CIO Profiles: Barry Grant Of iQor

Career Track

How long at iQor: Nine years at this business services provider.

Career accomplishment I'm most proud of: I was the new CTO of Municipal Credit Union in New York on Sept. 11 when the company's only data center, a block from the World Trade Center, was destroyed. MCU's customers -- many of the firefighters and police officers leading rescue and recovery efforts -- didn't have access to their funds. Our team worked six days straight to get the data center back online and our first responders access to their funds.

On The Job

IT budget: About $50 million

Size of IT team: 300

Top initiatives:

Vision

One thing I'm looking to do better: This year, iQor established the Center for Applied Analytics, a cross-functional team of data scientists who help our clients use analytics to improve customer service. I want my team to adopt an analytics mindset so we're delivering the big data infrastructure and BI tools that help our scientists transform data into insights that make customers happier and our clients more profitable.

The most disruptive force in my industry today is ... the digitization of the contact center. Advances in technology are turning call centers into big data-generating machines. We now record 100% of calls and screen activity. We then unleash our data scientists on terabytes of structured and unstructured data sets to identify patterns that reside in the millions of recorded client interactions and use that information to improve the customer service we deliver.

Why IT projects go wrong:When a program doesn't work the way it should, it can almost always be traced back to a lack of open, honest dialogue between the end user and the development team.

What I need from tech vendors: Clarity of vision and a clear road map of the future. Too often, vendors change direction with the latest IT fad. I want vendors that can clearly articulate the problems they're trying to solve and then take aim at the problems through innovation.

Personal

Person I'd most like to have lunch with: Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, because I admire how he took a single idea and made it reality

Favorite band: Earth, Wind & Fire

Best book read recently: I reread Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert A. Heinlein every year; its moral lessons about civic responsibility are more important than ever

Last vacation: To Aruba -- 12 years ago

If I weren't a CIO, I would ... go back to being a DJ, which I was in my younger years

Ranked No. 52 in the 2012