CIO or CFO?

cio & leader.com

Tech for Governance

Best of Breed

viewpoint

Why Open Source is Not Always the Best Bet Pg 64

China to be on Par With US as Tech Leaders Pg 44

Cloudy Nerdy Pg 68

07 T r a c k t e c h n o lo g y

B u i ld b usi n ess

Shape self

Remembering Nikola Tesla | Five ‘No Regret’ Moves

CIO or CFO?

Is it an either-or situation?

Can your enterprise do without a CIO or a CFO? page 34

Volume 01 Issue 07 July 2012 50

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editorial yashvendra singh | yashvendra.singh@9dot9.in

Team Work

It is not, and will never be, an either-or situation for the CIO-CFO roles

T

he CIO is dead! Long live the CFO! Time and again this discussion around the CIO's role becoming extinct comes up. Alarm bells are sounded as new technologies and technology models emerge that promise to drastically reduce intervention from a CIO. Meanwhile, CFOs are increasingly getting involved in IT raising fears of their taking over the role of CIOs also. To control costs, CFO's want IT to be consigned to a bucket so that it can be measured easily. Reports have conclusively shown that there are more CIOs reporting

to CFOs than to their CEOs. All in all, it seems CIOs' position is slowly getting overshadowed by that of the CFO. These developments stand to make enterprise technology leaders edgy. On the contrary, they seem to be actually upbeat about the situation.

For most CIOs, the fear of cloud replacing them is too far fetched. By leveraging cloud, CIOs feel they would instead have more time on their hands to focus on information and not just information technology.

They feel that would be able to spend more time on thinking

editors pick 34 CIO or CFO?

Is it an either-or situation? Can your enterprise do without a CIO or a CFO?

about how IT can propel business forward. After all, it will be the CIO who will give shape to new marketing ideas from a technology standpoint.

To put it in simple words: Between the CIO and the CFO, neither has an in-depth knowledge of each others’ domain to replace the other. Being in the driver’s seat and controlling spending on technology is simply not enough. The real act lies in implementing it right.

Once the right implementation brings the right value to the organisation, the CIO would have all the right in the world to demand capex from his CFO! Going forward, as more and more CFOs get involved in IT, it will turn out to be a win-win situation for both the camps. While the CFO can take informed decisions, based on inputs provided by the CIO, the latter can focus on providing a strategic direction to the enterprise instead of getting bogged

down negotiating maintenance fees prices with vendors.

On their part, CFOs have to realise is that IT is implanted in every department of the organisation. Therefore, it needs to be measured differently than other budget lines.

As for the reporting structure, there even if CIOs do report to their CFOs, we don’t see a reason to be overly concerned.

At the end of the day, success is measured by how you get things done and not by who you report to.

It is not, and will never be, an either-or situation for the CIO/ CFO roles. Long live the CIO. Long live the CFO!

July 2012

1

july 2012 34

CIO or CFO? Cover Story

RegulArs

34 | CIO or CFO?

01 | Editorial 06 | Enterprise Roundup 68 | viewpoint

Is it an either-or situation? Can your enterprise do without a CIO or a CFO? s p i n e

cio & leader.com

Tech for Governance

Why Open Source is Not Always the Best Bet Pg 64

Best of Breed

viewpoint

China to be on Par With US as Tech Leaders Pg 44

Cloudy Nerdy Pg 68

Volume 01 Issue 07 July 2012 50

07 T r a c k T e c h n o lo g y

RemembeRing nikola Tesla | Five ‘no RegReT’ moves

2

Copyright, All rights reserved: Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission from Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd. is prohibited. Printed and published by Anuradha Das Mathur for Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd, Bungalow No. 725, Sector - 1, Shirvane, Nerul, Navi Mumbai - 400706. Printed at Tara Art Printers Pvt ltd. A-46-47, Sector-5, NOIDA (U.P.) 201301

July 2012

shape self

CIO or CFO?

Is It an eIther-or sItuatIon? Can your enterprIse do wIthout a CIo or a CFo? page 34

Volume 01 | Issue 07

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my story

20 | Unleashing Woman Potential

Marian N Ruderman, senior fellow, Centre for Creative Leadership talks to Yashvendra Singh on different xx aspects of leadership

19 | Top Down Taking a Hands-On Approach Vilakshan Jakhu, CIO, BPTP believes a hands-on approach has helped him align technology with business

30 | opinion View a Todie For: How Cognitive Biases Cause Disaster on Mt Everest India Inc would do well to pick up lessons from these experiences

28 | ME & MY MENTEE Honesty and Trust are Keys to Success Strong rapport helped this mentor-mentee duo achieve great heights

27 | The best advice I ever got “Accept a person as he/she is”

22 | Leading edge The Executive’s Guide to Better Listening

32 | SHELF LIFE Make Every Step Count on Your Leadership Ellis

Nobody is perfect, be it peers, friends or parents. But you have to respect the other person as a human being

Strong listening skills can make a critical difference in the performance of senior executives

notes that authentic leadership flows from inside out

July 2012

3

www.cioandleader.com Managing Director: Dr Pramath Raj Sinha Printer & Publisher: Anuradha Das Mathur Editorial Executive Editor: Yashvendra Singh Consulting Editor: Atanu Kumar Das Assistant Editor: Varun Aggarwal Assistant Editor: Akhilesh Shukla DEsign Sr Creative Director: Jayan K Narayanan Art Director: Anil VK Associate Art Director: Atul Deshmukh Sr Visualiser: Manav Sachdev Visualisers: Prasanth TR, Anil T & Shokeen Saifi Sr Designers: Sristi Maurya & NV Baiju Designers: Suneesh K, Shigil N, Charu Dwivedi Raj Verma, Peterson, Prameesh Purushothaman C & Midhun Mohan Chief Photographer: Subhojit Paul Sr Photographer: Jiten Gandhi

12 A Question of Answers

12 | Innovation in Government Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, UIDAI explains how documenting the existence of every resident will change the country

64 | tech for governance: Why Open Source is Not Always the Best Bet Few pointers you should look at before taking the leap

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44 | Best of breed: China to be on Par With US as Tech Leader Silicon Valley’s position as technology innovation centre may face challenge

4

July 2012

57 | Next Horizons: Enterprise Social Media Firms are modifying their business models to get social media savvy

Iomega HP – PSG Ricoh IBM Schneider Fujitsu Gartner Riverbed

IFC 5, BC 8-A 9 10, 11 15 17 IBC

advisory Panel Anil Garg, CIO, Dabur David Briskman, CIO, Ranbaxy Mani Mulki, VP-IT, ICICI Bank Manish Gupta, Director, Enterprise Solutions AMEA, PepsiCo India Foods & Beverages, PepsiCo Raghu Raman, CEO, National Intelligence Grid, Govt. of India S R Mallela, Former CTO, AFL Santrupt Misra, Director, Aditya Birla Group Sushil Prakash, Sr Consultant, NMEICT (National Mission on Education through Information and Communication Technology) Vijay Sethi, CIO, Hero MotoCorp Vishal Salvi, CISO, HDFC Bank Deepak B Phatak, Subharao M Nilekani Chair Professor and Head, KReSIT, IIT - Bombay NEXT100 ADVISORY PANEL Manish Pal, Deputy Vice President, Information Security Group (ISG), HDFC Bank Shiju George, Sr Manager (IT Infrastructure), Shoppers Stop Farhan Khan, Associate Vice President – IT, Radico Khaitan Berjes Eric Shroff, Senior Manager – IT, Tata Services Sharat M Airani, Chief – IT (Systems & Security), Forbes Marshall Ashish Khanna, Corporate Manager, IT Infrastructure, The Oberoi Group Sales & Marketing National Manager – Events and Special Projects: Mahantesh Godi (+91 98804 36623) National Sales Manager: Vinodh K (+91 97407 14817) Assistant General Manager Sales (South): Ashish Kumar Singh (+91 97407 61921) Senior Sales Manager (North): Aveek Bhose (+91 98998 86986) Product Manager - CSO Forum and Strategic Sales: Seema Menon (+91 97403 94000) Brand Manager: Gagandeep S Kaiser (+91 99999 01218) Production & Logistics Sr. GM. Operations: Shivshankar M Hiremath Manager Operations: Rakesh Upadhyay Asst. Manager - Logistics: Vijay Menon Executive Logistics: Nilesh Shiravadekar Production Executive: Vilas Mhatre Logistics: MP Singh & Mohd. Ansari OFFICE ADDRESS Published, Printed and Owned by Nine Dot Nine Interactive Pvt Ltd. Published and printed on their behalf by Anuradha Das Mathur. Published at Bungalow No. 725, Sector - 1, Shirvane, Nerul, Navi Mumbai - 400706. Printed at Tara Art Printers Pvt Ltd. A-46-47, Sector-5, NOIDA (U.P.) 201301 For any customer queries and assistance please contact help@9dot9.in This issue of CIO&Leader includes 16 pages of CSO Forum free with the magazine

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07 MONTH 2010

4

Enterprise

Cloud, analytics to drive data centre growth Pg 10

illustration by manav sachdev

Round-up

story Inside

HP Launches Comprehensive Cloud Services HP to offer enterprises a complete lifecycle experience in cloud

HP has announced a full-fledged services play into the burgeoning cloud computing market in India.

Making the announcement, Laxminarayan Rao, National Manager – Cloud Consulting Services, HP India, said that because of the multiple ways in which enterprises are embracing cloud, a homogenous control layer is needed to manage the heterogeneity of cloud environments. Today, companies are considering one or multiple ways of cloud deployment, including private cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud, managed hosted cloud, etc. According to Rao, the majority of CIOs are now considering or in the

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July 2012

process of deploying cloud computing technologies for their organisations. Taking its play of the recently announced converged cloud infrastructure further, HP will offer a range of HP Engineering Cloud Transformation Services to enterprises. The services include: engineering cloud experience workshop, which is designed to reduce risk and expedite decision making with best practices for product development and engineering transformation programmes. engineering cloud rapid investment analysis, which will help instil client confidence that a transformation can generate a rapid return on investment.

Data Briefing

295% SMARTPHONES GROWTH IN INDIA Source: IDC

E nterprise R o u nd - u p

They BARACK Said it OBAMA In an interview to PTI, Obama was careful not to be directly critical of the negative investment climate in India but cited the concerns of the American business community to make his points.

“Time may be right for another wave of economic reforms to make India more competitive in the global economy”

Yahoo! Sets up Grid Computing Lab at IIT Madras Lab to facilitate research on big data and cloud

—Barack Obama, US President

yahoo! India R&D in partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT- Madras) today announced the launch of Yahoo! Grid Computing Lab at the IIT- Madras campus. This cluster of high-end servers at the lab will allow researchers to access web-scale data and conduct research on big data and cloud computing systems.

Cloud services empower companies to dramatically improve agility and innovation at web scale. As more companies are moving their services to the cloud, it has emerged as an important area of research to explore new approaches in the field. The partnership will support researchers at IIT- Madras to process and analyze huge volumes of structured and unstructured data which, to date, has been limited due to significant cost barriers in getting large computing systems operational.

Hari Vasudev, Vice President, Connections, Yahoo! Inc. said, “At Yahoo! we believe that open and collaborative research is the best way towards building the next generation of the Web. By partnering with premier institutes like IITMadras, we hope to spur research in big data problems in areas such as search, personalization and digital advertising.”

QUICK BYTE ON hacking

Pacific North West cybercrime trio have been sentenced for $3m hacking spree.

The three men, Joshuah Allen Witt, 35, John Earl Griffin, 36, and Brad Eugene Lowe, 39, have all now been given stiff prison terms. Lowe was sentenced for sixand-a-half years, whilst Witt and Griffin were sent down for nearly eight years each July 2012

7

image by photos.com

E nterprise R o u nd - u p

Cloud, Analytics to Drive DC Growth APAC will account for 25%

of DC investment of $152 bn by 2016 Data center transformation is one of the three key trends driving IT growth in 2012, according to analyst firm Canalys (the others being consumerisation of IT and enterprise mobility). Its latest forecasts reveal that the market for data center IT infrastructure globally, including servers, storage, networking, security and virtualisation, will reach $128 billion this year, up six percent from $120 billion last year. Total invest-

ment will grow five percent on average per annum to reach $152 billion in 2016.

Large data centers will lead this expansion, posting an average annual increase of 8% over the same period. Much of this infrastructure will be used to form the backbone of cloud services for both consumer and commercial customers.

‘On the consumer side, everything from social networking platforms to online

Global Tracker

80 percent of respondents in developing markets

stated Internet as important for end-to-end shopping 8

July 2012

Source: Capgemini

Internet Shopping

banking services will require resilient infrastructure on which to run,’ said Alex Smith, Senior Analyst at Canalys. ‘This is particularly evident in the Asia Pacific region, where businesses in China and India are investing heavily in infrastructure to provide online services to their customers. The size of the populations in these markets presents a huge potential demand for data center infrastructure.’ Cloud computing has been a hot topic in the enterprise space in recent years and will continue to disrupt established patterns of IT purchasing behavior. The management of hardware and software traditionally conducted in-house will increasingly be transferred to thirdparty providers, with resources charged for on an on-demand, metered basis. This transition is already well underway in many public sector organizations, particularly in Europe where government spending is being re-shaped by the ongoing economic challenges. These trends are helping to concentrate investment into fewer, but larger, data centers, as opposed to being distributed across many smaller facilities.

Analytics is another driver of large data center investment. ‘Different organizations, with different interests spanning commerce, the environment and a spectrum of scientific disciplines will require large data warehouses and the ability to analyse vast quantities of information,’ Smith added.

‘The need to routinely process exabytes of data will become common.’

Canalys predicts Asia Pacific will be the fastest growing region over the next five years and will account for a quarter of worldwide data center infrastructure spend by 2016. ‘IT infrastructure expansion is critical to support the high-growth economies and rising online populations in this region,’ said Matthew Ball, Canalys Director of Enterprise Services. ‘The leading US vendors must focus resources on expanding their channel coverage in key Asia Pacific markets in order to capitalize on these growth opportunities. And they should not underestimate the challenge presented by local vendors, such as Fujitsu, Hitachi, Huawei and NEC.’ Canalys forecasts that North America will remain the biggest data center infrastructure market, though its share of total worldwide investment will fall from 43 percent in 2011 to 41 percent in 2016.

E nterprise R o u nd - u p

image by photos.com

New Center of Excellence for Workforce Solutions Kronos, Qimpro plan tieup

Kronos Inc. has extended its reach in the Indian market through a strategic alliance with Qimpro, a leader in quality consulting in India.

The alliance will leverage the synergies of Qimpro’s leadership in quality consulting and Kronos workforce management solutions to drive workforce transformation for Indian businesses through workforce cost optimisation, process effectiveness, and performance excellence.

The two organisations will focus on key industries such as manufacturing, retail, and healthcare.

A Center of Excellence (CoE) will be jointly established by Kronos and Qimpro to showcase the solutions and establish innovative ways to address the challenges of controlling labor costs, minimizing compliance risk, and improving workforce productivity in India.

While the CoE will provide the joint go-to-market strategies for the relationship, it will also focus on leveraging best practices, benchmarks, and standards that the alliance brings to joint Kronos/ Qimpro customers.

Commenting on the tie-up, James Thomas, country manager, Kronos India, said, “It’s an opportune time to storm the Indian business community with a quality revolution in workforce performance excellence hinging on cost optimization and process effectiveness, and through this strategic relationship, we look forward to accomplishing just that.”

According to Suresh Lulla, founder and managing director, Qimpro Consultants, “Kronos workforce management solutions will significantly strengthen Qimpro’s Process Management services. This relationship will enable us to confidently explore hidden opportunities for cost of poor quality within the third dimension of variability – the workforce.”

Qimpro offers professional services that range from assessment to transformation management, and from training to coaching and facilitation. Qimpro has over the years, distinguished itself in planning and implementing the recognition process at the national level. Since inception in 1987, Qimpro has provided services that have helped over 300 clients conduct over 6,000 projects and saved over Rs 16,000 crores; and has developed and copyrighted the BestPrax Barometer, a tool to measure the quality of business practices for good governance.

Fact ticker

Worldwide IT Spending to Surpass $3.6 Trillion in 2012 Three percent increase from 2011 Worldwide IT spending is on pace to reach $3.6 trillion in 2012, a 3 percent increase from 2011 spending of $3.5 trillion, according to the latest outlook

by Gartner Inc. Gartner's 2012 IT spending outlook has been revised up slightly from the 2.5 percent projection last quarter.

Gartner's global IT spending

8B

July 2012

forecast is relied upon by more than 75 percent of the Global 500 companies in their key technology decisions. The market segments are analyzed by more than 200 Gartner business and technology analysts who are located in all regions of the world.

"While the challenges facing global economic growth persist

— the eurozone crisis, weaker U.S. recovery, a slowdown in China — the outlook has at least stabilised," said Richard Gordon, research vice president at Gartner. "There has been little change in either business confidence or consumer sentiment in the past quarter, so the short-term outlook is for continued caution in IT spending. However, there are some bright spots for IT providers. Gartner expects enterprise spending on public cloud services to grow from $91 billion in 2011 to $109 billion in 2012.

DocuSign

E

lectronic signature firm DocuSign has secured $47.5 million in funding from premier investors, public funds, and strategic tech-industry leaders. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led the funding.

Accel Partners and a large, global institutional investor joined in the funding round.

Comcast Ventures and SAP Ventures provided additional investment joining existing tech industry partners salesforce. com and the National Association of Realtors. The company will use the funds to accelerate growth of the DocuSign Global Network via increased customer-focused R&D, deeper vertical industry solutions, and faster international expansion.

