December 2nd, 2004
CIO agenda: Three funerals and a wedding
Tom Foremski of the SiliconValleyWatcher describes the mood of the recent Churchhill Club CIO panel with particpants from Levi Strauss, Agilent Technologies, Microsoft and Fireman’s Fund as "three funerals and a wedding." *
Ron Markezich, the Microsoft CIO, was in an ebullient mood, very much at odds with the rest of the panel. He said he had an IT budget so large that he had never been able to spend it all. “My problem is I don’t have enough good people to oversee the investments,” Mr Markezich said. “I under-spend by $20m to $30m every year.”
That must have felt like salt in the wound for the others on the panel.
Each of the CIOs, from Levi, Agilent, Fireman’s Fund, were somber and looked exhausted. They spoke of very tough times for their corporations in recent years. Huge restructurings, outsourcing IT, the tough political fights when making big changes. Fred Matteson, of Fireman’s Fund spoke of “extreme budget pain” for business groups as the most effective and only way to drive solid change. He mentioned a Winston Churchill quote, "if you are going through hell, keep going."
I attended the event as well and was intrigued by Agilent CIO Marty Chuck’s expression of a goal for his IT team of 950 people as giving back 10 million hours of productivity–a hour a day for every worker per year–to the company. Indeed, many hours of real work are lost due to poorly designed applications, slow networks, inadequate management systems, lack of training, buggy software, clunky provisioning, unnavigable portals, etc. It’s a goal that any CEO or CFO can get behind…and fund…
Stay tuned for my upcoming video interview with Ron Markezich…
