Vinod Sivarama Krishnan – CIO Global, Jubilant Life Sciences Limited, India.

Jubilant is a global leader in Pharmaceuticals – specifically Contract Manufacturing and Contract Research, Generics & Specialties. The group also has a significant presence in Food Service, Oil & Gas Exploration and Prospecting and Retail.

Vinod is a Business Technology Leader with over 18 years of global experience in delivering business solutions and creating and leading IT organizations across several business domains.

The Center for CIO Leadership has requested CIO members and other industry experts to answer three questions regarding predictions for the CIO in 2012. Here are my answers to these three questions.

What are your top 3 CIO priorities for 2012?

1. Data to Information using Analytics – In the highly dynamic world we live in with increasingly short business cycles, my businesses need to understand where they stand in near real time and to be able to determine the impact of changes in the environment to their business model and performance and make better decisions based on this information. While we are able to collect more data, we’re certainly not able to process it into useable information quickly enough for businesses to actually use in their day-to-day operations. I expect just the process of working on this initiative to lead to more internal visibility of the key drivers and that the very process of measurement will drive improvement.
2. Flexibility of Infrastructure and Applications – Better analytics will lead to more frequent changes of direction, both strategic and tactical, leading to a need for more flexible infrastructure and applications. This will challenge me and my team to rebuild (or in some cases, build) our platforms in a more granular, more flexible way to allow for these changes and respond to them as quickly as possible. Already the inability to scale (or reorient) our systems emerges as a big constraint in business flexibility, and that concern will have to be taken off the table as quickly as possible.
3. Finding and Retaining IT Management Talent – Frequent changes in direction and scale will require IT leaders with a different set of skill sets – more flexibility, more platform or tool agnosticism with the ability to view business requirements and processes as services to be provided using standard sets of tools. Significant empowerment of business users (by design) to reconfigure their processes within broad controllership lines will be essential, requiring IT to step out of the business of managing simpler aspects of process redesign. This will require a very different mindset, and the challenge will be to find (or build) and retain the right people.

How will 2012 be different from 2011 for you as a CIO?

For me, 2012 will be a year of

1. Broadening (more geographies, more P&Ls) and deepening (more functionality, more interconnectedness) of the standard platforms put in place for the group. I will also need to create appropriate cost-effective support mechanisms for the standard platforms. My team and I will need to succeed in our ongoing implementations, create a track record of successful delivery and ensure that we build momentum for these platforms by measuring and highlighting business impact and benefits achieved. In contrast, 2011 was more about building the base of the standard platforms, creating several quick proofs-of-concept to understand the technology and illustrate benefits and investing in building expertise on these platforms.
2. Increasing uncertainly from the business. I expect more starts and stops as the business responds to market and economic challenges, or moves to address opportunities being created. This will mean an increasing need to find or create flexible business systems. The cost of this flexibility and its impact on the current and future bottom line will need to be quantified and reviewed on a continuous basis. Business units which understand the value of this flexibility and are willing to fund it will reap significant advantages over 2012 itself, and certainly over the next three years, and it will be my job to help them understand this value.
3. Increasing demands on IT. As we move from the more basic deliverables to more evolved needs, demands and expectations will grow. Increasing consumerization of IT and greater understanding of IT in the executive suite will lead to increased pressure to deliver. Now that most CEOs and Directors come from a generation that has grown up with a good understanding of IT, it is significantly harder to expect key technology decisions to be made from within IT or expectations to be set solely by IT. Expected lead times to new functionality (in line with shorter business cycles) will now be significantly shorter, and my teams can expect to work on several smaller projects with defined benefits simultaneously as opposed to larger projects with longer payback periods.

What organizational or industry shifts are you expecting in 2012?

1. As a diversified conglomerate present in many high-growth verticals, I expect several new opportunities and threats, possibly simultaneous, to come out of the current economic conditions. I expect that responses will range from hunkering down to growing aggressively, making common strategies across the group difficult to come by and requiring more nuance to allow for specific market and economic differences globally and across industries. As growth slows in some segments, I expect some consolidation of processes and adaptation to last year’s growth.
2. I expect a shift to basics and more focus on controllership and compliance to minimize the probability of incidents due to rapid change of systems and processes. Specifically there will be a focus on ensuring quality of process, product and service irrespective of internal changes within the organization (which will be mostly focused on efficiency and cost).
3. Rapid increase in customer mobility and the availability of connectedness will call for large-scale redesign of business models, processes and systems to enable shorter reaction times and quicker responses to market and economic conditions. Mobility will fundamentally alter business models in several parts of our business and render some historical advantages redundant – and hopefully create some new advantages for first movers!