The company also announced that Kleiner’s Mary Meeker, a noted Internet-industry expert, has joined its board of directors. “This financing demonstrates the value the market places on technologies that drive fundamental business transformation – particularly those with immediate ROI, viral adoption, and nearly unlimited application,” said Keith Krach, chairman and CEO, DocuSign.

“DocuSign empowers anyone to sign anything, anywhere, anytime.” “DocuSign has created a compelling growing business by re-imagining an age-old basic service – signing documents,” said Mary Meeker, general partner, Kleiner Perkins.

DATA CENTER CORNER Modularity

The Evolution of Reliability

Modularity not only delivers more obvious and easily understood benefits but also the most subtle, least understood, and profound reliability benefit: fault tolerance. story roi Once servers and storage devices become fault tolerant throughout the data center, it will change the way IT failure is defined

M

Modular DCPI can be sized to align with the data center’s present IT requirements, and grow as requirements dictate Fault tolerant DCPI equipment allows continued operation of power or cooling when a DCPI component fails.

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July 2012

odularity is an established technique for organizing and simplifying a complex system. From elementary (flashlight batteries) to complex (the cells of an organism), modularity has a record of success that is hard to challenge. Nonetheless, in man-made systems on the brink of the evolutionary transition from monolithic to modular design, there can be skepticism and slow starts until modularity settles in and begins to deliver its time-tested benefits.

Data center physical infrastructure (DCPI) of data centers is in this transition phase. While the physically evident attributes of building-block architecture – scalability, flexibility, simplicity, portability – are easily understood and not in serious dispute, one aspect of modular design in this industry has become a subject for debate: reliability. Modularity not only delivers more obvious and easily understood benefits but also the most subtle, least understood, and profound reliability benefit: fault tolerance. The inherent fault tolerance of modular design provides a powerful new defense against failure, introducing into complex

systems a strategy for reliability that is not only adequate, but also superior. It is imperitive to understand that fault tolerance has profound significance. Once servers and storage devices become fault tolerant throughout the data center, it will change the way IT failure is defined.

Consider two different failure scenarios in a data center (See Figure 1). On the right is a failure of all Figure 1: Two failure scenarios for a data center (overhead view, four rows of eight racks)

One rack fails

All racks fail

data center corner

CUSTOM PUBLISHING

As fault tolerant architectures become more widespread, data centers will be able to tolerate more unit failures the racks, as would happen if a single large UPS protecting the entire data center failed and dropped the load. On the left is a failure of one rack. In conventional data centers, these two scenarios would be viewed by IT managers as the same failure, because – in a one-rack failure – interdependencies among servers, disk arrays, switches, and routers would likely cause cascading effects that bring down the entire data center.

As the new array-style modular designs for computing and storage take hold, the failure on the left – one rack – is beginning to be viewed by IT managers as a “better” failure, because redundancy of resources now offers the possibility of data center survival even when individual units fail. As fault tolerant architectures become more widespread, data centers will be able to tolerate a greater number of unit failures without total system failure. When blade servers fulfill their early promise of seamless fault tolerance, the failure of one, two, three, or even more racks will be a survivable event.

Implications for DCPI This new paradigm for failure management has implications for how the new IT architecture should be protected by its data center physical infrastructure.

For example, as data centers become more fault tolerant in their IT layer, power protection by a single, large UPS will become less optimal since failure of that UPS brings down the whole system – an unnecessary outcome in a fault-tolerant data center capable of surviving the loss of a rack. If UPSs are distributed throughout the data center, one UPS for every rack, then failure of any single UPS will fail only one rack, not the whole system. Even though there are more UPSs, which increases the likelihood of individual UPS failure, such a failure can be tolerated by the system. If it takes failure of three racks to fail the entire system, then three of those UPSs would have to fail simultaneously to bring down the system, an extremely unlikely event – much less likely than failure of a single large UPS. So, reliability theory strongly favours modular distributed power and cooling architecture as systems become more fault tolerant.

25

%

Faster deployments with modular data center compared to traditional data center designs

The modular advantage for DCPI Why will modular DCPI replace conventional DCPI? • Ability to scale and grow. Modular DCPI can be sized to align with the data center’s present IT requirements, and grow as required. This advantage has importance to DCPI, where the traditional method has been one-time deployment of power and cooling to support maximum IT requirements, resulting in waste in capital and OpEx. • Simpler process of duplication. Modular design means manufacturing a large number of small units, instead of a small number of large units.

Greater production volume means fewer defects; smaller, simpler design means more automation and less manual work during manufacture, which means fewer defects.

• Ability to specialise the function of modules.

Power-protection and cooling units can be manufactured in a variety of configurations to target the particular availability and cooling requirements of different parts of the data center.

• Rapid adaptation to the environment. With new equipment being added and IT equipment changing every 2 to 3 years, the contents of data centers are under constant revision.

• Fault tolerance. Just as fault tolerant IT equipment allows continued data center operation when an IT component fails, fault tolerant DCPI equipment allows continued operation of power when a DCPI component fails. Fault tolerance can be accomplished by redundancy of DCPI units – for example, by having extra power modules in a UPS. The advantages of modular DCPI over the conventional one is quite evident, considering the various new mechanisms it enables an enterprise to perform. Today, organisations need to adopt this innovative solutions to enhance their efficiency and productivity and stay ahead of competition.

BROUGHT to YOU BY

July 2012

11

Nandan Nilekani | Chairman, UIDAI

Innovation in Government An interview with McKinsey’s Eric Braverman and Mary Kuntz, Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India explains how documenting the existence of every living resident will change the country Enrollment in the ID program began in September 2010, and today more than 200 million Indians are in it. Why have so many people enrolled?

Well, identity rights are very important for participation in the formal economy. Having a document that proves your identity is the basis for owning property. It’s the basis for getting basic entitlements or pensions or scholarships. It’s the basis for travel.

India is becoming more of a migrant society—people are moving from villages to cities, from north to south, from central to coastal India. And when they move, they have to prove to the local establishments who they are, or else they can’t open a bank account, buy a mobile connection, or get a job.

The West has fairly well-developed ID systems. In India, we have 25 million births a year, but no system for

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July 2012

giving out birth certificates or Social Security numbers, like in the United States. Many Indians don’t have any document that proves their existence.

That’s the basic problem we’re trying to solve. But the game-changing dimension of our ID platform is that it’s digital.

What impact has the program had on India’s government?

It will have a huge impact on publicservice delivery and, in turn, on residents’ satisfaction with the way government works. The platform we created is an open API,1 so other entities—say, banks and telecom companies—can embed our APIs to verify someone’s identity before that person withdraws money or buys a SIM card for a mobile phone. So, for example, if a person is entitled to a pension, all the government has to do is say, “Send

this amount to this ID number.” That ID number translates into a bank account, and the money gets credited to the account. The government doesn’t even have to know where the bank account is. Residents will be empowered because they’ll be able to access public services from anywhere.

We can authenticate a person online, so services can be delivered online, via mobile phones, or at physical servicedelivery locations.

Bringing banks and telcos into such a consortium has raised concerns about privacy and civil liberties. How are you addressing those concerns?

We used a lot of design principles to make the ID system as privacy enabled as possible. For example, the information we collect from individuals is very simple: just the name,

Nandan Nilek ani | A Question of answers

Unique Identification: Setting a goal to have half a billion people in the system by 2014

A Question of answers | Nandan Nilek ani

“We want to create a virtuous cycle between applications and enrollment. We also want to make sure that there’s a sustainable organisation that can continue to deliver on the promise of this transformational project”

address, date of birth, and gender, with e-mail addresses and phone numbers optional. We also have biometric data, but we use this only to prevent duplication (to make sure a person gets only one unique ID number) and also for authentication. We don’t share people’s data with banks; the banks’ data aren’t shared with the ID system. So whether a person is withdrawing 100 rupees or 1,000 rupees is known only to the bank. You can think of it as a federated architecture, where each player knows only his or her part of the activity.

What does it take for a federated architecture such as this to work?

There are two big components to our system: the enrollment system and the authentication system. The enrollment system is a distributable, scalable architecture; we have our technology platform running in about 27,000 locations. The enrollment data are encrypted and then sent to our database for issuing unique ID numbers, so that requires massive back-end computing facilities. The authentication system, however, is cloud based.

An authentication request—from a bank, for instance—would come over the mobile network. We verify that person’s identity, and we send the answer back.

It sounds like “big data” plays a role in making this work.

You can’t manage 27,000 enrollment stations, around 50,000 operators, and a million enrollments a day without big data. At any given point, we can say how many people enrolled, where they enrolled, how long each biometric capture took, how many retries the operator had to do per enrollee. We have that level of granularity in our performance data analytics so we can distinguish good operators from bad operators— which is important because we pay them based on how many people

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July 2012

they enroll. Big data is crucial to performance management.

Also, we intend to publish our enrollment data after it has been made anonymous. If somebody wants to analyse enrollments by state, gender, or age, they can just download our data, which is machine readable.

You can find out, for example, that a particular region is underserved, because the number of authentication requests from there is low. As the system matures, there’ll be more of this type of analysis. And again, it’s a balance between enabling such analysis and protecting privacy.

How will you measure the progress of the ID program? In two years, what will you be looking for to declare it a success?

You’re asking me to make forwardlooking statements, something I avoided at my old job. But I’ll make one now—our goal is to have at least half a billion people on the system by

things I Believe in There are two big components to our system: the enrollment and authentication system Our goal is to have half a billion people in the system by 2014 What we would like to accompolish is to create a thriving application ecosystem

2014, which will make this one of the world’s largest online ID infrastructures. That’s one metric of success.

A second measure of success is to have two or three major applications of this ID infrastructure. The government can use it for electronic benefits transfer—that is, to pay out entitlements, pensions, and other benefits.

The government can also use the system for subsidy transfers. Half of the $60 billion the Indian government spends on benefits and entitlements is for subsidies on food, fuel, and fertiliser. The government is looking into converting those subsidies into cash transfers—at least in the case of fertilizer and fuel—as opposed to offering the products at lower prices.

You mentioned your old job.

What are some lessons for making major change happen that you have drawn from your experience as an entrepreneur?

One is the need for speed in imple-

A Question of answers | Nandan Nilek ani

mentation—the bias for action. Another is the ability, which is crucial in business, to recognise gaps and niches in the market.

But one area where the public sector is very different from the private sector is the amount of time you have to spend on consensus building and stakeholder navigation.

In the private sector, you’re answerable to your management, your board, investors, maybe financial analysts. In the public sector, the number of stakeholders is much larger—the federal government, state and city governments, the media, activists, the public—and they often have different agendas and ideologies. Navigating all this, while preserving the integrity of your approach, requires a lot of negotiation.

You’ve encountered opposition from certain interests. How have you dealt with that?

Obviously, a transformational change like this will meet resistance from certain groups.

To overcome barriers, what we try to do is, first of all, to make the people our champions. The people who enroll in the system become the voice of the system. Part of our

strategy is to link the ID to benefits because, fundamentally, the ID is optional. So we’re taking a benefits-oriented approach—for example, if there’s an immunisation programme that requires an ID, then all the children required will get the ID. Another part of our strategy has to do with speed of execution. We launched the platform in 14 months, and as you mentioned we’ve already enrolled 200 million people. A third thing is that we’ve tried to create a “coalition of the positive.” A lot of people now have a stake in the success of this project. Banks and telcos, for example, have an interest in helping us make it work.

Other countries are experimenting with digital-ID programmes and are trying to scale them. What advice can you give these countries?

They should have a scalable architecture right from the beginning. We could scale to 27,000 enrollment stations in one year because we built an entire ecosystem—there was a software platform, a hardware platform, a training platform for operators. We had many partners so that the load would get

shared. We did a lot of things architecturally to drive scale.

But what’s equally important is that we expect to see a lot more innovation because of the platform’s open API. That’s the best way to do this: the government builds the platform but makes it open so that individual creativity and entrepreneurship can build more solutions.

Ultimately, what we’d like to accomplish in this role is to create a thriving application ecosystem around the platform. Over the next few years, we’d like to see more apps developed by both the public and private sectors—and the fact that so many people are enrolled in the system will, we hope, spur more developers to build applications.

We want to create a virtuous cycle between applications and enrollment. We also want to make sure that there’s a sustainable organisation that can continue to deliver on the promise of this transformational project.

—Creating a ‘coalition of the positive’ in India: An interview with Nandan Nilekani Eric Braverman is a principal in McKinsey’s Washington, DC, office; Mary Kuntz is an external contributing editor for McKinsey.

ion ial ct ec se Sp ship er ad le

“When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.”

—Napoleon Bonaparte

July 2012

18A

Introduction

CIO&LEADER This special section

on leadership has been designed keeping in mind the evolving role of CIOs. The objective is to provide an eclectic mix of leadership articles and opinions from top consultants and gurus as well as create a platform for peer learning. Here is a brief description of each sub-section that will give you an idea of what to expect each month from CIO&Leader:

20 My Story

The article/interview will track the leadership journey of a CIO/CXO to the top. It will also provide insights into how top leaders think about leadership

19

top down

This feature focusses on how CIOs run IT organisations in their company as if they were CEOs. It will comment on whether IT should have a separate P&L, expectation management of different LoB heads, HR policies within IT, operational issues, etc. This section will provide insights into the challenges of putting a price on IT services, issues of changing user mindset, squeezing more value out of IT, justifying RoI on IT, attracting and retaining talent, and competing against external vendors

28

22

Leading edge An opinion piece on leadership penned by leadership gurus.

Plus, an insightful article from a leading consulting firm

ME & MY MENTEE

Cross leveraging our strong traction in the IT Manager community, this section will have interviews/features about IT Managers and CIOs talking about their expectations, working styles and aspirations. In this section, a Mentor and a Mentee will identify each other’s strengths and weaknesses, opine on each other’s style of functioning, discuss the biggest lessons learnt from each other, talk about memorable projects and shared interests

32

SHELF LIFE

A one-page review of a book on leadership

18B

July 2012

27

The best advice I ever got Featuring a top CIO/Technology Company Head and the best guidance/ recommendation he received with respect to his personal or professional growth.

The advice could relate to dealing with people, managing personal finance, and balancing work and life

Top Down

Vilakshan Jakhu

CIO, BPTP

Taking a Hands-On Approach

Vilakshan Jakhu, CIO, BPTP believes a hands-on approach has helped him align technology with business Vilakshan Jakhu, CIO- BPTP is a good example of how a CIO can lead his department from the front and deliver what the business expects from it.

At the young age of 33, Jakhu collaborates with the top management and takes important decisions that impact the company's growth. For instance, he is presently in the midst of implementing a CRM solution in BPTP. Jakhu decided on the implementation with the objective of providing the element of customer delight when working with BPTP, right from the first interaction until the customer gets the possession of the property.

“Rather than having point solutions, we wanted to have an integrated communication strategy with the customer wherein he can contact us through email, chat, phone call, letter, log in online.” he says. The implementation will be over by the end of July, 2012.

Adopting a hands-on approach, Jakhu wanted to know about the issues first and then build a system around it.

“For one month, I was listening to every single call received at the customer service desk to get a hang of what the customer is asking for, what kind of language was being used, and the problems they encountered.” says Jakhu.

Jakhu believes that unless a CIO involves himself in the business part of this exercise, he will not be able to design the desired CRM system.

He also teamed up with the customer service head to understand the area of customer service and instill a culture of responding to customer calls swiftly and rightly within set timeframes.

“This mindset is absent in the realty industry and we are in the process of being a first mover in this case.” says Jakhu.

BPTP is now working on another feature in the CRM that would co-ordinate with customers to have them registered with the respective authority after getting the possession of the flat. The CRM project is currently in the user acceptance testing phase. The sales and marketing components are live. The customer servcie part is almost in place. Jakhu's hands-on approach was also visible when BPTP's data centre was beign constructed at Gurgaon.Jakhu was on the ground having a first hand look of datacentre construction.

— As told to Abhishek Rawal

July 2012

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My Story Marian N. Ruderman

Unleashing Woman Potential Marian N Ruderman, senior fellow, Centre for Creative Leadership talks to Yashvendra Singh on different aspects of women leadership Marian N. Ruderman is a senior fellow and director of Americas and Europe-Middle East-Africa research at the Center for Creative Leadership, a top-ranked, global provider of leadership education

As more and more women achieve leadership status, what are some of the challenges they typically face?

As the numbers of managerial and executive women continue to grow throughout the world, many organisations have generally done little to understand women's careers. Women are now making it clear to organisations that they lead different lives than men and that the companies they work for, both large and small, need to pay closer attention to their concerns. As women achieve greater successes in the executive world, we are seeing both a change and an expansion of the kinds of struggles they typically face. Previously, gender-related hurdles such as harassment, isolation and proving oneself were their primary obstacles. Now the emphasis is on the choices and tradeoffs, the forces that influence their decisions, and strategies for constructing meaningful and fulfilling careers. In an effort to better understand the realities facing women executives, the Center for Creative Leadership studied the experiences of dozens of high-achieving women who attended CCL’s Women’s Leadership Programme. The women were mid- to senior-level managers, the majority of whom worked for Fortune 500 companies. This work resulted in a number of key findings.

So what were the key findings of the study?

When viewed from an organisational perspective, the basic issue is that high-achieving women feel they

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July 2012

must make significant compromises in order to survive in organisations in which careers are patterned after the stereotypical male experience. A particularly important outcome of ignoring the gendered nature of organisations is that many companies are experiencing a high level of turnover among women managers and executives. This is a disturbing trend for many reasons.

According to the Center for Creative Leadership, what are the key themes for today’s managerial women?

There are five major themes identified in CCL’s research as key to managerial women as they evolve as leaders.

