Image Gallery: 2010 Global CIOs

Start The Discussion | | June 26, 2010 00:00 AM

See how 10 world IT leaders are driving change and growth.

Informationweek Discussions

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.

Previous Slide Next Slide 10 of 11

Fabio Faria - Votorantim Industrial

Fabio Faria's IT organization has to think globally. Votorantin Industrial operates in 21 countries, in industries including cement, metal, paper, agribusiness, chemicals, and energy. Much of Faria's work over the past eight years with the conglomerate has been focused on governance and standardization. This year, though, a major part of the IT team's mission will be supporting growth, both organic and through acquisitions.

In 2010, Faria expects to continue spreading world-class operating and management practices across the group as part of the growth push. IT's charter is to improve efficiency and effectiveness of handling people, operations, risk, and information.

Faria's team laid the foundation for this in a 30 month, $53 million effort called the Integra Project. It resulted in the adoption of an integrated management system for the group's companies in Brazil and abroad, driving for alignment in processes and business information throughout the group and contributing to the consolidation of the corporate governance model.

That built off an SAP ERP implementation, concluded in early 2007, that is now tapped by around 10,000 users in 14 countries. The company also hyas created IT competency centers that provide services for the entire organization.

Faria's 32 years in IT, 22 of them in leadership roles, began in the former airline company VASP as mainframe operator. He worked for several large national and multinational companies in a number of IT roles. Faria has focused on IT strategic planning aligned to business strategy, development of IT policies, outsourcing contracts and enterprise solutions, and adoption of IT best practices, such as ITIL. -Roberta Prescott, InformationWeek Brazil