Steve Phillips, Senior VP and CIO, Avnet

How long at current company: Four years

Career accomplishment I'm most proud of: In the '90s, I led IT for Pillsbury's European division. We migrated eight country-specific ERP systems onto a single SAP system in 18 months. In 2001, Pillsbury was acquired by General Mills, and this SAP platform has become the ERP platform for their international businesses.

Most important career influencer: Several former bosses come to mind, each characterized by their willingness to invest time in coaching. One standout is former Gateway CIO James Pollard. He drove home the idea that there shouldn't be a gap between IT and business groups--we are one and the same./p>

Major decision I wish I could do over: Many years ago, I worked at a company that needed to cut expenses. I spent my time focusing on why it was unreasonable to cut IT costs. Instead, I should've been finding new ways to correct the cost base or helping create new revenue and profit streams.

The next big thing for my business will be ... one-stop shopping. As a tech distributor, providing solutions means delivering engineering expertise, proven systems, supply chain capability, logistics efficiency, financing, consulting, training, and services.

Best advice for future CIOs: Learn how business operates. Successful CIOs are business leaders as much as they are technologists. They understand their role in meeting long-term business goals. Consider taking business courses or spending time running a business unit to gain insight.

IT budget: We target IT spend in a range of 6% to 10% of gross profit.

Size of IT team: 650 employees worldwide

Top three initiatives:

• Improving our order-processing systems and processes to reduce cycle times and make us more responsive to our customers' needs
• Increasing our supply chain management capability to leverage our global scale and scope for our suppliers and customers
• Enabling our suppliers and customers to conduct more business with Avnet electronically to help them become more efficient

How I measure IT effectiveness: For investment projects, we look at payback interval: length of payoff time based on benefits created.

Colleges/degrees: Essex University, United Kingdom, BS (honors) in electronic engineering; postgraduate diploma in management studies from Thames Valley University

Best book read recently: Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams

If I weren't a CIO, I'd be I can't imagine being anything else.