These are authenticity, wholeness, agency, connectedness and self-understanding. Organisations should help women cultivate these five themes.

But what should organisations do to help women evolve as leaders?

Given the increasing demands for leadership talent today, organisations can't afford to misunderstand or underestimate the developmental issues facing women in leadership roles. CCL’s research has uncovered several steps they can take: 1. Increase the opportunities for women to learn from one another informally: Encourage the development of employee associations or networks for women. These homogeneous groups help managers share common experiences and concerns and form developmental

Marian N. Ruderman| Interview

5points 1

Women are making it clear to the organisations that they lead different lives than men

2

Organisations have done little to understand women's career

3

Organisations can't afford to misunderstand the developmental issues facing women in leadership roles

4

Encourage the development of employee associations or networks for women

5

Encourage women to take advantage of opportunities for formal developmental assessment

relationships with each other. Such relationships provide women support as well as opportunities for informal feedback about their strengths and weaknesses as leaders.

2. Encourage women to take advantage of opportunities for formal developmental assessment: Structured assessment and feedback, such as that offered through 360-degree instruments, can be part of a larger development programme. One industry association CCL works with has

arranged for large numbers of its managerial women to take part in feedback-intensive programmes.

The association sponsors a program for women executives from different organizations in the industry so they can get support from each other and feedback at the same time.

3. Help decision makers understand how to develop and create challenging assignments for women: Such assignments should take

into account the extra challenges experienced by women managers.

Too little challenge results in too little growth; too much challenge overwhelms the learning process. A female executive, for example, who needs to broaden her understanding of the business might be given an assignment exposing her to new regions, lines of business, or functions.

With proper support, she can learn to flourish in this role.

July 2012

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Leading edge Bernard T. Ferrari

The Executive’s Guide to Better Listening Strong listening skills can make a critical difference in the performance of senior executives. Here’s how By Bernard T. Ferrari A senior executive of a large consumer goods company had spotted a bold partnership opportunity in an important developing market and wanted to pull the trigger quickly to stay ahead of competitors. In meetings on the topic with the leadership team, the CEO noted that this trusted colleague was animated, adamant, and very persuasive about the move’s game-changing potential for the company.

The facts behind the deal were solid.

The CEO also observed something troubling, however: his colleague wasn’t listening. During conversations about the pros and cons of the deal and its strategic rationale, for example, the senior executive wasn’t open to avenues of conversation

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that challenged the move or entertained other possibilities. What’s more, the tenor of these conversations appeared to make some colleagues uncomfortable. The senior executive’s poor listening skills were short-circuiting what should have been a healthy strategic debate.

Eventually, the CEO was able to use a combination of diplomacy, tactful private conversation, and the bureaucratic rigor of the company’s strategic-planning processes to convince the executive of the need to listen more closely to his peers and engage with them more productively about the proposal.

The resulting conversations determined that the original deal was sound but that a

much better one was available—a partnership in the same country. The new partnership presented slightly less risk to the company than the original deal but had an upside potential exceeding it by a factor of ten.

The situation facing the CEO will be familiar to many senior executives. Listening is the front end of decision making. It’s the surest, most efficient route to informing the judgments we need to make, yet many of us have heard, at one point or other in our careers, that we could be better listeners.

Indeed, many executives take listening skills for granted and focus instead on learning how to articulate and present their own views more effectively.

ILLUSTRATION BY manav sachdev

Be r n a r d T. F e r r a r i | L e a ding e dge

This approach is misguided. Good listening—the active and disciplined activity of probing and challenging the information garnered from others to improve its quality and quantity—is the key to building a base of knowledge that generates fresh insights and ideas.

Put more strongly, good listening, in my experience, can often mean the difference between success and failure in business ventures (and hence between a longer career and a shorter one). Listening is a valuable skill that most executives spend little time cultivating. (For more about one executive’s desire to be a better listener, see “Why I’m a listener: Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer.”)

The many great listeners I’ve encountered throughout my career as a surgeon, a corporate executive, and a business consultant have exhibited three kinds of behavior I’ll highlight in this article.

By recognising—and practicing— them, you can begin improving your own listening skills and even those of your organization.

1. Show respect One of the best listeners I have ever observed was the chief operating officer (COO) of a large medical institution.

He once told me that he couldn’t run an operation as complex as a hospital without seeking input from people at all levels of

the staff—from the chief of surgery to the custodial crew. Part of what made him so effective, and so appealing as a manager, was that he let everyone around him know he believed each of them had something unique to contribute.

The respect he showed them was reciprocated, and it helped fuel an environment where good ideas routinely came from throughout the institution.

The COO recognised something that many executives miss: our conversation partners often have the know-how to develop good solutions, and part of being a good listener is simply helping them to draw out critical information and put it in a new light.

To harness the power of those ideas, senior executives must fight the urge to “help” more junior colleagues by providing immediate solutions. Leaders should also respect a colleague’s potential to provide insights in areas far afield from his or her job description.

Here’s an example: I recall a meeting between a group of engineers and the chief marketing officer (CMO) at a large industrial company. She was concerned about a new product introduction that had fallen flat. The engineers were puzzled as well; the company was traditionally dominated by engineers with strong product-development skills, and this group had them too.

As the CMO and I discussed the technological aspects of the product with the engineers, I was struck by their passion and genuine excitement about the new device, which did appear to be unique.

Although we had to stop them several times to get explanations for various technical terms, they soon conveyed the reasons for their attitude—the product seemed to be not only more efficient than comparable ones on the market but also easier to install, use, and maintain.

After a few minutes, the CMO, who had been listening intently, prompted the engineers with a respectful leading question: “But we haven’t sold as many as you thought we would in the first three months, right?”

“Well, actually, we haven’t sold any!” the team leader said. “We think this product is a game changer, but it hasn’t been selling.

And we’re not sure why.”

July 2012

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L e a ding e dge | Be r n a r d T. F e r r a r i

After a pause to make sure the engineer was finished, the CMO said, “Well, you guys sure seem certain that this is a great product. And you’ve convinced the two of us pretty well. It seems that customers should be tripping over themselves to place orders. So assuming it’s not the product’s quality that’s off, what else are your customers telling you about the product?”

“We haven’t spoken to any customers,” the engineer replied.

The CMO blanched. As the conversation continued, we learned that the product had been developed under close wraps and that the engineers had assumed its

good listening and targeted follow-up questions, she helped to extract a much better solution from the engineers themselves. She didn’t cut the conversation short by lecturing them on good marketing techniques or belittling their approach; she listened and asked pointed questions in a respectful manner. The product ultimately ended up being a game changer for the company.

Being respectful, it’s important to note, didn’t mean that the CMO avoided asking tough questions—good listeners routinely ask them to uncover the information they need to help make better decisions. The

“Some people can intuitively grasp where to draw the line between input and interruption, but the rest of us have to work at it” —Bernard T. Ferrari virtues would speak for themselves. “But maybe not,” said the team leader. “Maybe we ought to push it a little more. I guess its good traits aren’t so obvious if you don’t know a lot about it.”

That engineer had hit the nail on the head. The device was fine. Customers were wary about switching to something untested, and they hadn’t been convinced by the specs the company’s sales team touted.

As soon as the engineers began phoning their counterparts in the customers’ organizations (an idea suggested by the engineers themselves), the company started receiving orders.

Had the CMO looked at the problem by herself, she might have suspected a shortcoming with the product. But after some

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goal is ensuring the free and open flow of information and ideas.

I was amused when John McLaughlin, the former deputy director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, told me that when he had to make tough decisions he often ended his conversations with colleagues by asking, “Is there anything left that you haven’t told me . . . because I don’t want you to leave this room and go down the hall to your buddy’s office and tell him that I just didn’t get it.”

With that question, McLaughlin communicated the expectation that his colleagues should be prepared; he demanded that everything come out on the table; and he signaled genuine respect for what his colleagues had to say.

2. Keep quiet I have developed my own variation on the 80/20 rule as it relates to listening. My guideline is that a conversation partner should be speaking 80 percent of the time, while I speak only 20 percent of the time.

Moreover, I seek to make my speaking time count by spending as much of it as possible posing questions rather than trying to have my own say.

That’s easier said than done, of course— most executives are naturally inclined to speak their minds. Still, you can’t really listen if you’re too busy talking.

Besides, we’ve all spent time with bad listeners who treat conversations as opportunities to broadcast their own status or ideas, or who spend more time formulating their next response than listening to their conversation partners.

Indeed, bad listening habits such as these are ubiquitous (see sidebar, “A field guide to identifying bad listeners”).

I should know because I’ve fallen into these traps myself. One experience in particular made me realise how counterproductive it is to focus on your own ideas during a conversation.

It was early in my career as a consultant and I was meeting with an important client whom I was eager to impress. My client was a no-nonsense, granite block of a man from the American heartland, and he scrutinized me over the top of his reading glasses before laying out the problem: “The budget for next year just doesn’t work, and we are asking our employees to make some tough changes.”

All I heard was his concern about the budget. Without missing a beat, I responded to my client and his number-two man, who was seated alongside him: “There are several ways to address your cost problem.”

I immediately began reeling off what I thought were excellent suggestions for streamlining his business.

My speech gained momentum as I barreled ahead with my ideas. The executive listened silently—and attentively, or so it seemed. Yet he didn’t even move, except to cock his head from time to time.

When he reached for a pen, I kept up my oration but watched with some annoyance as he wrote on a small notepad, tore off the sheet of paper, and handed it to his associ-

Be r n a r d T. F e r r a r i | L e a ding e dge

ate. A smile flitted almost imperceptibly across that man’s face as he read the note.

I was already becoming a bit peeved that the executive had displayed no reaction to my ideas, but this little note, passed as though between two schoolboys, was too much. I stopped talking and asked what was written on the paper.

The executive nodded to his associate.

“Show him.”

The man leaned across the table and handed me the note. My client had written, “What the hell is this guy talking about?”

Fortunately, I was able to see the humor in the situation and to recognise that I had been a fool. My ego had gotten in the way of listening.

Had I paid closer attention and probed more deeply, I would have learned that the executive’s real concern was finding ways to keep his staff motivated while his company was shrinking.

I had failed to listen and compounded the error by failing to keep quiet. Luckily for me, I was able to get a second meeting with him.

It’s not easy to stifle your impulse to speak, but with patience and practice you can learn to control the urge and improve the quality and effectiveness of your conversations by weighing in at the right time.

Some people can intuitively grasp where to draw the line between input and interruption, but the rest of us have to work at it. John McLaughlin advises managers to think consciously about when to interrupt and to be as neutral and emotionless as possible when listening, always delaying the rebuttal and withholding the interruption. Still, he acknowledges that interrupting with a question can be necessary from time to time to speed up or redirect the conversation.

He advises managers not to be in a hurry, though—if a matter gets to your level, he says, it is probably worth spending some of your time on it.

As you improve your ability to stay quiet, you’ll probably begin to use silence more effectively. The CEO of an industrial company, for example, used thoughtful moments of silence during a meeting with his sales team as an invitation for its junior members to speak up and talk through

“I have developed my own variation on the 80/20 rule as it relates to listening. My guideline is that a conversation partner should be speaking 80 percent of the time, while I speak only 20 percent of the time” details of a new incentive program that the team’s leader was proposing.

As the junior teammates filled in these moments with new information, the ensuing rich discussion helped the group (including the team leader) to realize that the programme needed significant retooling. The CEO’s silence encouraged a more meritocratic—and ultimately superior—solution.

When we remain silent, we also improve the odds that we’ll spot nonverbal cues we might have missed otherwise. The medical institution’s COO, who was such a respectful listener, had a particular knack for this.

I remember watching him in a conversation with a nurse manager, who was normally articulate but on this occasion kept doubling back and repeating herself.

The COO realised from these cues that something unusual was going on. During a pause, he surprised her by asking gently, “You don’t quite agree with me on this one, do you? Why is that?” She sighed in relief and explained what had actually been bugging her.

3. Challenge assumptions Good listeners seek to understand—and challenge—the assumptions that lie below the surface of every conversation. This point was driven home to me the summer before I went to college, when I had the opportunity to hang out with my best friend at a baseball park.

He had landed a job in the clubhouse of the Rochester Red Wings, then a

minor-league farm team for the Baltimore Orioles. That meant I got to observe Red Wings manager Earl Weaver, who soon thereafter was promoted to Baltimore, where he enjoyed legendary success, including 15 consecutive winning seasons, four American League championships, and one World Series victory.

Weaver was considered fiery and cantankerous, but also a baseball genius. To my 18-year-old eyes, he was nothing short of terrifying—the meanest and most profane man I’d ever met.

Weaver wasn’t really a listener; he seemed more of a screamer in a perpetual state of rage. When a young player made an error, Weaver would take him aside and demand an explanation.

“Why did you throw to second base when the runner was on his way to third?” He’d wait to hear the player’s reasoning for the sole purpose of savagely tearing it apart, usually in the foulest language imaginable and at the top of his lungs.

But now and then, Weaver would be brought up short; he’d hear something in the player’s explanation that made him stop and reconsider.

“I’ve seen that guy take a big wide turn several times but then come back to the bag. I thought maybe if I got the ball to second really fast, we could catch him.” Weaver knew that the move the player described was the wrong one.

But as ornery as he was, he apparently could absorb new information that temporarily upended his assumptions. And,

July 2012

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L e a ding e dge | Be r n a r d T. F e r r a r i

in doing so, the vociferous Weaver became a listener.

Weaver called his autobiography It’s What You Learn After You Know It All That Counts. That Zen-like philosophy may clash with the Weaver people thought they knew. But the title stuck with me because it perfectly states one of the cornerstones of good listening: to get what we need from our conversations, we must be prepared to challenge long-held and cherished assumptions.

Many executives struggle as listeners because they never think to relax their assumptions and open themselves to the possibilities that can be drawn from conversations with others.

and to shake up their thinking with an eye to reevaluating what they know, don’t know, and—an important point— can’t know.

Arne Duncan, the US Secretary of Education, is one such listener. He believes that his listening improves when he has strong, tough people around him who will challenge his thinking and question his reasoning. If he’s in a meeting, he makes sure that everyone speaks, and he doesn’t accept silence or complacency from anyone. Arne explained to me that as a leader, he tries to make it clear to his colleagues that they are not trying to reach a common viewpoint.

The goal is common action, not common

“Many executives struggle as listeners because they never think to relax their assumptions and open themselves to the possibilities that can be drawn from conversations with others” As we’ve seen, entering conversations with respect for your discussion partner boosts the odds of productive dialogue.

But many executives will have to undergo a deeper mind-set shift—toward an embrace of ambiguity and a quest to uncover “what we both need to get from this interaction so that we can come out smarter.” Too many good executives, even exceptional ones who are highly respectful of their colleagues, inadvertently act as if they know it all, or at least what’s most important, and subsequently remain closed to anything that undermines their beliefs.

Such tendencies are, of course, deeply rooted in human behavior.2 So it takes real effort for executives to become better listeners by forcing themselves to lay bare their assumptions for scrutiny

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thinking, and he expects the people on his team to stand up to him whenever they disagree with his ideas.

Duncan uses a technique I find helpful in certain situations: he will deliberately alter a single fact or assumption to see how that changes his team’s approach to a problem.

This technique can help senior executives of all stripes step back and refresh their thinking. In a planning session, for example, you might ask, “We’re assuming a 10 percent attrition rate in our customer base. What if that rate was 20 percent?

How would our strategy change? What if it was 50 percent?” Once it’s understood that the discussion has moved into the realm of the hypothetical, where people can challenge any underlying assumptions without risk, the creative juices really begin to flow.

This technique proved useful during discussions with executives at a company that was planning to ramp up its M&A activity.

The company had a lot of cash on hand and no shortage of opportunities to spend it, but its M&A capabilities appeared to have gone rusty (it had not done any deals in quite some time). During a meeting with the M&A team and the head of business development, I asked, “Listen, I know this is going to be a little bit shocking to the system, but let’s entertain the idea that your team doesn’t exist. What kind of M&A function would we build for this corporation now? What would be the skills and the strategy?”

The question shook up the team a bit initially. You have to be respectful of the emotions you can trigger with this kind of speculation.

Nonetheless, the experiment started a discussion that ultimately produced notable results. They included the addition of talented new team members who could provide additional skills that the group would need as it went on to complete a set of multibillion-dollar deals over the ensuing year.

Throughout my career, I’ve observed that good listeners tend to make better decisions, based on better-informed judgments, than ordinary or poor listeners do—and hence tend to be better leaders.

By showing respect to our conversation partners, remaining quiet so they can speak, and actively opening ourselves up to facts that undermine our beliefs, we can all better cultivate this valuable skill.

—This article is printed with prior permission from McKinsey Quarterly.

Bernard Ferrari is an alumnus of McKinsey’s Los Angeles and New York offices, where he was a director; he is currently the chairman of Ferrari Consultancy. Elements of this article were adapted from his upcoming book, Power Listening: Mastering the Most Critical Business Skill of All (Penguin, March 2012)

The best advice I ever got

“Accept a person as he/ she is” “Try to accept a person as he/she is" is one of the best advices I ever got. Nobody is perfect, be it peers, friends or parents.

But you have to respect the other person as a human being. You should respect his/ her knowledge and when as a leader you propose any solution, always let the other person participate in it. One has to understand that by respecting the other person, one ensures that you also get the same kind of respect. Respect is something which can only be received if you give the same to the other person. I have always learned to be compassionate towards others and in this process it evolves me as a person because I feel better to be associated with people.

