CIO Forum: Keep Up With The Pace

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September 22, 1997

CIO FORUM:
Keep Up With The Pace

By Denis O'Leary
IW 500 slug nformation Technology provides the core genetic code for the evolution of business. Companies that don't leverage IT effectively-and keep up with the pace of change-will fail to meet the standards of their marketplace.
Consider that IT is still in its infancy, with virtually boundless capabilities. It is on a dramatic growth curve; PC hardware upgrades demonstrate the ongoing validity of Moore's Law, which states that processing power doubles every 18 months. The core ingredients of silicon and bandwidth are materially shifting, both in price and functionality, every two to three years.
These waves of technology change are crashing onto established business models like the ocean on the shore. They are putting the models at risk, eroding many like sand castles at high tide.

Denis O'Leary is executive VP and CIO at Chase Manhattan Bank and IW's 1996 Chief of the Year

While the unrelenting pace of change may be daunting to some, to others it offers profound opportunity. In financial services, a key opportunity is the development of an information architecture and transaction capability that allows effortless customer navigation throughout the organization. This platform of customer fulfillment, not the front-end window of touching the customer, is the foundation for electronic commerce.
Connectivity is increas ingly easy and inexpensive. But contrary to the airline-magazine view of a World Wide Web site and a toll-free number creating a globally enabled company, platforms of fulfillment require a sophisticated information architecture, strong middleware, and robust, scalable production platforms. Here is where the sobering reality of some of the most progressive technologies becomes apparent: Reliability, security, and flexibility are too often promised in future releases of software.
For organizations to thrive, they must learn to integrate technology into new business models, rather than add technologies to old ones. This requires a specific modus operandi regarding the role of the technology professionals in a large corporation.
The debate is not whether IT managers lead or whether they enable the business. Technology professionals are an integral part of the business team, where all members must participate in an ongoing and iterative planning, decision-making, and implementation process. Such collabora tion must pervade the entire organization.
For global organizations, even this ability to collaborate is aided by technology. An infrastructure must be in place to allow employees anywhere in the world to identify an opportunity, connect with other corporate resources and expertise, create and deliver a solution, and then leverage it across the company's markets.
Today, acquisitions and mergers are facilitating operating excellence-the combination of efficiency, service quality, and control-in many industries. The aggregation of market footprint lets major players leverage the increasingly powerful economies of scale that result from digitization and automation.
But such advantages are unlikely to endure unless accompanied by customer intimacy-knowing what to sell to whom, how, and when. This translates into diverse and flexible channels, mass customization of products, and segment-of-one marketing. These components combine in a highly iterative, information-based business model.
Whether your company is in financial services, manufacturing, or retail, the waves of change will affect most elements of your business model. Effective organizational cultures and business technology architectures can make the future stimulating and rewarding. There has never been a better time to be a technology professional. Surf's up.

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