Carlos Francavilla, Director, BITCompany, Argentina.

Business & Technology Advisor, more than 25 years of working with IT to enable business transformations.

The Center for CIO Leadership has requested CIO members and other industry experts to answer three questions regarding predictions for the CIO in 2012.  Here are my answers to these three questions.

What are your predictions for the top 3 CIO priorities for 2012?

1. Using IT to attract and retain customers.
   Innovation and transformation of existing and new products will be used to satisfy the very fast change in the behavior of customers who are becoming more IT savvy, global, and connected – any time, any place, and with any gadget.
   The CIO will need to combine their knowledge of the entire value chain and processes of the company with the unique awareness of technology's capabilities to push the company beyond merely what is has been and toward what it must become.
   What does this mean?  IT is not aligning with the Business; IT is part of the Business.
   Do you present budget proposals for IT, or budget proposals for growth and innovation and bigger customer engagement enabled by IT?
2. Technology Diversity.
   The old days of a central IT Organization dictating and imposing which Technology is the right to use is gone forever.
   Consumerism of IT will become a reality and the IT Organization needs to be flexible and support any device that the market is producing, and that the people in the organization will choose to buy and bring to the enterprise.
   This process starts at the Board and includes all the people in the organization.  Today which technologies to use is becoming a business and a personal decision, IT must transform itself to be an “advisor” to people in the organization about the capabilities and the risk of the technology diversity and prepare the IT operations to understand this new reality and support it.
3. People Skills.
   The central IT unit with a focus in Technology is leaving room for an IT Organization with more people closer to the rest of the company and the CUSTOMERS.
   Do you have the right people for this this job?  Do you have an IT Organization with a lot of certifications in any international standard or framework for IT that are in the market? Would you be proud of the culture of the IT Organization?
   Prepare the IT people to be an “Advisor” and work head to head with all the other departments in the company.  Think for a moment, with which Business Unit do you work more closely, today?  Operations?  Marketing?  Finance?  You guessed it; Operations will be the answer in more than 60% of the IT Departments!
   Your Department needs new skills far beyond the comfort zone of the IT people, prepare for this transition, embrace the challenge and be proud of your people. 

How will 2012 be different from 2011 for CIOs and IT?

The convergence of the Internet, Web 2.0, and mobile technologies has created a disruptive shift in business.  The era of Business-to-Person (B2P) communications driven by all social (social media, social networks, and social influence) things has emerged as a new model for engagement.

In today’s global environment;

• One billion people connected to Internet
• Four billion have mobile phones with data capable smart phones now providing over 50% of new phone sales
• More than four hundred million people are sharing billions of pieces of content and experiences each week via online exchanges

Social Media have changed the way we do business (customers, partners, prospects, and employees).  We use social media as a platform for discussion of ideas, experiences, and knowledge-exchange. A s we enter the era of business-to-person (B2P) customer relationship systems, those organizations that harness Web 2.0 technologies and platforms to enable B2P communications will be the winners.

As a CIO and leader of an IT Department, are you embracing this disruptive shift?  Are you sharing with your colleagues what you know most, technology capabilities and how to use them in this new Social Media World?

2012 will differ from 2011 in a way that if we as a CIO couldn’t move the Company fast enough in that direction, others will be doing it.

Come on, tweet now with the CMO and other CxO colleagues and start working together to transform the company processes to this Business to Person communication.

Your Board and CEO will be glad to approve your investments when you walk together to the corner office and talk about this transformation.

What business shifts are you expecting in 2012?

Uncertainty will be the word of 2012 and the CEO and Managers will be looking for ways to defend the company against this threat and/or taking advantage of this world in recession.

Are you applying IT to enable the business so that you and your colleagues find the answers?

Are you helping the company to choose the right strategy?

According to Mckinsey, are you thinking about your decisions being better for a company’s competitive position, trying to influence, or even determine, the outcome of crucial and currently uncertain elements of an industry’s structure and its conduct?  Or is a wiser course to scope out defensible positions within an industry’s existing structure and then to move with speed and agility to recognize and capture new opportunities when the market changes?

IT can enable companies to change the structure of entire industries and/or gain speed and agility to companies.  Are you ready for these business shifts?

Are you enabling that your company play and win in the Champions League of your Industry?