We should always remember that one can only be a successful leader by not only setting examples for others to follow but also by helping them participate in the process and be a part of the journey. Once a person gets involved in a process, his/her involvement increases tremendously and I have witnessed that team work takes a different shape when everybody is putting in his thoughts and ideas. So I believe that the best advice for me has always been the thought of respecting others and making them participate in decision making process.

Also another very important thing that I learned when I was working with Apparel Export Promotion Council is that we should keep on trying to find solutions till the problem is solved. This was inculcated in me by my then boss Anurag Mathur. He

Nandkishor Dhomne CIO, Manipal Hospitals

would tell me that I should not come to him with problems but approach his cabin only when I have couple of solutions to a particular problem. I think this has helped me immensely in my professional career and I today try and put the same to my subordinates. Once a person learns to solve problems, he/she grows as a person and his/her confidence level also increases by leaps and bounds. It not only helps him grow professionally, but also helps the him personally as now he is prepared to take on any problem that might come his way.

As a CIO, we should always try and nurture talent, and both the advice which I have mentioned helps me immensely in doing the same. When I follow these advice, it automat-

ically ensures that I have a team which is selfmotivated and can progress on their own. I feel that even if I am not physically in office, my team has the ability to solve any problem that comes their way. The solution may be a temporary one, but they will definitely have a solution to the problem.

As a leader, we should always lead in a way where our subordinates not only learn to grow but also take some values with them which they would be able to share with the next generation. We all at some point or the other hear a lot of advices, but it is for us individuals to work upon them and make them a part of our life in a way which becomes productive to the mankind.

—As told to Atanu Kumar Das

July 2012

27

me & my Mentee

MENTOR

Pertisth Mankotia

Head窶的T, Sheela Foam (Sleepwell)

MENTEE

Charu Bhargava

Asst. GM窶的T, Sheela Foam (Sleepwell)

Honesty and Trust Are Keys to Success What's your technique of mentoring? mankotia While undertaking new initiatives, I invite equal participation from my subordinates and ask for their suggestions.

Even if I know the best way, I would rather not reveal it outright. Instead, I would invite ideas from my subordinates and complement their ideas with mine. As a result, they feel a sense of contribution to the project.

This results in the colleague/mentee taking ownership of the project. The mentee should proactively own the project and have a sense of belonging to it.

How do you instill that belongingness? It comes by passing on the credit. Even if my mentee/team member didn't fair well, I try and give them the credit to boost their confidence for the next project. When things go wrong, I will not pass on the blame but take it on myself because the employee was deputed by me. These behaviourial traits build relationships.

I welcome all kinds of communication from my co-workers--personal and official. The mentor should also enhance personal relationship with employees by attending to marriage invitations and offering help during a medical situation.

Comparing work of two colleagues in the same function is not my way. I only pick the good points. Normally a CIO keeps all the authority to himself. If the managing director (MD) wants any information, it should be routed through the CIO. However I choose to encourage my mentee to personally meet the top management.

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The MD thus feels that apart from the CIO there are other competitive people in the organisation.

Which are the top two qualities you like about Mankotia? bhargava Clear Intentions: Clear intention should be a part of your working style. If you are clear from your heart the end results will fall in line. It may take longer to take people into confidence but they will ultimately buy your viewpoint.

Positive Attitude: Sometimes when you become negative about a situation, the end results also become negative.

He always suggests to keep a positive approach about a situation, otherwise no matter how positive the situation might be, you will make it negative with your attitude.

He is the kind of person who has the habit of passing the credit to his juniors and disowns credit for his achievements. Pertisth has never stopped any of the team members from interacting with the top management.

In fact he encourages them to pay them a visit.

He always encourages me to meet Gautam (Rahul Gautam, MD, Sheela Foam) and recommend me to represent IT for meetings with top management, give presentation etc.

What's your strategy to get the best out of your mentee? mankotia I gain the confidence of my mentee and that to my mind is the key to mentoring. Confidence builds

P e r t i s t h M a n k o t i a & C h a r u Bh a r g ava | me & m y Me n-

“Even if my mentee didn't fair well, I try and give him the credit to boost his confidence”

“I appreciate Mankotia's readiness to always stand by his colleagues to infuse confidence”

a rapport and relationship among co-workers and with the CIO. But how do you build confidence? The key lies in giving complete freedom but at the same time also keeping her rest assured that he will stand by her side in case if situation goes out of control.

Along side, you have to make things interesting because the mentee should feel motivated. Pay hikes, monetary incentives doesn't gain confidence. They are event-based things and have a short-term effect.

The CIO should establish himself not by designation but skillsets, point taken that he might not be good at everything but to be conceptually right is an imperative.

More than anything else, honest and trust plays a huge role in mentor-mentee relationship.

Words and action of the mentor should be consistent. A sense of consistency has to be maintained by the mentor in terms of what he/she thinks, says and finally implements. These are the key pillars of building a relationship with the mentee.

In the second instance of implementing the system for our dealer network at 20 locations, the first impression of the distributor was that we are trying to peep into their business. A 20-member team from our side was implementing the solution. To pacify the dealers, Mankotia called them on a daily basis to discuss the details of the roll out. He would also solve the queries from the distributors. This exercise was aimed towards making sure the dealers have no doubts about data security. I learned a lot from that experience.

How has Mankotia been a catalyst in bringing the best out of you? bhargava I appreciate his readiness to always stand by his colleagues to infuse confidence. For e.g. I was visiting Australia to roll out out 'Greenplus', Sleepwell's homegrown ERP. Five cities had to be covered. Mankotia personally paid a visit to Australia to make sure the 'ERP Go Live' is smooth and without any hassles.

Never before have I handled a project independantly thus I was nervous. His visit assured me that he would take care in case of any last minute issues.

Which learnings from Mankotia have you passed on to your juniors? bhargava Similar to Mankotia, I have given ample flexibility and freedom to my juniors. In the last five years, I haven't taken up jobs which were regular for me then. They are all being delegated. So if I have confidence that they can do it with the kind of accuracy and output I need, my team is matching expectations.

I have been very flexible, needless to say with the set time lines but how do they meet those deadlines is upon them. I don't interfere with their way of working on a day to day basis.

An atmospehere of flexibility has been created for me by Mankotia, so I would like to replicate that for my juniors. I have also created a level of trust in my juniors.

The names of the employees who might have unknowingly committed certain mistakes are restricted between me and them. I would not let them face any problem. I will have my neck on the block if something goes wrong, rather than my team members.

—As told to Abhishek Raval

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29

OPINION David Lim

View a Todie For: How Cognitive Biases Cause Disaster on Mt Everest Cognitive biases have led to costly

errors for mountaneers. India Inc would do well to pick up lessons from these experiences

ABOUT THE AUTHOR David Lim, Founder, Everest Motivation Team, is a leadership and negotiation coach, best-selling author and twotime Mt Everest expedition leader.

He can be reached at his blog http:// theasiannegotiator. wordpress.com, or david@ everestmotivation. com

30

THE author Ernest Hemingway once said that there are only three true sports in the world, the rest being merely games; and these sports were motor racing, bull fighting and mountaineering.

Where Everest is concerned, India has not been a slacker, especially when it was one of the first nations to lead a team up to the top. This was in 1965, 12 years after one of it’s own nationals Tenzing Norgay, stoop on top of the world on Everest’s first ascent.

But each year, like a part of a tick-list of driven people, Everest has hundreds of climbers swarming its flanks, almost all of them attempting to scale it from either its standard routes from the south in Nepal or the North, from Tibet. I still applaud anyone who wishes to take on the personal challenge of the peak, as it is still not an easy accomplishment. In it’s purest form, the sport of mountaineering is about freedom of expression. It’s about self-determination, route finding, working as a team, and challenging yourself in a pristine, harsh and remote arena. And yet, climbing Everest has lost most of the elements that make mountaineering what it is. For Everest at least, the aim of the game is summiting, and sometimes at all costs. Ask those this season who were asked to turn around, but did not; and then died on their descent, largely from exhaustion and mistakes made in a hypoxic state.

Veteran mountain guide, Dave Hahn, told me more than a decade ago on my second Everest expedition,

July 2012

image BY photos.com

D a v i d L i m | OPINION

“There is the sport of mountaineering, and then there is this thing called Everesting”. Dave Hahn should know.

He’s climbed Everest an amazing 14 times.

In ‘Everesting’ it seems, more and more people want to get to the top, at the expense of investing in a long, often rewarding apprenticeship of, and love of mountaineering. Even as recently as 1998, when I led the first Singapore Mount Everest Expedition, our aim was to climb the mountain with more than the minimal experience, clocking up significant time in the mountains prior to tackling the peak. That year, from the standard route from Nepal, 45 people summitted. This spring season on Everest, nearly 400 people have done so.

None, in Nepal, died in that spring season in 1998. Ten died during this spring season.

Leaving aside the classic and more recent mountaineering risks like overcrowding, a key factor is cognitive biases at work. These are tendencies to make mental shortcuts in a decision-making process where normally, you will get it right, most of the times.

The most common ones are: ‘Sunk cost’—the most wannabe Everest climbers have saved up the US$40,000-65,000 to have their once-in-a-lifetime shot, and are loathe to turn back even when wisdom dictates that they do so. More experienced climbers are invested in their sport and lives—and often make the better deci-

In ‘Everesting’ it seems, more and more people want to get to the top, at the expense of investing in a long, often rewarding apprenticeship of, and love of mountaineering sions. Another, which can affect anyone, is ‘confirmation bias’.

The well-reported 1996 tragedy happened when two major teams’ expedition leaders looked at the weather reports and chose to interpret the facts to merely confirm what they wanted to do—go for the summit on a specific date, when that date was just far too close to a change for the worse in the weather. Eight climbers died in this single incident. Three members of the IndoTibetan Police Border Police force also died on the north side of the peak in that storm. But their deaths were due largely to an expectation that the weather would not turn as vicious as it did.

Another cognitive bias at work was the ‘anchoring effect’. One of the principle teams involved in the tragedy was led by a very successful expedition leader who had previously summitted with his clients three times in previous years on May 10th. His belief that May 10th would still work out that year may have been influenced by the anchoring effect the date had with him—even if the weather reports clearly stated that weather would start to deteriorate slowly from May 8th, until a full blown storm on the 11th. By compartmentalising weather (which does not behave this way), he assumed the 10th was a workable summit day, and he could get his team down before the 11th. In reality, the first part of the storm arrived by the afternoon of the 10th, creating havoc amongst the teams that day. In the business world, what kind of cognitive biases are at work, and how can we spot them? British Petroleum’s collective leadership, for example, may have been lulled into a ‘belief bias’ that things would not be too disastrous in the early stages of the 2010 Gulf oil spill as there had been thousands of drill sites in that area without a single major disaster. Look at some of your own beliefs, and constructs and check if you are being affected by any of these cognitive biases that colour your decision making adversely. For those on Everest, these mistakes truly make the peak one with a view to die for.

DAVID LIM IS A LEADERSHIP AND NEGOTIATION COACH AND CAN BE FOUND ON HIS BLOG http:// theasiannegotiator.wordpress.com, OR subscribe to his free e-newsletter at david@everestmotivation.com

July 2012

31

SHELF LIFE

“Near-death experiences are no fun, but they do at least cause you to stop and examine your life’s priorities” — Lee Ellis

Make Every Step Count on Your Leadership Journey

Ellis notes that authentic leadership flows from inside out

How did

American Military leaders in the brutal POW camps of North Vietnam inspire their followers for six, seven, or eight years to remain committed to the mission, resist a cruel enemy, and return home with honor? What leadership principles engendered such extreme devotion, perseverance, and teamwork?

In this powerful and practical book, Lee Ellis, a former Air Force pilot, candidly talks about his five and a half years of captivity and the fourteen key leadership principles behind this amazing story. As a successful executive coach and corporate consultant, he helps leaders of Fortune 500 companies, healthcare executives, small business owners, and entrepreneurs utilize these same pressure-tested principles to increase their personal and organisational success. Rarely can a leadership book—usually stark and cold in tone, written with business school savvy—be called moving, but former Air Force pilot and leadership consultant Ellis culls lessons from his experiences as a POW in the infamous Hoa Loa Prison (the “Hanoi Hilton”) in North Vietnam and juxtaposes them with suggested strategies.

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Some of the things that Leading with Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton focuses on include: - Courageous lessons from POW leaders facing torture in the crucible of captivity.

- How successful teams are applying these same lessons and principles.

- How to implement these lessons using the Coaching sessions provided in each chapter.

Two books in one, Ellis shares his recollections from this harrowing time, and at the end of each chapter, presents the lessons he’s learned —often extensive, but never trite. Detailed descriptions of the personalities that make and destroy leaders (including fellow POW John McCain), as well as the physical and emotional torture he endured, give the book much added depth and show leadership as a quality of character. Though many of the leadership lessons are interpersonal, dominant among them is the idea of selfreflection. As Ellis writes: “Authentic leaders consistently live in harmony with their values, even when no one is looking. Their walk matches their talk.” Much more than a leadership

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lee Ellis is founder and President of Leadership Freedom LLC. He is a leadership consultant and keynote speaker in the areas of teambuilding, executive development, and assessment. Early in his career, Lee served as an Air Force fighter pilot flying fifty-three combat missions over North Vietnam

text, Ellis offers an inspiring story that will engage readers.

Ellis notes that authentic leadership flows from the inside out. You will be most successful and fulfilled when you clarify who you uniquely are in terms of purpose, passion, and personality, and then lead authentically from that core. He opines, “Critical moments can be catalysts for constructive change, but I urge you not to wait for a life-and-death situation or another type of crisis before you begin to think about who you are and where you’re going. Take the time now to ensure that your personal and career choices are aligned with your purpose, passion, and personality.” In the book’s Foreword, Senator John McCain states, “In Leading with Honor, Lee draws from the POW experience, including some of his own personal story, to illustrate the crucial impact of leadership on the success of any organisation. He highlights lessons and principles that can be applied to every leadership situation.” This book is ideal for individual or group study as a personal development, coaching, or executive training resource.

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C O V ER STORY | ci o o r cf o ?

CIO or CFO?

Is it an either-or situation?

Can your enterprise do without a CIO or a CFO?

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July 2012

REASON #1

120+

CONTEMPORARIES FROM INDIA AND SAARC

JOIN IN

CIOs and CFOs are two key positions in any organisation. Off late there have been speculations that the role of a CIO is diminishing.

As organisations move towards outsourcing their information technology needs, there are serious questions asked about the need for a CIO. We, at CIO&Leader,

CELEBRATING

DIVERSITY

spoke to some of the leading CIOs and CFOs to find out what they feel about this burning issue.

By Atanu Kumar Das Design By Shokeen Saifi

July 2012

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C O V ER STORY | ci o o r cf o ?

CIO & CFO:

Two Faces of a Coin

Both the CIO and CFO are equally important for an enterprise to achieve the designated goals set for an organisation By Atanu Kumar Das

O

ne crucial question that has been doing the rounds for the last couple of years is how relevant will be a CIOs role in the coming years considering that a lot of information technology can now be outsourced by any enterprise. There are also suggestions that a CFO can very well do the job of a CIO. With changing business needs, the job of a CIO is less of technology deployment and more of business growth in the company. Some analysts have also pointed out that a CIO who has a sound knowledge in finance can also do the job of a CFO. So, the important question is, can any organisation run without a CIO or a CFO? Can a CIO do the job of both the CIO and CFO or can a CFO do the job of both the CFO and a CIO? Here we will try to find the answer to this complex question, and also highlight the other critical changes that are happening in the CIO and CFO domain.

How relevant is a CIO today?

Many organisations are outsourcing their IT needs, but does this mean that they can do without a CIO. CIOs and CFOs across different verticals think that with the dominance of IT in everybody's life, the life of a CIO is far from over. Rather his/her job becomes far more critical for the organisation.

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According to Rajeev Batra, CIO, Sistema Shyam Teleservices, “If we talk about an organisation outsourcing the work of its technology department, then also someone in the company has to take the responsibility of owning the job. Someone has to interact with the outsourced company to get the work done in the proper manner.

According to me, CIO's job will never be redundant.

I remember reading an article in Gartner five years ago that CIOs will become redundant, but they still exists and their job has become more dynamic then what it was before. A CIO should ensure that that his organisation should be ahead of the technology curve and be cost-effective in whatever project that he/she implements.”

Sathya Kalyanasundaram, Director Finance & Operations, Texas Instruments, feels that technological requirements can now be outsourced in an extremely efficient and cost effective manner. But that doesn't mean that an organisation can run without a CIO. “I do believe the need for a thought leader such as a CIO is important in organisations that are looking to create long-term sustainable value to their shareholders, employees and the consumers in general.

The value that a thought leader in IT can bring from imbibing the culture, strategy and vision of the organisa-

REASON #2

2 NIGHTS AND 3 DAYS, RE-LIVE YOUR LIFE AS A STUDENT AT “THE CAMPUS – A LEARNING HUB”…

“It is imperative for a CIO and CFO to work together and bring the best of each other to the company's plate” –Anup Vikal, CFO & CIO, Interglobe

tion, and helping achieve these objectives by implementing effective technological solutions, cannot be measured.”

According to Giri Giridhar, President Finance, Wockhardt Global, “I don't think that the job of the CIO is getting redundant. On the contrary, it is going up. Technology is reshaping the business and operating models and the role of the CIO is up there in enabling the companies to keep up in order to be competitive.”

One of the important thing that comes out of this is the fact that a CIO today needs to upgrade his skill-sets and be aware of finance and business dynamics to ensure that his position in the company is viewed with equal importance like that of a CFO. On the other hand, a CFO also needs to get close to the CIO and understand technology so that they both can work together and implement the best possible solutions in their organisations.

