Tom Gill, 2013 Honoree
- Title
- Vice president of IT and CIO
- Employer
- Plantronics
- Location
- Santa Cruz, Calif.
- Your relationship with a key business leader:
- My relationship with our new chief marketing officer, Marilyn Mersereau, is important and timely. Gartner predicts significant increases in spending on IT by marketing departments over the next three years, and we have embraced that as an important focus. Examples of areas to increase our marketing systems footprint include increasing our understanding of customer sentiment through social, global marketing campaigns, big data and analytics.
- How do you evaluate emerging technologies?
- We run proof-of-concept projects and pilots with limited numbers of participants. This allows us to gauge the level of business value that we can expect to gain from a new technology without making a significant investment. Cloud-based services make this easier than in the past, and vendors are eager to demonstrate the ROI on their products.