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March 20, 2000

The ABCs Of E-Business
E-transformation is forcing IT and business managers to relearn their roles

Illustration by Jon Conrad

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ix months ago, if First International Bank CEO Brett Silvers spoke once a month to his VP of IT, John Garner, that was a lot. Now, with the bank in the throes of an E-transformation effort, the two speak daily. In recent months, each has learned more about the other's work than they ever expected to before the E-business undertaking began. And that cross-pollination doesn't stop at the top: One-on-one collaboration between business and IT managers takes place at every level of the bank.

"We've become much more collaborative," Silvers says. "We never had tech people so involved in the guts of the organization. The more our technology people are trained on sales and credit, the faster they can translate and integrate what we do into E-business."

As companies pursue new ways of doing business, an increasing number of business and IT managers are finding it necessary to learn more about their counterparts' areas of expertise. In training centers and on corporate campuses nationwide, business professionals are learning about new Internet technologies, and IT managers are studying the finer points of sales, marketing, and finance.

Some go it alone, reading, studying, and surfing the Web to expand their sphere of knowledge. Others carve time out of their too-busy schedules to attend intensive one-day or one-week courses offered by universities or other organizations (for example, InformationWeek's five-day Executive Boot Camp, being held this week in Berkeley, Calif.). Some even go back to school, juggling a combination of on-campus and online learning while maintaining a significant profile within their companies. Whatever the method, the increased collaboration between IT and business has caused a blurring of the lines that demands an open mind interested in learning.

The new cross-training programs go far beyond well-meaning efforts to foster career development in professionals. A growing number of executives and educators are citing knowledge-sharing between business and IT professionals as a requirement for companies to achieve customer satisfaction, efficient operations, and a competitive advantage in today's fast-paced, technology-powered new economy.

"Marketing and business are constantly asking what's possible. IT needs to know what's desired," says Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and a professor at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. For that reason, the traditional, hierarchical business model no longer works, and the new economy calls for companies that foster collaboration via a more horizontal structure. Marketing and IT have to continually share information with each other "so they can have a continual stream of information going to their customers," Reich says.

Brett Silvers Photo by Edward Santalone Yet only 20% of U.S. companies have begun to create customer-driven teams that bring these departments together, Reich says. But as more companies begin to realize the importance of shared knowledge, they're emphasizing collaboration between the once-disparate departments of business and IT and forcing changes in the very structure of the business.

At Schneider National Inc., the nation's largest long-haul freight carrier, business analysts are learning how to manipulate a multidimensional database so they can analyze their own data rather than wait for the IT department to serve up results. They receive the most in-depth IT training of any nontechnical professionals in the company--as much as 10 days at a business-intelligence training center at Schneider's headquarters in Green Bay, Wis. "We spent a lot of energy making sure it was taught in business language, not IT language," says Bill Braddy, director of knowledge services at Schneider.

Meanwhile, IT managers shadow customer-service representatives on the job--even donning headphones to listen in on customer calls--to gain insight into how reps use IT on the front lines of the business. "It's a necessary and advisable part of getting comfortable with the business," says Braddy, who participated in the customer-service insight training when he joined Schneider. "It was a humbling experience."

The experience taught Braddy that the service rep must have quick access to a wealth of information about each customer, including personalized data, geographic location, and the level of importance of meeting delivery dates. Equally important--and not to be found in any manual--the training experience gives IT professionals a chance to observe the relationship between customers and service reps. "When you listen to the conversations and watch them interact, you can see what they need to know about the customer and gain first-hand knowledge about how those information services are used," Braddy says. "It's much more powerful than what you get out of a procedures guide."

But the best interaction at Schneider, Braddy says, is an intense, early-morning weekly meeting of a nine-member committee that represents all major units of the company. The purpose: to audition the ideas of business managers proposing IT-driven projects.

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