Upgrading the skill-sets Gone are the days when a CIO needs to have only technical skill-sets. Today, a CIO is much better off if he possesses finance background. It not only helps him to understand the business better but also ensures that his interaction with the CFO becomes much more enthralling and understanding.

According to GG Rao, CIO, HCL Infosystems, “Today, a CIO is also the finance guy. I have done my Masters in Technology and then after 10 years of my job, I did MBA from IIM Calcutta where

I got to learn a lot of things starting from operational excellence, human resource behaiviour and all this helped me a lot in my job as a CIO. After I did my MBA it helped me understand the business benefits much better. For example, when I am implementing SAP in HCL, then I realise that I can appreciate it much better than someone who has only technical background.”

He adds, “I also believe that today, business managers must have a MBA degree or some finance background. Whenever, there are candidates who come for interview I ensure that I interview those people who have some business background because in the long-run, this is going to help them grow in the company.”

Batra feels that transformation from technological to business side is crucial for a CIO and some CIOs can do it on the job without getting a finance degree, but have a finance background is definitely an added advantage.

“My transformation as a CIO started around 10 to 12 years ago when I did the first outsourcing job for the company and this project allowed me to understand the business dynamics of the organisation. Having a finance background definitely helps because you understand what are pros and cons of doing a particular project in money terms,” said Batra.

This transformation holds true even for the CFOs as they are also making efforts to understand technology and be close associates of the CIO in most of the projects implemented.

July 2012

37

@

ISB,

HYDERABAD

C O V ER STORY | ci o o r cf o ?

According to Kalyanasundaram, “As the CFO, I believe it is essential to understand the technological and operational expertise that the IT organisation brings to the table. It is equally important for the IT organisation to be aware of the overall strategy of the organisation and how IT can help enable / drive the same. The cost mindset is important but it is more important for the CFO to create a value mindset within the IT organisation. Driving long-term sustainable value in operations will help

Striking the right balance

The key to success for an organisation is when the CFO and the CIO strikes the right balance and working in tandem to achieve organisational goals. It is imperative that the CIO and CFO understand that at the end of the day, the objective is to achieve the set goals and not step on each others' shoes.

According to J.S. Puri, Former CIO, Fortis and Mentor, Strategic Management Solutions, “It is in the interest of an organisation to strike a fine balance between the roles of the CIO and the CFO. Meanwhile, for a CIO to hold his own, there is a need for him to take up additional responsibilities. He should not limit himself to the IT department and should instead handle additional roles. This would not only increase his stature within the organisation but also add value to his own profile.

Puri further adds, “A CIO should also grab whatever opportunity he gets to make his presence felt within his organisation.

This opportunity could be in a meeting with the top management.

–Rajeev Batra, CIO, Sistema Shyam The CFO should realise the fact that he can’t work without the support of the CIO and vice-versa. The two should collaborate if they have to take their company to the next level of growth.”

According to Anup Vikal, CFO and Head IT & Strategy -- Interglobe Enterprises, “I have been handling both the portfolio of a CIO and a CFO in this organisation for the last two and a half years and one has to have increase operating and financial effectiveness. Thus, immense knowledge of both the domain to do justice technological solutions driven by the IT organisation will to the positions. I have worked with the organisations drive greatest performance when their expertise is leverwhere the CIO and CFO are on the governing body aged with a proper value mindset.” because these two are key positions in an organisation.

Rao feels that he is lucky to have a CFO who is actively It is imperative for a CIO and CFO to work together and involved with IT projects because the latter is also bring the best of each other to the company's plate. Both responsible for part of the business within the organisahave to collectively work to enhance the growth of the tion. The CFO also actively participates in all the IT projorganisation.” ects that goes around in the organisation.

Both the positions of CIO and CFO are equally impor“I am lucky that I have for a CFO who understands techtant for an organisation. nology thoroughly and reviews every ongoing project. He The debate of whether CIOs position will be relevant also doesn't always look for return on investment (RoI) in the future will solely depend of how CIOs strengthen when sanctioning a project as he himself is working as a their with skills apart from technology and become leadbusiness head of a particular department. I believe that a ers in their organisations.

CFO today has to be closely associated with technology if the organisation's future is assessed,” added Rao.

“A CIO should ensure that that his firm should be ahead of the technology curve and be cost-effective”

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July 2012

ci o o r cf o ? | C O V ER STOR y

REASON #3

Things CIOs

A RIVETING SESSION ON NEGOTIATION WITH PROF. KAMDAR CAN HELP YOU TO...

Should Know About CFOs

It is very important for a CIO to step into the CFO's shoes and understand his business priorities in order to achieve the goals that are set for an organisation By Atanu Kumar Das

I

t is imperative for any organisation to have a CFO and a CIO who can complement each other and generate business value that leads to continuous growth in an organisation.

Most importantly, a CIO today needs to be aware of the CFO's priorities so that he can align IT to the business objectives of the organisation. As the role of a CIO becomes more dynamic, his role or involvement in the overall business decisions of the organisation also becomes increasingly challenging. Some of the key things a CFO looks for in a CIO includes his knowledge about not only technology but also the commercial acumen he possesses. A CIO should be a person who can clearly grasp the organisation's overall strategies and align the IT objectives and goals.

According to Anup Vikal, CFO and Head IT & Strategy -- Interglobe Enterprises, “A CIO should always know the future of technology and its impact on the business that he/she handles. Today, a CIO should have the commercial acumen and should be able to perceive what is beneficial for the business.

For me it is important that a CIO should understand the customers and the processes of the company and all these qualities are every essential to become a successful CIO.” To add to this Sathya Kalyanasundaram, Director Finance & Operations, Texas Instruments, said, “An effective CIO is one who can clearly grasp the

By Atanu Kumar Das

organisation’s overall strategy and align the IT objectives and goals to the organisation’s strategy. The CIO should also have the ability to visualise and implement effective IT solutions that drive operating efficiency in all the business units and business support entities.”

“The CIO can do so by building sustainable and successful working relationships with all the leaders to understand their needs and articulate solutions accordingly. In addition, the CIO should be able to nurture and grow a world class IT organisation that is capable of delivering cutting-edge business solutions to the company.”

For Giri Giridhar, President Finance, Wockhardt Global, a CIO's role is that of an enabler to the business. “Such enablement is at two levels - one at a process level where technology helps to increase efficiency and productivity and second at a business level - where work on areas such as for example - data analytics, can help to identify niches for maximising revenue and profitability.”

Knowing what the CFO is thinking CIOs feels that it is very important to know what a CFO is thinking and how he is planning the growth of the organisation. While it is important for a CIO to know about a CFO, it is equally important for a CFO to understand technology and in turn encourage the CIO to come up with innovative tech-

July 2012

39

KNOW YOUR

“BATNA”

C O V ER STORY | ci o o r cf o ?

nological solutions that can transform the business within the organisation. According to Rajeev Batra, CIO, Sistema Shyam Teleservices, “The CFO is aligned to the financial aspect of the company and CIO should ensure that he should understand what are the emerging business opportunities in the market. Most of the IT investment strategies are aligned to the CFOs thought process, so it is very important to know what the CFO is thinking and planning for the company.”

Batra adds. “There are couple of very important things which the CIO should ensure when communicating with the CFO. The CIO should be aware of the projects that the CFO has in mind and that can only happen if there is a constant communication between these two heads.

The CFO in turn should always ensure that the budgetary requirement is defined properly so that the CIO can plan accordingly. At MTS, I have constructive arguments with my CFO and at the end of the day we take the decision keeping the company's benefit in mind.”

G.G. Rao, CIO, HCL Infosystems feels that it is important for a CIO to communicate in simple language to the CFO and use less technical terms. The CIO should define the goals of the project carefully and should be able to sell the concept to the CFO. He also makes sure that in scenarios where bigger budget is required, he approaches the business heads of different verticals and sells the concept first to them and then approaches the CFO along with the business heads.

“When ever I communicate with my CFO, I ensure that I use very simple English without any jargons. A CIO should be clear about how a project will benefit the company and should be able to articulate the same to the CFO. Whenever I need bigger budgets for IT, I approach the business managers and come up propositions where I can clearly showcase how it will impact the business within our organisation. By doing this I am able to sell the concept to the CFO as other departments within the organisation vouch for the change that I plan to implement,” said Rao.

Working together for a common goal There have been many instances where the CIO doesn't get the desired budget he needs to make technological

“A CIO's role is that of an enabler to the business at both the process level as well as business level” –Giri Giridhar, CFO, Wockhardt

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changes in the organisation. This can either be because the CFO is not convinced about the project and he doesn't have enough IT budget in that organisation.

We are all aware that if IT is implemented in a innovative manner it can cut down cost dramatically in an organisation.

There is hardly any doubt that if the CIO and CFO work hand in hand to ensure productivity of the organisation, sky is the limit for them. Let us see some of the instances where the CFO and CIO have worked together to align technology with the business dynamics of the organisation.

Kalyanasundaram says that there are many collaborations with the CIO that he is personally proud of in Texas Instruments. “Over the last two to three years, the IT team has worked very closely with the larger finance and operations (F&O) team to rationalise and improve the efficiency of the external collaboration that Texas Instruments shares with its consulting partners. The external development / design centers (EDC) model has evolved into a structured process where the intended consulting partner works with the businesses and the entire F&O organisation to chart a roadmap and determine investments in the collaboration model from both Texas Instruments and the EDC partner,” said Kalyanasundaram.

Secondly, the IT organisation at Texas Instruments has done an excellent job of keeping their operating cost flat to lower over a three-year period. This has been achieved by a three-step process: a) A detailed analysis of the operating costs and the key contributors to the same. b) Identification of opportunities to leverage savings in procurement across multiple layers such as storage, data centers, compute capacity, equipment, etc.

REASON #4

“A CFO can be successful in the long run only if he/she can understand technology” –S. Kalyanasundaram, CFO, Texas Instruments

c) Driving a cost and forecasting discipline in determining what the operating costs (over the various layers mentioned above) will be at over a period of one to three years, and work proactively with the businesses to help determine their needs to realise the best value for the proposed investments.

According to Giridhar, “Currently, in Wockhardt, I and the CIO are working on developing an integrated business planning process, which should help to relook at the way we budget - by bringing in significant granularity and driver based development. We are expecting this work to help in far more sharper budgeting in the organisation.”

“Recently, at MTS we incorporated the enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution for the organisation and the CFO was fully involved in this exercise.

We both have worked closely on this project and we have also deployed SAP for which we won the SAP ACE award and it was done in record time. The implementation has helped the company's productivity immensely and this was a result of collaboration between the CFO and the CIO,” added Batra.

How important it is for a CFO to know about technology?

For a CIO, one of the best things that can happen is to work in an organisation where the CFO knows and has a keen interest in understanding technology.

According to Kalyanasundaram, “A CFO can be successful only if he/she can understand technology. In my conversations with my IT Director, I rely heavily on the expertise that the IT Director brings to the table. At Texas Instruments, we view IT as an enabler and driver of growth similar to the role of the larger F&O and that is the reason we invest heavily on IT deployments and I am involved with each and every decision that is taken.”

Agrees Vikal, “It is very important for a CFO to understand technology. I have been doing the role

BE THE DRUMMER YOU ASPIRED TO BE IN… of a CIO and CFO at Interglobe for the last two and a half years, and I am able to do this because of my knowledge on finance and technology. I believe that a CIO always wants a CFO to be open to new technological changes and that can only happen if the CFO is willing to learn and administer innovative change within the organisation.”

In the last couple of years the role of the CIO as well as the CFO has changed dramatically. Whereas the CIO is perceived to be a person who will look beyond technology, a CFO is now looked upon a person who is a business partner in the organisation.

He has to not only look at finance, but also make strategic technological changes that would help the organisation step ahead of the competition.

According to Vikal, “Today a CFO is the business partner apart from managing the finance of the company and in three to four years down the line, I believe a CFO's role is going to be of a value creator in the organisation. If we talk about the CIO, he is perceived to be an individual who is responsible for saving costs of the organisation.”

“Today, a CIO is looked at as a transformation guy and five years down the line a CIO should be an individual who will have an edge on customer service delivery.”

One thing that comes out clearly is that without proper communication and understanding, a CIO will not be able to achieve the desired result. A CIO's relationship with the CFO is key to the company's success and this in turn will ensure how effectively they administer technological deployments in the organisation.

July 2012

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RHYTHM WITH

DRUMBERRIES!

C O V ER STORY | ci o o r cf o ?

CFOs Role in

IT Investment Increasing

T

he CFO is increasingly becoming a top technology investment decision maker — if not the leading decision maker — in many organisations,according to a joint study by Gartner, Inc, and Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF), the research affiliate of Financial Executives International (FEI). The study shows that the CFO's role in technology decision making has increased in the last year with 44 percent of CFOs stating that their influence over IT investment has increased since 2010, while 47 percent say that it has remained the same and just nine percent of those surveyed believe that their influence has decreased.

The survey of CFOs, which is in its fourth year, is designed to gather perceptions from financial executives

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July 2012

about the economic environment, the CFO's role in technology and their IT investment priorities. The survey was conducted between October 2011 and February 2012, and it included 255 CFO respondents.

“The CFO and CIO are well-positioned to work together at generating business value from enterprise IT investments. However, this performance is often not achieved because of poor perceptions of IT, a parochial CFO or CIO perspective, or simply a failure to invest in the CFO-CIO relationship,” said John Van Decker, research vice president at Gartner. “This year’s results show that, in most organisations, the CFO and CIO work together to finance IT and provide information that supports enterprise processes. But there is also an opportunity for them to form a powerful alliance that generates more value for the enterprise.”

Illustration by manav sachdev

CFO and CIO work together to finance IT and provide information that supports enterprise processes

ci o o r cf o ? | C O V ER STOR y

The survey results showed that there are many ways that CFOs are involved in making IT investment decisions. Forty one percent said that they were the actual leader of a group responsible for IT investment, whereas another 41 percent were part of a group responsible for IT decision making, 16 percent provide advice and one percent said they were the sole decision maker. Since the large majority was involved in group decision making about IT, engaging the CFO is clearly a critical issue.

“CFOs need to explain to CIOs the IT capabilities needed by the finance function,” said Bill Sinnett, director of research at FERF. “There is an opportunity for them to form a powerful alliance that generates more value for the enterprise. The CFO and CIO are well-positioned to work together at generating superior performance from enterprise IT investments.

However, this performance is often not achieved because of poor perceptions of IT, a parochial CFO or CIO perspective, or simply a failure to invest in the CFO-CIO relationship.”

One reason CFOs are important stakeholders is that they control IT funding. Although CFOs don't strictly decide who receives the money, they are powerful influencers and strict enforcers of policies and decisions. CFOs often have greater access to, and involvement with, senior business governance groups, and usually have strong influence and credibility with the CEO and board.

IT spending is currently very healthy from the responses in the study, and if there is a business improvement that can be made from increasing investments in IT spending, many CFOs will con-

sider approval. From an IT operating expense perspective, 39 percent of CFOs see a similar expense budget for IT in 2012 from 2010, while 44 percent forecast an increase. For IT capital appropriations, 32 percent foresee status quo on spending, while 48 percent are expecting an increase. When asked how companies view spending in 2013 versus 2012, 51 percent see the same IT operating expense levels, and 41 percent forecast similar IT capital spending while 44 percent see an increase in capital spending in 2013 over 2012.

When it comes to areas that CFOs would like to invest in, the study showed that business intelligence, analytics and performance management are at the top of the list. CFOs clearly recognise the need for improved technology support for these key business processes and identified the top business process area that needs technology investment as the ability to facilitate analysis and decision making (57 percent) closely followed by collaboration and knowledge management (52 percent).

In addition, the analysts identified four major technology trends that are on the CFO's radar and will drive technology planning, investment and usage in 2012 and beyond. These are the nexus of social, mobile, cloud and information. Enterprise organisations are being challenged to adapt as these technologies, and the data that result from their adoption and deployment internally to the enterprise and externally with customers, expands exponentially. With the exception of social media, which scored low in terms of technology initiatives, mobile, cloud (including software as a service [SaaS]) and information are priorities with CFOs. “While CFOs certainly appreciate reduced cost through the more efficient delivery of IT, organisations need to understand that CFOs want technology investment that they can see business value from in the form of improved business processes. Therefore, their priorities are largely focused on analytics and business applications,” said Sinnett.

“CFOs are beginning to look at technologies that can span BI and applications and deliver applications through mobile access and via SaaS,” said Van Decker. “While these nexus capabilities are a concern more in 2013, IT organisations must communicate how more effective business platforms can be leveraged to deliver better architectures for business applications that are top of mind to the CFO.”

4.5%

Will be the increase in spending in enterprise application software in the year 2012

July 2012

43

REASON #5

STRATEGY AND TECHNOLOGY COME TOGETHER TO ENHANCE YOUR LEARNING CURVE...

MEET

PROF. JEFF SAMPLER

Best of

Breed Features Inside

Remembering Nikola Tesla Pg 46

Why IT Stakeholder Management Fails Pg 48

China to be on Par With US as Tech Leader Silicon Valley’s position as technology innovation centre may face challenge

A

sked to predict future disruptive technologies and the next epicenter for innovation, technology executives worldwide believe that China and the US will be at the forefront, with cloud enabling both the next indispensable consumer technology and business transformation for enterprises. Mobile technologies will continue to build on cloud, providing the tech breakthrough that will transform businesses, according to the Global Technology Innovation survey by KPMG LLP (US), the audit, tax and advisory firm.

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July 2012

Illustration by shigil n

Securing Mobile Devices Pg 49 More

survey | Best of breed

Almost 30 percent of the 668 business executives in the Americas, Asia Pacific (ASPAC), Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) said China and the US show the most promise for disruptive breakthroughs with global impacts, while 13 percent cited India. Interestingly, only 39 percent of US respondents selected the US as most promising, while 71 percent in China selected China.

