CIO Profiles: Eric Williams Of Catalina Marketing

Career Track

How long at company: 19 years at Catalina, which handles loyalty cards and coupons for retailers

Career accomplishment I'm most proud of: Our multipetabyte data warehouse. This has transformed us into one of the leaders in information management.

Most important career influencer: John King, the CIO for a large Los Angeles retailer. He helped me realize that money isn't the most important component in your career. As he said, if you enjoy your work and the people you work with, and you always strive to add value to your company, you'll be successful--and money always follows success.

On The Job

IT budget: $35 million

Size of IT team: 250 people

Top initiatives:

How I measure IT effectiveness: The bottom line: overall company sales. IT develops and operates the company's production systems, so everyone in IT watches our sales.

Vision

Next big thing for my industry: Understanding the type of technology a consumer wants to use to receive marketing information. Some consumers will want paper for some time, others will desire email, while others will want a smartphone app, and so on.

One thing I'm looking to change: Develop a Center of Excellence for our SOA development.

The federal government's top tech priority should be ... to help industry in developing standards for information exchange. Instead of the government trying to dictate standards, it should fund a business association for companies and let them develop the standards.

Personal

Leisure activities: Hiking, fishing, nature photography

Favorite pro sports coach: Tony Dungy, who proves you don't have to scream and curse to lead teams to greatness

Business-related pet peeve: The use of empty phrases to drive strategic thinking: Think outside the box ... push the envelope ... one and one is three ...

If I weren't a CIO, I'd be ... a forest ranger, teaching people about nature photography

Ranked No. 5 in the 2011

Download the Sept. 26, 2011 issue of InformationWeek