreeding" of ideas.

Michael Prince, CIO at Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corp.

The push for innovation helped AG Interactive's IT staff develop ways to meet sharp increases in Web traffic, according to Petro. He said the company's IT budget was so tight that it forced workers to try different strategies, including a shift to the open-source MySQL database and the use of asynchronous processing.
Michael Prince, CIO at Burlington Coat Factory Warehouse Corp., has tried to establish the Burlington, N.J.-based retailer as a technology innovator. Burlington Coat was among the first large companies to install Linux widely, and it's now deploying a Linux-based grid computing system.
But Prince said he thinksthose projects have been possible only because of the trust the IT department has built with Burlington Coat's business users. Prince has been at the company since 1983, and many of his IT staff members also have long tenures.
"People have confidence that we know what we're doing," Prince said. Long-term employment in IT "adds something to a company's ability to be innovative and efficient," he added.
Despite the differences in the approaches they use, all the IT managers said that collaboration with business users is a crucial part of the push for alignment. "For IT to try to force business process change, that means resistance all the time," said Matthew Maguire, vice president of information services at Domino's Pizza Inc.

Read more about management in Computerworld's Management Knowledge Center.