In the March - May 2012 survey of 668 business executives globally whose organizations were focused on the technology space, thirty-four percent of the respondents were in the Americas, 42 percent in Asia Pacific, and 23 percent in Europe, Middle East and Africa. In regards to countries, 25 percent were from the United States, 14 percent from China and nine percent from Israel.

Interestingly in the last decade, India has made substantial and rapid strides on the path of innovation-based development and already managed to adapt and implement a number of measures to support this development. The government has invested significantly in technology. Communication technology like 3G has already made a mark in India and with the introduction of the 4G; technology will no longer play a support role in most businesses, it will become key enabler and business models will be driven by the technology. Cloud has also been leveraged and several e-Governance initiatives have been launched. While the Government is one of the primary pillars to drive innovation and cutting-edge technology, involvement of the private sector is also equally important for swift and effective enablement.

To identify disruptive technologies and the scope of change two to four years out, KPMG surveyed executives from techno-logy industry startups, midsized to large enterprises, venture capital firms and angel investors.

“The pace of technology innovations today is happening at unparalleled speed and China’s projected rapid rise to prominence as a technology leader would be another example of this,” said Gary Matuszak, partner, global chair and US leader for KPMG’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications practice. “China’s anticipated parity with the US tech sector shows the significant challenge facing the US to retain its position as an innovation leader. Other countries will continue taking steps to boost technology innovation and to attract tech entrepreneurs.”

“These survey findings also demonstrate that China’s innovation investment has fostered an environment for the development of disruptive technologies that is growing by leaps and bounds. The Chinese Government is encouraging significant investment in three key areas – (1) shared services and outsourc-

ing, (2) payments and cloud computing. The 12th Five-Year Plan is also driving innovation in these critical areas, in order to create a nationwide virtual environment,” said Egidio Zarrella, a partner with KPMG in China.

Asked what technology will have a major impact by 2015, 30 percent of the survey respondents globally said cloud software as a service (SaaS) will enable the next indispensable consumer technology. In regard to driving business transformation, 22 percent said cloud infrastructure as a service, followed closely by SaaS, will have the greatest impact. In the US, SaaS was the top selection in consumer and enterprise technologies.

“It is clear that technology leaders in countries where technology innovation is thriving believe that the Cloud represents a technology tidal shift. They are placing a huge bet on Cloud, as it has multiple capabilities and benefits for providers and users

Interestingly in the last decade, India has made substantial and rapid strides on the path of innovation-based development such as generating revenue, improving operational efficiency, reducing costs and time to market, and enabling other disruptive technologies such as mobile and social applications,” said Matuszak. “The significant Cloud investment that is under way is likely to spur technologies that drive breakthroughs in business transformation.”

Mobile technologies also are seen as a significant beneficiary of Cloud, as almost 30 percent of global respondents expect that the next tech breakthrough in four years resulting in the greatest business transformation will come from smartphones, tablets and other mobile technologies.

Potential challenge to Silicon Valley’s position as tech innovation center Forty-four percent of global respondents said it was likely that what many consider the technology innovation center of the world would shift from Silicon Valley to another country in the next four years, while 23 percent of those surveyed said it is unlikely and 34 percent were undecided. Not surprisingly,

July 2012

45

REASON #6

TRAIN THE TRAINER SESSIONS TO GROOM THE TEACHER IN YOU…

BECOME THE “GUEST FACULTY”

B EST OF B REED | p e r s o n a l i t y

only 28 percent of the US respondents think the shift is likely, while more than half in ASPAC, and more than 40 percent in EMEA see the move as likely. Of those globally who believe the center will shift, most (44 percent) said it would move to China.

Apple viewed as top innovator In considering innovation drivers, visionaries and leaders, more business executives globally identified Apple, now led by Tim Cook, and former CEO Steve Jobs as tops in these three areas. As the top company driving disruptive innovation, Apple was followed by Google and Microsoft, according to the survey. Respondents also viewed Jobs as the top global innovation visionary, followed by Bill Gates. In China specifically, executives said Gates was the top visionary and Jack Ma the innovation leader. In India, Infosys was identified as the innovation leader, and in Israel, it was IBM. At the same time, about one-third globally pointed to Google, Facebook and Amazon as emerging leaders in mobile commerce.

Innovation development, challenges, barriers

this was true, while in the US, less than half thought so.

In regard to adopting future technoloThe survey uncovered differences in who gies, cost/pricing models was pointed to by or what function is responsible for driving survey respondents as the top innovation in companies. About challenge to adopting the next three in 10 globally said the CEO indispensable consumer techhas the responsibility to drive nologies, while security/privacy innovation in their company, governance is the number one while 20 percent, including half challenge to adopting future the respondents in China, said the Chief Innovation Officer. Fifwill be the growth of business transforming technologies and also is the top barrier teen percent each cited the Chief cloud computing in Information Officer and research 2012 and will reach a to commercialising disruptive and development. Some 38 figure of $109 billion innovation.

“The fact that security/privacy percent said that innovation is governance is a challenge is most often spotted and nurtured not news, yet it’s an ongoing in the research and development reminder of their importance department, followed by IT and as the business models continue to evolve,” strategic planning, while the majority of those said Matuszak. “The companies that develsurveyed use revenue growth as the metric to op a way to balance data-driven innovation measure innovation value. with the appropriate transparency, privacy Asked whether their education system and information security frameworks to serves as an incubator for innovator thinksatisfy customers and regulators will have a ers, slightly more than half believed this was competitive edge.” true. In China, close to 75 percent thought

19%

Remembering Nikola Tesla

Tesla’s life and experience hold lessons for all aspiring technologists

By Marc J. Schiller

N

ikola Tesla was born 156 years ago on July 10.

It’s not a stretch to say that Tesla was (and maybe still is) the greatest electrical engineer the world has ever known. Tesla’s contributions to the world of technology are vast, including the Tesla coil, modern radio, the induction motor, and most famously the alternating current (AC) electrical supply system that powers the world.

Tesla spent much of his life suffering for his brilliance and fighting for recognition.

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It therefore seems especially fitting to mark Tesla's birthday by taking a few minutes to reflect on his life and accomplishments. His life and experience hold lessons for all aspiring technologists who, just like Tesla, are eager to bring the benefits of technology to a large community of people.

Lesson No. 1: Believe Throughout his career, Tesla challenged established scientific wisdom and, because of his creative and independent thinking, was able to create technologies that others

thought impossible. Only Tesla had the grit to challenge the most famous inventor of his time, Thomas Edison, arguing for the use of his AC electricity delivery system in place of the DC system championed by Edison. Only Tesla had the vision and inventiveness to harness Niagara Falls into powering a city. Even when Tesla’s financiers doubted him, he stuck to his guns and ended up proving everyone wrong.Remember Tesla when you’re being told that it can’t be done when you know it can.

p e r s o n a l i t y | B EST OF B REED

REASON #7

When Tesla first went to work for Edison as a new immigrant to the United States, Edison promised him $50,000 if he could improve the running of his direct current electrical plants. When Tesla succeeded, Edison laughed and said that Tesla didn’t understand American humor, offering him a meager salary bump instead. Tesla promptly quit. His inventions for his own company and for other industry giants such as Westinghouse cost Edison a fortune in time and money. In fact, shortly before his death, Edison admitted that his greatest mistake in life was not adopting Tesla’s AC system earlier.

Remember Tesla when you are truly not being valued for your contributions, or when promises by stakeholders or clients are not being kept. Quitting a job can be very scary, but there are times when you’ve got to do it.

Lesson No. 3: Find the Critical Path

Tesla never married, believing a personal life would distract him from being an inventor

Edison famously declared that genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration; Tesla disagreed. Upon Edison’s death, Tesla was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “His method was inefficient in the extreme...just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 percent of the labor.” Tesla believed that a method of invention that involved careful planning and application of knowledge to problems before implementation was superior to Edison’s trialand-error approach. Remember Tesla when you are being urged to development before the critical path is clear to you. Remember Tesla when trial and error is being held up as the great savior of slow technology implementation.

else did and he wanted the budget-stricken project to succeed. Disputes with J.P. Morgan brought an end to his near open-ended financing from the banker who, like all stakeholders, needed proper management and attention. He never married or had children, believing a personal life would distract him from his calling as an inventor. He had a history of losing patents for his inventions, including losing the patent for the invention of radio to Marconi.

And Edison and Marconi often get more credit for Tesla’s discoveries.

Lesson No. 4: Don’t Be Nikola Tesla

The takeaway?

As much as I admire Tesla’s brilliance, courage, and We’d all like to be as technically brilliant as Tesla, accomplishments, it seems to me that his greatest but that brilliance is no substitute for the business lesson for the 21st century IT professional is the and social acumen you need to achieve the peace of quiet warning his life offers when viewed as a whole mind, influence, and financial security that many and not just in the confines of his work. of us would consider the most important result of To be sure, Nikola Tesla is one of the most important all this hard work. Without the requisite resources inventors in history, his funeral was and influence, Tesla was unable to bring attended by heads of state -- he even has many of his greatest inventions to the an automotive company and a planet world. What a shame to be stymied not named after him. But he also died in by scientific impossibility but by busipoverty, alone and living in a hotel, the ness and social blundering. So, as we victim of his poor career decisions. take note of the incredible genius and will be the growth of Tesla famously tore up his contract life of Nikola Tesla, take a moment to hardware in 2012 and with Westinghouse for the generous think about how you can be more like will reach a figure of him—but not too much. royalties he was owed on the Niagara $420 billion Falls Power Project mentioned above, all —This opinion was first published in CIO because he was gratified that WestingInsight. For more such stories please visit house believed in his idea when no one www.cioinsight.com.

3.4%

July 2012

47

A ROLE MODEL & EXEMPLARY LEADER, DR. SANTPURT MISRA WILL HELP YOU TO…

imaging by shigil N

Lesson No. 2: Quit

“UNDERSTAND YOURSELF”

B EST OF B REED | M a N A g E m e n t

Why IT Stakeholder Management Fails

Three conflicting mindsets are quietly sabotaging your stakeholder management activities

F

act: You know how critical stakeholder management is to your personal career success and to the overall success of your IT group.utes to reflect on his life and accomplishments.

His life and experience hold lessons for all aspiring technologists who, just like Tesla, are eager to bring the benefits of technology to a large community of people.

Fact: You spend a great deal of time coaching and reminding your people about the importance of stakeholder management.

Fact: You go home at night frustrated by the absence of critical stakeholder management activities that have cost you your reputation, your time and your political capital with your peers.

Where’s the problem?

Ask around and the answers you typically hear fall into one (or more) of the following categories: • Blame the staff: Stakeholder management is mostly about communications and you know how it is with IT professionals, they’re just not good communicators.

• Blame the boss: IT leaders may be saying what to do but they aren’t really teaching their people how to do it. Besides, most of them are pretty bad communicators themselves, so how are they supposed to teach their people?

• Blame the stakeholders: They think they know it all. They hate IT and never listen anyway. So it doesn’t really matter what IT does.

IT Stakeholder Management Fail: Conflicting Mindsets It’s convenient to blame one or more of

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July 2012

Illustration by shigil n

By Marc J. Schiller

the parties to the problem, but this doesn’t yield much progress. So, for today I’d like to suggest a different approach. Instead of blaming people, I’ll point out three fundamentally conflicting mindsets (between IT and stakeholders) that are quietly sabotaging your stakeholder management activities.

And, since each mindset is totally justified in its own right, it’s no surprise that stakeholder management is in such a sorry state.

Of course once these mindset differentials are recognised, they can be addressed and overcome. More on that in a later column.

Mindset Conflict No. 1: IT wants to be “understood” (and appreciated).

Stakeholders couldn’t care less.

In my line of work, I get to help IT execs at all levels prepare stakeholder management presentations. Without fail, the No. 1 most common approach used by IT managers (even experienced ones) is to explain to stakeholders what’s going on in hopes of educating them about the challenges of the project so that they understand.

To achieve this understanding, they provide great amounts of detailed information so their stakeholders can see for themselves what’s going on. For the vast majority of IT professionals, the key goal of stakeholder management activities is to get stakeholders to see the complexity and appreciate the difficulty

M o b i l i t y | B EST OF B REED

of what they are doing. In other words, stakeholders couldn’t care less about to give stakeholders knowledge so they “the process,” all they want to hear you can appreciate how hard IT is worksay is that you will take responsibility for ing. As a fundamental approach, this is the results. But how can you? So many flawed. That’s because your stakeholdof the issues are out of your hands. ers are not in a learning mindset. They will be the growth of have little interest in learning about Mindset Conflict #3: When broadband market in your problems. Their mindset is simply IT thinks a project is nearly india in the year 2012 this: Why are you here? Is there a probfinished, stakeholders are just lem? Do I really need to care? When’s getting started it going to be fixed? Will it cost me time You made it through the project. Along or money? Your stakeholders don’t have the way you somehow managed to keep the time or ability to comprehend the complexity of stakeholders informed, aware, and engaged. The what you want to tell them, let alone appreciate it. All system goes live. No crashes. You breathe a sigh of they hear is that you are trying to make them underrelief. And then, as if out of nowhere, the complaints stand something by burying them in details. come streaming in.

• “This isn’t what we expected at all.”

• “How are we supposed to work in this system, it’s Mindset Conflict No. 2: IT thinks process. nothing like what we are used to.”

Stakeholders think results.

• “We have a major problem here.”

Let’s say you’re the IT executive charged with “What???” you say. “But you and your team signed managing a complex multi-vendor, multi-platform off on the designs months ago. Your people all went e-commerce project that is supposed to enable major to training. Your people all signed off on the user revenue growth by driving an increase in direct-toacceptance test.” (I’ll spare you the rest of the conconsumer sales of your company’s products. You versation. You’ve had it 100x already.) spare your stakeholders the technical details yet all you hear is “I don’t care about what you have to do, —This article is printed with prior permission from www. just make it happen.” infosecisland.com. For more features and opinions on All you can do as the IT guy (or gal) is take responinformation security and risk management, please refer to sibility for managing the process correctly. Your Infosec Island.

REASON #8

18%

Securing Mobile Devices

M

Mobile devices have to be secured against a variety of threats

obile devices typically need to support multiple security objectives: confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

To achieve these objectives, mobile devices should be secured against a variety of threats.

General security recommendations for any IT technology are provided in NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-53, Recommended Security Controls for Federal Information Systems and Organisations

[SP800-53]. Specific recommendations for securing mobile devices are presented in this publication and are intended to supplement the controls specified in SP 800-53.

This publication provides recommendations for securing particular types of mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets. Laptops are specifically excluded from the scope of this publication because the security controls available for laptops today are quite different than those available for smart phones,

July 2012

49

LEARN WITH HARVEY KOEPPEL ABOUT…

THE ROLE OF

THE CIO

B EST OF B REED | M o b i l i t y

Threat modeling helps organisations to identify security requirements and to design the mobile device solution to incorporate the controls needed to meet the security requirements.

Illustration by shigil n

Organisations deploying mobile devices should consider the merits of each provided security service

Mobile device management technologies are solutions for controlling the use of both firm-issued and personally-owned mobile devices by enterprise users tablets, and other mobile device types.

Mobile devices with minimal computing capability, such as basic cell phones, are also out of scope because of the limited security options available and the limited threats they face. Centralised mobile device management technologies are a growing solution for controlling the use of both organisation-issued and personally-owned mobile devices by enterprise users.

In addition to managing the configuration and security of mobile devices, these technologies offer other features, such as providing secure access to enterprise computing resources. There are two basic approaches to centralized mobile device management: use a messaging server’s management capabilities (sometimes from the same vendor that makes a particular brand of phone), or use a product from a third party, which is designed to manage one or more brands of phone.

It is outside the scope of this article to provide any recommendations for one approach over the other; both approaches can provide the necessary centralised management functionality.

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Organisations should implement the following guidelines to improve the security of their mobile devices:

Organisations should develop system threat models for mobile devices and the resources that are accessed through the mobile devices Mobile devices often need additional protection because their nature generally places them at higher exposure to threats than other client devices (for example, desktop and laptop devices only used within the organisation’s facilities and on the organisation’s networks). Before designing and deploying mobile device solutions, organisations should develop system threat models.

Threat modeling involves identifying resources of interest and the feasible threats, vulnerabilities, and security controls related to these resources, then quantifying the likelihood of successful attacks and their impacts, and finally analysing this information to determine where security controls need to be improved or added.

Most organisations do not need all of the possible security services provided by mobile device solutions. Categories of services to be considered include the following: • General policy: enforcing enterprise security policies on the mobile device, such as restricting access to hardware and software, managing wireless network interfaces, and automatically monitoring and reporting when policy violations occur.

• Data communication and storage: supporting strongly encrypted data communications and data storage, and remotely wiping the device if it is lost or stolen and is at risk of having its data recovered by an untrusted party.

• User and device authentication: requiring authentication before accessing organisation resources, resetting forgotten passwords remotely, automatically locking idle devices, and remotely locking devices suspected of being left unlocked in an unsecured location.

• Applications: restricting which applications may be installed (through whitelisting or blacklisting), installing and updating applications, restricting the use of synchronisation services, digitally signing applications, distributing the organization’s applications from a dedicated mobile application store, and limiting or preventing access to the enterprise based on the mobile device’s operating system version or mobile device management software client version.

Organisations should have a mobile device security policy.

A mobile device security policy should define which types of mobile devices are permitted to access the organization’s resources, the degree of access that various classes of mobile devices may have—for example, organization-issued devices versus personallyowned (bring your own device) devices—and how provisioning should be handled.

