InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
August 24, 1998
Crossing Over
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One of the most important payoffs of Radcliff's group was a cultural change that improved customer relations. Instead of dividing the group into separate units focused on specific functions, Radcliff has people devoted to specific customer segments. As a result, each person is able to answer any question a customer has from the team's shared information.That kind of improved customer service doesn't surprise Jane Linder, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. Customer relationships are one of the main reasons companies meld the top IT management job with business experience and responsibilities, she says. People with business experience know how to develop relationships with customers and partners. In general, people in IT-focused careers don't have these relationships, Linder adds.
Internal Understanding
It's not just the external customer who benefits from a crossover executive's depth of experience. Internally, there is a significant cross-pollination of understanding and ideas.
For example, CA's Quinn, executive VP of global information and administration services, started at the company 13 years ago as an MVS systems programmer; he moved into sales, then ran CA's professional services division and worldwide marketing. Now, Quinn is in charge of operational services, such as travel, corporate events, distribution, facilities management--and IT.
Quinn drove the development of a sales-force automation system for CA's 3,500 salespeople around the world. The system, built by customizing an off-the-shelf package, lets salespeople share information about their accounts--who's in charge of what, who's evaluating which products, who makes final buying decisions.
The only way to create such a sales tool, says CA president Kumar, is to have someone with sales, marketing, and technology experience drive the process. "The pure techie would never know what kind of information is most useful for the salesperson sitting in a hotel room the night before a big customer meeting," Kumar says. "Gary knows what that's like. He has experienced the pain."
Fostering this type of empathy among executives and their staffs is important for companies trying to tie technology more closely to business. Cummins' Crowther is credited with using a similar approach to improve the rest of the company's understanding of IT and its strategic role.
When Crowther took the VP of IT job at Cummins, the IT organization didn't have a particularly good reputation in the company. Projects overran schedules and budgets; the business side didn't think it was getting its money's worth and refused to expand the IT budget. Senior management, uncomfortable with technology, shied away from discussing it, Crowther says.
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Illustration by Grey Ivor Morris
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