News

CIO Profiles: Frank A. Morelli Of Movado

InformationWeek
InformationWeek

Don't wait to make tough people decisions, this CIO says.

Career Track



Frank A. Morelli Senior VP of Global Business Processes & CIO, Movado Group

Frank A. Morelli
Senior VP of Global Business Processes & CIO, Movado Group

How long at Movado Group: About six and a half years at this watchmaker.

Career accomplishment I'm most proud of: I'm honored to have been a part of a number of global transformational changes in business processes and integrated systems at Movado and Colgate-Palmolive. Bringing in large-scale initiatives within budget -- and with real subsequent, positive change -- is truly rewarding.

Decision I wish I could do over: The decisions I'd most like to do over are those in which I didn't rely on prior lessons learned and instead allowed fear or pride to drive me to seek a compromise to keep things moving. Almost every one of those experiences had a common denominator: people. The decisions centered on either waiting too long to let someone go or giving the benefit of the doubt to someone when experience told me I shouldn't.

On The Job


Top initiatives:

  • Replacing our outlet stores' systems. This initiative involves both in-store systems as well as a cloud-based offering that we're tightly integrating to our global ERP system.
  • Expanding our e-commerce presence. This initiative involves adding brands and geography to our e-commerce platforms as well as expanding consumer capabilities with online repair and service experiences.

Vision


How I give my team room to innovate: We have defined project work and support activities that are aligned with corporate priorities, but we allow team members the opportunity to propose initiatives -- be they experiments or innovations -- as long as they can make a case for how they align with the overall corporate vision.

One thing I'm looking to do better: We're a small global group supporting a fairly sizable IT footprint, so the one thing we want to do better is cross-train people. This isn't always easy because of some deep skill requirements. That said, we have a few people assigned to initiatives that take them beyond their areas of expertise to help them learn and grow.

What I need from tech vendors: First, they need to listen to customer requirements. Beyond that, they need to come forward with more clarity and honesty instead of marketing hype.

Most overrated IT movement: Cloud computing is overrated right now, but I do believe it will evolve and replace a significant share of on-site solutions. The analogy I like to use goes back to a time in history when manufacturers needed to generate their own power. Once the infrastructure was in place, there were standards -- consistency in delivery, security and affordability -- and people migrated to utilities. It was clearly the better choice.

Personal


Leisure activities: Family gatherings and showing my Chevrolet Corvettes, a 1966 C2 Convertible and 1999 C5 Coupe

Favorite musicians: Eric Clapton and Cream

Favorite app: Cor.kz, a wine app

First job: Clerk in a supermarket

Person I'd most like to have lunch with: Jesus Christ

If I weren't a CIO, I'd be ... a dentist, an electrician, an auto mechanic or an aging member of a touring rock band

Ranked No. 13 in the 2012 InformationWeek 500

Related Reading


More Global CIO Insights


Informationweek Discussions

Start the Discussion


InformationWeek encourages readers to engage in spirited, healthy debate, including taking us to task. However, InformationWeek moderates all comments posted to our site, and reserves the right to modify or remove any content that it determines to be derogatory, offensive, inflammatory, vulgar, irrelevant/off-topic, racist or obvious marketing/SPAM. InformationWeek further reserves the right to disable the profile of any commenter participating in said activities.

Disqus Tips To upload an avatar photo, first complete your Disqus profile. | View the list of supported HTML tags you can use to style comments. | Please read our commenting policy.
Subscribe to RSS

Resource Links