M o b i l i t y | B EST OF B REED

It should also cover how the organization's centralised mobile device management servers are administered and how policies in those servers are updated. The mobile device security policy should be documented in the system security plan.

Organisations should implement and test a prototype of their mobile device solution before putting the solution into production

80%

of the smartphone market globally is dominated by android and apple devices

Aspects of the solution that should be evaluated for each type of mobile device include connectivity, protection, authentication, application functionality, solution management, logging, and performance.

Another important consideration is the security of the mobile device implementation itself; at a minimum, all components should be updated with the latest patches and configured following sound security practices. Also, use of jailbroken or rooted phones should be automatically detected when

feasible. Finally, implementers should ensure that the mobile device solution does not unexpectedly “fall back” to default settings for interoperability or other reasons.

Organisations should fully secure each organisationissued mobile device before allowing a user to access it

This ensures a basic level of trust in the device before it is exposed to threats.

For any already-deployed organisation-issued mobile device with an unknown security profile (e.g., unmanaged device), organisations should recover them, restore them to a known good state, and fully secure them before returning them to their users.

REASON #9

LET YOUR SPOUSE UNWIND, SHOP, RELAX AND ENJOY…

—This article is printed with prior permission from www. infosecisland.com. For more features and opinions on information security and risk management, please refer to Infosec Island.

WHILE YOU

Navigating the Minefield

Understanding mobility can transform a minefield into a cake walk

LEARN

By Patrick Oliver Graf

image by photos.com

Illustration by shigil n

E

very IT purchase decision compels an organisation to confront the diverse, often conflicting, needs of the various departments and functions within it.

When it comes to mobile and remote technologies, this becomes even more complex as seemingly conflicting ideas — often anchored in control versus access — demand consideration.

With over 70 percent of companies planning on hiring remote independent contractors in 2012, making purchasing decisions around this have become an inevi-

July 2012

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B EST OF B REED | M o b i l i t y

table reality of today’s workplace.

At the heart of such matters, is the seemingly inescapable tug-of-war between financial and technical considerations, complicated by end-user demands and departmental politics. But does it have to be this way? Let’s play the old game of putting ourselves in the other’s shoes to understand, fully, what the trade-offs are for both sides and why there’s no right or wrong way to weigh these.

First, let’s start with the scenario of puredy this, finance might consider imposing chasing remote access technology for your limitations on the number of employees company, looking first from the perspective who can participate in remote access or of IT administrators, who typically want an mobile working. Then there’s the inevitable easy-to-deploy, manageable solution — even end-user consideration. When traveling or if that means spending slightly more. accessing the server from home, the last Why? With a remote access solution thing employees want to worry about is a that requires a labor-intensive rollout, complex sign-in and security process with each device on the company network will their VPN. However complexity is often a probably need to be installed with proper primary safeguard for network security. software. This means it’s not just the cost of This dichotomy leads to two unfortunate the solution that needs to be considered, but results. The first is an increase in help-desk how much time and money will be spent on calls, frustrated employees inquiring how to documentation. Keep in mind that in BYOD use the service designed to make their lives cultures, the rollout means that IT needs easier. The second and more dangerous to first work with HR to develop a protocol from a security perspective is the tendency for which personal devices can and cannot for employees to turn to workarounds. be used for work. Then, IT needs to set up Instead of taking the time to learn the new time with each individual employee within system, they might turn to free consumerevery department, usually coordinated with based remote desktop or file-sharing soludepartment executives and HR, to both tions, exposing the network to a plethora of install the software and train employees on potential vulnerabilities. how to use it. And in many cases throughSecurity executives are going to attempt out this process, the IT administrators know to implement restrictions right through the they are arming colleagues with a doublesoftware itself. Internally, other IT colleagues edged sword, simultaneously giving will also look for workarounds in order to them the power to work remotely and to minimise the amount of time they need to compro-mise the security of the company spend on helpdesk calls and configuration. through misuse.

And, again in a vicious circle, there are the Today nearly every proactive solution end-users themselves- employees from all brought forth by IT gives other employees other departments who will raise concerns new ways to screw up. In fact, a recent Gartthat remote dial-ins are too slow ner report predicts that in a few or complex, or that the solution years IT departments will not is not flexible enough to meet be able to keep up with the diftheir particular job needs. ferent ways in which employees Finally, there is the always can compromise data security. looming issue of intra-office From finance’s perspective, google android phones politics. Like other IT tools, costs go far beyond the upfront were sold in q1 of 2012 most remote access solutions price of the solution. The actual with market share of come with a certain number cost of a device is not just the 56 percent of centrally administered sticker price, but also employee functions that allow IT to set training and documentation protocols and permissions for costs, to name a few. To rem-

When traveling or accessing the server from home, the last thing employees want to worry about is a complex sign-in and security process with their VPN

81 mn

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individual employees or departments.

For example, sales teams are privy to access the server remotely under some circumstances, whereas marketing is privy under a different set of circumstances.

The difficult part about this is, it quickly becomes known throughout the office that IT is acting as a gatekeeper, barring some employees from certain information while allowing others greater access.

A sales representative might ask to be granted full remote access even before the solution is fully up and running in order to close a deal. Customer service might question why other departments are allowed to work remotely before they are.

In all organisations, there is a constant struggle between satisfying the technological needs of workers, while also maintaining an adherence to compliance and security.

Remote access represents the next major iteration of this battle.

When selecting new solutions to help the office run more efficiently, the decision and deployment process should take into consideration these particular pain points.

In today’s office, IT is not a medical kit or a gatekeeper. Instead, IT is a facilitator of the best working experience possible, which now includes whether or not the employee, or entire department, even needs an office at all. The end-user isn’t just a passive recipient of technology and financial considerations exceed initial cost points.

But this complexity also means there’s far more overlap between the pain points – and how to solve them – across an organisation.

Sometimes it’s this understanding that can transform a minefield into a cake walk.

—This article is printed with prior permission from www.infosecisland.com. For more features and opinions on information security and risk management, please refer to Infosec Island.

M a N A g E m e n t | B EST OF B REED

REASON #10

ENDLESS LAUGHTER BROUGHT TO YOU BY…

Five ‘No Regret’ Moves

Ways to handle customer engagement in a better way

By Tom French, Laura LaBerge, and Paul Magill

N

ment data they may express skepticism about maro organisation can avoid coming to keting’s place in the new environment. grips with the rapidly evolving behavior Although these challenges are difficult to overof consumers and business customers. come, companies need not be frozen in place while They check prices at a keystroke and are they wait for a complete picture of the answer to increasingly selective about which brands emerge. The five “no regrets” moves described below share their lives. They form impressions from every help senior executives to move beyond their funcencounter and post withering online reviews. tion-by-function view of customer engagement and These changes present significant organisational to improve the coordination of activities across the challenges, as well as opportunities. The biggest is broad range of touch points they must care about. that all of us have become marketers: the critical By widening the lens companies use to view custommoments of interaction, or touch points, between er-engagement needs, enabling more rapid responscompanies and customers are increasingly spread es, and building internal lines across different parts of the organisaof communication, these steps create tion, so customer engagement is now nimbler organisations with more pervaeveryone’s responsibility. sive marketing.

In many companies, the marketing function is best placed to orchestrate customer engagement for the entire 1. Hold a customerApple iphones were organisation. To do so, the function engagement summit sold in q1 of 2012 with Almost all companies have annual or must be pervasive—able to influence market share of 23 touch points it doesn’t directly control. semi-annual business-planning processpercent Over the past year, we’ve seen a wide es that bring senior managers together range of companies try to address cusfrom units and functions to discuss tomer engagement in more integrated strategies and objectives. Yet few underways, but many executives have told take a similar process to discuss how to us they simply don’t know where to begin. The engage with the lifeblood of all companies: customspectrum of organisational choices is broader than ers. We recommend holding such a summit, with ever, and companies are struggling to determine the a participant list that starts right at the top and cuts appropriate role of marketing for their business. across units and functions. At one US health insurer, What’s more, senior executives often view any for example, the CEO’s direct involvement sparked a internal effort by the marketing function as a “land company-wide dialogue about how dramatically cusgrab.” Given the absence of solid return-on-investtomer behaviour had changed and the breadth and

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COMEDY STORE

speed of the tactics required to keep up.

The focus of such a summit is customer engagement, which should not be confused with the customer experience; engagement goes beyond managing the experience at touch points to include all the ways companies motivate customers to invest in an ongoing relationship with a product or brand. The summit must address three things. First, line and staff managers have to align on thevision for engagement: what relationship do you want with your customers? Examining their decision journey helps you to compare your level of engagement with what you believe it should be. After Starbucks investigated customer engagement in France and Italy, for example, it concluded that consumers in those countries preferred traditional local café formats.

As a result, it invested in distinctive store layouts and furnishings and adjusted its beverages and service techniques.

Second, the summit’s participants should coordinate the activities required to reach and engage customers across the full range of touch points. When one multichannel retailer held its summit, the company, like many others, discovered that recent trends had left it with an anachronism: a set of touch points that should be coordinated but were instead managed independently within functional silos. A customer-engagement summit allows the senior-management team to create a coordinated plan spanning them—so that, for example, the customer experience in a call center can be coordinated with the behavior of frontline employees, or the online-registration experience with product development.

Finally, a company ought to agree on the elements of the customer-engagement ecosystem that should be undertaken in-house and those that will involve outside partners.

Internal resources probably won’t be able to deliver all of the requirements imposed by a world with many touch points: for instance, content and communications; data analytics and insights; product and service innovation; customer experience design and delivery; and managing brand, reputation, and corporate citizenship. Senior leaders need to decide how to carry out these activities and design the mix of in-house capabilities and external partners that will deliver them.

These customer-engagement planning ses-

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Illustration by shigil n

B EST OF B REED | m a n a g E m e n t

In many companies, the marketing function is best placed to orchestrate customer engagement sions, in addition to informing and motivating the organisation as a whole around customer engagement, can help avoid spreading scarce resources too thinly.

2. Create a customerengagement council One of the first outcomes of a customerengagement summit will probably be the realisation that an ongoing forum for focusing management’s attention on engagement is needed. This doesn’t have to be yet another marketing committee. In fact, your customer-engagement council may already exist under another name, such as the strategic-planning or brand council. The pur-

pose is to bring together all primary forms of engagement— marketing, communications, service, sales, product management, and so on—to coordinate tactics across touch points in a more timely manner.

This council, which should be an operational and decision-making body, must translate the findings of the customerengagement summit into specific actions at individual touch points. To accomplish this goal, the council’s membership needs to be large enough to ensure that all key players are represented but small enough to make decisions efficiently. One high-technology company, for example, included 17 people on the engagement council. Because it is

m a N A g E m e n t | B EST OF B REED

difficult to make it function efficiently with more than a dozen or so members, decision making in practice rested with a core group comprising the chief marketing officer and the heads of the company’s three primary divisions; subteams of the council coordinated its decisions with the company’s other entities when necessary. These councils are most effective when chaired by the same person who leads the customer-engagement summit, such as the CMO or the head of communications, strategy, sales, or service.

The second consideration is how regularly the council should meet. The customer-engagement council of one retail bank meets weekly, for example; a similar council at a social-services organisation, monthly. The frequency of such meetings generally is based on what key engagement activities the group is driving and their cycle time. The third consideration involves inputs and support: the council must make fact-based decisions, so it needs information on everything from priority touch points to customer behavior and the moves of competitors.

Finally, such a council must have a customerengagement charter. To reduce the risk of gaps, rework, and turf wars, everyone in the organisation needs clarity about decision rights over touch points and the key processes that affect them. As we explained last year, it’s useful to allocate the design, build, operate, and renew rights for specific touch points explicitly to functional “owners.” Marketing, for example, might design and renew scripts for a call center, which sales or operations would build and operate. In addition, the process of developing a charter is useful to force a dialogue about who owns and does what. More specifically, what does marketing do in customer engagement? What does it not do? When conceived, constructed, and operated correctly, these customer-engagement councils play a critical role in breaking the “silo” mind-set that diminishes the effectiveness of customer engagement in many organisations. Such a council often serves as a mediator and decision maker in conflicts between functions and business units and as a filter for what must be elevated to the level of the CEO or other senior leaders.

3. Appoint a ‘chief content officer’ A decade ago, when the extent of the digital revolution—the massive proliferation of media and devices and the empowerment of consumers via social networks and other channels— became clear, many companies quickly appointed “digital officers” to oversee

The CCO role is designed to provide the on-brand, topical, and provocative content needed to engage customers

these emerging touch points. It’s now evident that the challenge is not just understanding digital channels but also coping with the volume, nature, and velocity of the content needed to use them effectively. Companies need to create a supply chain of increasingly sophisticated and interactive content to feed consumer demand for information and engagement, not to mention a mechanism for managing the content consumers themselves generate. The emergence of companies-as-publishers demands the appointment of a chief content officer (CCO).

Companies across industries—from luxury goods to retailing, financial services, automotive, and even professional sports—are creating versions of this role. All are adopting a journalistic approach to recognise hot issues and shaping emerging sentiment by delivering compelling content that forges stronger emotional bonds with consumers.

The CCO role is designed to provide the on-brand, topical, and provocative content needed to engage customers. The CCO must develop and manage all aspects of the supply chain for content, ranging from deciding where and how it’s sourced to overseeing the external agencies and in-house creative talent generating it. Companies shouldn’t forget that even with a CCO in place, designing and executing a content strategy still requires coordination with several key business areas. The group responsible for gathering and analysing customer insights, for example, may need a new mandate to support the CCO by providing research on what customers and segments require, as well as where, when, and how that content can most effectively be delivered. The CCO may need help from human resources to find, attract, manage, motivate, and develop the in-house creative talent often required to fulfill a content vision. The CCO is the number of mobile will have to work closely with the team responsible for shaping brand percepsubscribers india has tions to understand the company’s till may 2012 character deeply—its heritage, purpose, and values—and with areas such as corporate social responsibility, investor

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REASON #11

ENJOY SUFI QUWWALI NIGHT WHILE IT HELPS YOU…

CONNECT WITH THE “DIVINE”

B EST OF B REED | m a N A g E m e n t

relations, and government affairs to gain a full perspective on how the company interacts with external stakeholders.

4. Create a ‘listening center’ Engagement is a conversation, yet companies are increasingly excluded from many of the most important discussions. More social and other media are available to mobilise your fans and opponents than ever before, and any interaction between a customer and your company could be the match that starts a viral fire. In this environment, companies should establish listening centers that monitor what is being said about their organisations, products, and services on social media, blogs, and other online forums.

Such monitoring should be hardwired into the business to shorten response times during real and potential crises, complement internal metrics and traditional tracking research on brand performance, feed consumer feedback into the product-development process, and serve as a platform for testing customer reactions. We’re already seeing listening centers established across a broad swath of sectors from financial services to hospitality to consumer goods. A French telecommunications company not only monitors online activity but also has a tool kit of prepared responses. “I can’t predict what crisis will hit,” a senior executive at the company said. “But depending on the magnitude of it, I know the people I need to get in the room and what to discuss.”

More customer interactions across more touch points are shaping the degree of engagement

money to invest elsewhere; if the experience of customers is so positive that they voluntarily serve as advocates for your brand, for example, can you reduce advertising expenditures? The moves your customer service center makes to resolve a crisis—say, a lost credit card on a honeymoon or a major machine failure on a critical production run—may build more lifetime loyalty than years of traditional loyalty campaigns.

What prevents many companies from realising these productivity gains and crossfunction trade-offs is a failure to look at total spending on customer engagement.

They don’t see the opportunities to make trade-offs across functions and optimise the impact of investments across the entire set of touch points. Most budget on a function-by-function basis, and measure impact the same way. When you look at these expenditures and investments that way, there is almost never enough money, because each function seeks increased funding to improve the customer interactions for which it is accountable. That’s a losing 5. Challenge your total customergame. Instead, add up what you spend engagement budget on customer engagement—in areas such Many companies struggle to figure out how as sales, service, operations, and product they can afford all the new tactics, vehicles, management, as well as in marketing. Then and content types required to engage with identify all the radically cheaper approaches customers effectively. We propose a differyou could take and ask, for example, how ent mind-set: recognising that there’s plenty you would take them if your of money, but in the wrong budget was 15 percent of its places. Companies can now current size or how a comcommunicate with custompetitor in an emerging market ers much more productively: would approach this problem. digital and social channels, for Such exercises help to break example, are radically cheaper is the number of mobile the ingrained assumptions and (and sometimes more effecsubscribers bharti conventional wisdom that creep tive) than traditional media airtel had in india till into organisations and to highcommunications or face-to-face may 2012 light overlooked opportunities. sales visits. When you make Finally, look at trade-offs trade-offs across functions, across functions—for example, you can free large amounts of

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among investments in store renovations, revamped e-commerce sites, higher ad spending, changes in your model of sales force coverage, or improved operations in customer service centers. Which of these should be prioritised and in what order?

Such decisions should be made not just on the projected financial returns but also on a strategic assessment of how customer expectations are evolving, how competitors are changing their methods of customer engagement, and where your company may have distinctive capabilities that could help it win through superior customer engagement.

One major Asian retailer did exactly this.

Faced with ever-rising costs, it looked at its entire customer-engagement budget and identified where it was underperforming or missing out on new approaches to engagement. With that baseline, it cut 25 percent off its traditional marketing budget, invested in customer service, and reallocated other marketing expenditures to focus on digital, social, and mobile channels. By reducing in-store operations costs, the retailer financed new investments in a major loyalty program to improve its engagement with customers. As a result, 70 percent of the company’s sales now are to members of its loyalty program—about three times the rate of its competitors. Total costs are lower and margins higher, despite a challenging retail environment.

