Having worked in IT for about 20 years, Anthony F. Norris is no stranger to tech-driven change. But today, "change is more urgent than ever," says Norris, senior vice president of IT at FedEx Services, a unit of FedEx Corp.
Norris says the convergence of many forces is causing disruption throughout the business world — and it's prompting companies such as FedEx to put digital transformation front and center.
"Digital and mobile give us, our competition and startups the opportunity to think of interesting ways to serve customers and bring new business models to bear," he says. "It has never been more important for IT to be nimble and serve business in a rapid and effective fashion."
Norris, 44, says understanding the company's strategic objectives and business needs has been critical to supporting digital transformation. He credits in part his prior five-year tenure as vice president of marketing with the FedEx Office division for helping him hone his understanding of business needs. vOne such initiative centers on using APIs to insulate the company's legacy technologies and expose their capabilities.
"By creating these APIs, we're effectively creating a marketplace of services," he says. "It costs us less to execute projects and there's an important customer benefit: We're using the same information regardless of how they're interacting with us."