More customer interactions across more touch points are shaping the degree of engagement a customer feels with your company. The critical barrier to harnessing the potential value in this shift is organisational—companies that learn to design and execute effective customer-engagement strategies will have the advantage; the others will lose ground. We have no doubt that companies will one day evolve the full set of processes and structures needed to manage customer engagement across the whole organisation. Until then, these five steps can get you moving in the right direction.

—Tom French is a director in McKinsey’s Boston office; Laura LaBerge and Paul Magill are senior experts in the Stamford office.

—This article is reprinted with prior permission from McKinsey Quaterly.

NEXT

illustration by manav sachdev

HORIZONS

REASON #12

EXPLORE YOUR PASSION AS A PHOTOGRAPHER, POET ET AL…

WITH

“PASSION AWARDS”

Enterprise Social Media

Firms are modifying their business models to get networking savvy, but some have smarter business models than others

S

cores of companies have been promoting themselves as players in the enterprise social networking space of late, but they are not all created equal, with varying business models, approaches to the market and in some cases, a bit of a me-too eagerness. But amid the pretenders are serious contenders that bring a well-thought-out approach to the space and are attracting serious attention from major software ven-

dors. The $1.2 billion bid for Yammer by Microsoft, the nearly $700 million that Salesforce.com plans to pay for Buddy Media on top of the $326 million it paid for Radian 6, and Oracle's purchase of Vitrue are just some examples of the land grab by big software for enterprise social territory. The difference between the revenues these takeover targets generated and the price their acquirers were willing to pay for them is huge, perhaps indicating a bubble, but

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N E X T H O R I Z O N S | m a N A g E m ent

also perhaps indicating the growth potential in the space. But analysts and other industry players say the most sought after companies do not just offer me-too marketing plans, but innovative technology to make enterprise social networking work.

The whole point is to make a business more productive and profitable--not just social for the sake of social. Still, the market is fragmented, although it's generally dividing into two camps, one group that uses social media internally to enhance business productivity and another group using social media externally to better engage with customers. And because each of the smaller companies are niche players-offering unique technology or a specific algorithm--the acquirers have to snap up several companies in order to build a comprehensive solution. Notably, it's enterprise software companies, rather than retailers or big advertising or marketing firms that are buying up enterprise social media firms, said Michael Mullarkey, CEO of Brickfish, which delivers social media programs to better engage companies with their retail customers. A sample Brickfish campaign for Redbox, the DVD rental by vending machine company, invited customers to "Share Your Love" by having a photo taken of them hug-

real social innovation," said ging their neighborhood Redbox Ashley Furness, a CRM market and posting it on the company's analyst at Software Advice, a Facebook page. Silly, perhaps, lead-generation business for but Redbox had 3 million "Likes" multiple software vendors when they took on Brickfish and will be the decrease including Oracle, SAP and it now has 4.7 million. "Fortune in voice revenue Microsoft Dynamics. It helps 2000 companies rely on softduring the perioid business customers trying to ware companies like Salesforce, between 2012 to 2016 buy software determine their Oracle and SAP for enterprise needs and, from that, refer applications and are trying to find them to the appropriate vendor. ways to drive revenue," said MulThere are some vendors whose larkey. "It's enterprise software solution allows a user to import contacts companies that understand that social media from Facebook or LinkedIn into their CRM are going to drive transaction volume in the system, or to push content from their CRM years to come." And Mullarkey explains how system onto social networks and calling the acquisition strategies of the enterprise that a social enterprise platform, Furness software companies help them build their said. "Microsoft didn't spend $1.2 billion social media prowess. Redbox, he said, uses on Yammer just so you could have a social Buddy Media to build its presence on Facesharing button in your CRM system." The book, while Radian 6 moderates customer innovators in enterprise social networking comments on their Facebook page, and have created social intelligence algorithms, Brickfish delivers loyalty campaigns and similar to Facebook's, that are based on how other efforts to improve customer engagepeople use the platform and will pick up ment. Buddy Media and Radian 6 are now on the kinds of information that they share part of Salesforce. "It's like anything else, with others on the platform. it s a big space, there are lots of players out there," Mullarkey said. But some of them are less than they pretend to be. "The me— This opinion was first published in CIO too mentality is so true and I think the real Insight. For more such stories please visit distinction is between social integration and www.cioinsight.com.

25%

Best Practices for BYOD on a Budget BYOD problems are similar to those of VPN deployment: devices that connect to your network may spend time on other networks

By Jim MacLeod

W

hile the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) to work is a growing trend within the IT world, the main issue is that consumerfriendly technology is changing the way people want to work. Smartphones have provided mobile email for a decade,

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but the market has moved from business phones complete with corporate controls to consumer devices.

True mobile productivity is here More recently, tablets have enabled comfortable Internet access anywhere, with sophis-

ticated applications that allow true mobile productivity. However, increasing reliance on mobile devices is creating increasing demands on IT to support and secure devices. Some businesses have embraced BYOD arguing that employee-owned equipment for business usage could save the

m a N A g E m ent | N E X T H O R I Z O N S

Consumer devices are better While there are undoubtedly security risks associated with BYOD, this practice is inevitable given that consumer devices are simply better, faster, and usually less expensive than businessgrade. With the speed at which consumer technology advance, businesses employing BYOD don’t have to wait three years for equipment to depreciate before it can be replaced.

We are transitioning into a mobilised and interconnected workplace where employees can and will bring the hottest gizmos and gadgets into the work environment even if current company security policy forbids it. So, with BYOD becoming an inescapable reality, how can businesses embrace it without having to completely overhaul their security system? What follows are several ways to start implementing BYOD securely onto a network without having to buy the next shiny business security tool. Telling employees not to bring their own devices, or enacting a complicated policy to discourage the practice, is a guaranteed way to encourage employees to bypass restrictions. Don’t try to convolute the processes of allowing employees to bring their devices to work. Simplicity provides better voluntary compliance in the end. With BYOD, if there is an easy process for users to get online, they will typically agree to the additional conditions that make it easier for IT to manage these new devices.

BYOD problems are similar to those of VPN deployment: devices that connect to your network may spend time on other networks. For this reason, start addressing the BYOD problem by using a VPN. Create a new Wi-Fi SSID, or re-use a “guest” SSID, which will be a subnet in an outbound DMZ, the middle ground between an organisation’s trusted internal network and an untrusted, external network.

This will make access to the internal network only available via VPN, which leverages the security lessons learned from VPN deployment, and monitors inbound VPN connections. That subnet should also have Internet access -- assuming that the corporate network does too -- so employees will be willing to use it rather than trying to bypass it.

This creates a single location where all of the BYOD devices will congregate, and where network security can be applied.

By providing a BYOD SSID, the devices have access to your highspeed Internet connection, so employees are less likely to connect via cellular connection while at work. It also means that their communication will pass through any networklevel detection systems, increasing the chances of detecting virus or botnet behaviour without requiring an agent on the system. A BYOD network extends the protections of the corporate network to these devices, while simultaneously protecting the core network from them. Fortunately, email is one of the easiest services to deploy securely. Microsoft Exchange provides Exchange ActiveSync (EAS), which most mobile devices support. Non-exchange networks can also provide remote email via encrypted POP or IMAP along with encrypted and authenticated SMTP. Another low-effort way to provide network access without significant additional risk is to use full-screen remote logins, like Remote Desktop (RDP) on Windows or VNC on all platforms.

Simplicity provides better voluntary compliance in the end

— This article has been reprinted with permission from CIO Update. To see more articles regarding IT management best practices, please visit www.cioupdate.com.

July 2012

59

REASON #13

EVERYTHING AND MUCH MORE….AT THE 13TH ANNUAL CIO&LEADER CONFERENCE, HYDERABAD – 11TH -13TH AUG

BE THERE!

image by photos.com

company money, but there is not a definitive answer on this yet. The savings on hardware may turn into increased IT costs; initially by creating BYOD-friendly infrastructure and supporting an ever expanding variety of hardware, OSes, and apps. There are also security concerns of non-corporate equipment accessing the company network and data. It easy to fall into the trap of approving a capital expense now on the uncertain promise of operational expense reduction. Pilot programmes don’t have to be expensive, and can help uncover the hidden costs.

Event

Think Tank Conference-Delhi The second in a series of conferences, Think Tank Conference in New Delhi was a grand success Experts discussed various security issues facing the enterprises

Panelists talk about data protection challenges

Audience interacting with the panelists in a highly engaging discussion

E

ncouraged by the overwhelming feedback received during the CSO Summit in December 2011, CSO forum has decided to start a series of CSO Think Tank conferences during the year. These are essentially regional conferences where the focus would be on various operational challenges that CSOs face and how others in the community are addressing these.

The second CSO Think Tank Conference took place on 22nd June 2012 at Marriot, Gurgaon. The conference saw highly enthusiastic participation from the CISO

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community of New Delhi and NCR. The keynote address of the conference was presented by John Colley, Managing Director, (ISC)² EMEA. Colley shared his vast experience of over 20 years with the audience and talked about old issues and new problems facing today’s CISO. The

role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) is changing but they still have to face all of the issues they had to face before and in addition address a number of new problem areas. Colley opined that a CISO doesn’t only need to be a technologist but also act as a leader, a business man and in many situations, a Superman.

“Information security professionals need to shift their security mindsets. They need to concentrate on the ‘how to’ and not

cso think tank | E VEN T REPORT

waste time on the ‘why not’. CISOs need to work out how to make business change happen securely and minimise the risk instead of acting as a barrier of change,” Colley said.

Cloud turned out to be another topic of interest at the conference where panelists such as KK Chaudhary, Group CISO, Lanco Infra; Shraddha Tickoo, Subject Matter Expert, Trend Micro tried to clear the air around the security challenges in cloud and how they can be carefully mitigated using the right tools and processes.

The discussion went beyond data security issues in public cloud and the panel talked about various security issues at the virtual machine level in a private cloud or even in a basic virtualisation deployment.

Need for data protection was discussed in a session with Jijy Oomen, CIO, Bajaj Capital and Sougat Ghosh, Sr. Solutions Strategist, CA Technologies. The session analysed the real drivers for data protection. Some of the key questions addressed in the session were—why the current approach to protecting data in technology silos doesn't work? What steps can clients take to ensure that enterprise data is protected throughout its life cycle? What controls and tools are available to protect enterprise data in practice?

As an extension to the session on data protection, a session on data leakage prevention strategies talked about some of the best practices in the space and what organisations can do to build a robust DLP strategy. The session was addressed by Amitabh Misra, VP-Engineering, Snapdeal.com and Sameer Shelke, CTO, Aujas.

Unlike most other security technologies, DLP is never an out-of-the-box solution.

Bringing together right processes, technology and people is perhaps more important in a DLP deployment than most other software deployments. Being a customercentric organisation, Snapdeal.com has deployed some of the best mechanisms to prevent data leakage. Misra shared some of these DLP best practices and talked

Anuradha Das Mathur, Director, 9.9 Media, chairing the session on cloud security

Amitabh Misra, VP-Engineering, Snapdeal.com, sharing his views on DLP strategies

Delegates paying close attention during the keynote address by John Colley

about how the strategy has helped the company greatly prevent data leakage.

Arup Chatterjee, CISO, WNS shared his views on the increasing risks from distributed denial of services attacks. Every enterprise seems to live under the perpetual threat of a DDoS attack. Along with Jaydeep Nargund, Service Line Manager, Akamai on the panel, Chatterjee analysed a DDoS attack in depth, looked at steps enterprises can take to guard against one and also what can be done if an organisation does come under a DDoS attack.

Another important area of discussion was SIEM. Security Information & Event

Management is the name of the approximately 20-year-old technology sector whose solutions collect and analyse event logs that come from all types of devices and applications in a given IT infrastructure.

SIEM solutions have taken various forms and different tools specialise in different aspects of log management, monitoring security, proving compliance and/or maximising IT operations. The session was moderated by Burgess Cooper, CISO, Vodafone India and members of the panel included Subramanya Gupta Boda, Group CISO, GMR and Kartik Shahani, Country Manager, RSA.

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GOVERNANCE

$500k The amount Betaworks paid to acquire Diggs

Why Open Source is Not Always the Best Bet If you are using open source to reduce costs, here are a few pointers you should look at before taking the leap

By DHANANJAY ROKDE

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Illustration by manav sachdev

TECH FOR

Data Briefing

T

o p en s o u rce | T E C H F O R G O V E R N A N C E

This article is just an attempt to educate our readers that “open source shouldn’t be blindly used as an alternative for paid /commercial software”; it should in no way be perceived as mudslinging towards any open source software or community.

Alright, you’ve have managed to get yourself free software and an OS, Now what?

It is very typical for organisations to start using products like OpenOffice to take baby-steps into the open source arena. Ubuntu and its variants (Like Kubuntu & the Ubuntu Server edition) are popular choices of OS platforms. Other software such as Mozilla Firefox / Thunderbird, Gimp, VLC Media Player etc. provide good replacements for the classic end user needs.

HELP!!! I need support.

A colossal proportion of the IT world is used to and addicted to propitiatory office suites. This not only includes end users, but also system administrators and IT managers themselves. Users know basic operations on the systems; administrators know how to troubleshoot; and managers know whom to contact in case of a problem. So when someone from Finance starts screaming that salaries won’t be credited on time as an automated macro to be run spreadsheets has failed, since OpenOffice is unable to execute it – What does an IT manager do? OpenOffice has fantastic basic functionality, but it cannot even come close to what proprietary office suites offer. Also the knowledgebase of such open software is often incomplete. You have to rely on forums and bulletin boards to help you break away from the problem and resume actual productive work.

Although I must admit that these forums are very helpful, however one must keep in mind that this is a NOT certified and competent support. The forum owner is NOT liable in case they provide incorrect assistance and actually increase your damage. Most of the open source software relies on plug-ins or extensions to primary software package for added functionality and features. These extensions are NOT written by the author(s) of the primary package. Also there are no warranties that those extensions will work or the primary package will continue to support them after an upgrade or a major version change.

Be prepared for MUCH higher installation costs Yes! More than often open source leads to much higher installation costs. It is no wonder that more than 95% of the end user laptops and desktops come with a preinstalled copy of proprietary operating systems. This operating system comes with effective recovery alternatives. You can easily avail the option of reinstalling the entire operating system with losing any of your valuable data.

The same story holds true for slightly larger enterprise systems like web & database servers. Here are a few reasons why proprietary web and database servers work out cheaper in the long run: Easily available man power to administer and manage the infrastructure Low cost of expertise Instant technical support provided by the principal company The company takes full ownership of the technical solutions provided by them.

Quick solutions to complex environments (eg: one click clustering & virtualization) Companies that provide such proprietary software have people who are actually on their payroll and dedicated to cause of technical support.

On the other hand, staff required to manage and administer open source solutions are hard to find and expensive.

Also these solutions don’t necessarily provide off-the-shelf advanced functionality like load-balancing, clustering etc… You need a lot of customisation to attain such functionality and there would still be no support for the same.

These customizations come at an extra-ordinary cost and still; there is no one who can certify or sign-off on these custom architectures to be guaranteed or reliable.

Hence, in spite of this large investment you will still have a “crude hack” & NOT a solution. It is therefore your call to rely on that crude hack or not.

“?” A big question mark on reliability Although many technology conglomerates directly and indirectly support the cause of open source; they have

July 2012

5

POINTS

most of the open source software relies on plug-ins Staff required to manage open source solutions are hard to find and expensive if you do not pay for the product, no one is indebted to send you updates In open source you have to rely on forums and bulletin boards security is a concern while using open source

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T E C H F O R G O V E R N A N C E | o p en s o u rce

Also stiff competition and the race for increasing extremely limited financial commitment in these inimarket share, compels the proprietary software compatiatives. Good examples of such angelic investments nies to ensure that their products stand the test of time. include, Oracle buying a stake in MySQL and IBM Before you know it proprietary software has been at the investing in the Apache foundation & Eclipse. lead of showing compatibility towards almost all emergIBM’s venture to invest heavily into making their own open source database Cloudscape, (which is now will be the growth of ing trends like Web 2.0, Cloud capability, real time synabsorbed into the Apache suite as Derby) has not been cloud computing and chronization, seamless recovery etc … a success. In spite of being adopted by the Apache will touch a figure of foundation the IT industry has still not shown much But wait; someone told me that open source $207 billion by 2016 acceptance to it. These investments are only to set aside is more secure feelings of anti-monopoly and are clearly motivated by Open source software always capitalises on the security sentiments, than business. If these open source applifailures of their proprietary alternatives. Since these cations were really so efficient and cost-effective then the IT world proprietary companies are constantly fighting their “anti – sentiwould have seen a major revolution. The fact that such a revolt is ment”; the real flaws of open source never actually reach the users. actually NOT happening, proves the case for proprietary software.

With the freedom to access the source code at will, people who know what they are looking for can find the right stuff and way to exploit it. Open source does not have the liberty of incorporating several I am waiting for updates; what do I do? security mechanisms like code obfuscation & data masking. The Always bear in mind, this simple principle – “If you are not paying confidentiality involved in making such proprietary software eventufor the product itself; no one is indebted to send you updates”. So if ally pays off. The people who write the open source software have you are running open source systems, please set clear expectations other day jobs and lives. These open source projects are something with your business in terms updating and patching to meet newer that they do over their free time and clearly not for bread and butter. requirements. Proprietary software companies on the other are contractually and legally bound to send you critical patches and updates — This article is printed with prior permission from www.infosecisland. as soon as flaws are detected. They will have their teams sweat it out com. For more features and opinions on information security and risk manas soon as a bug or missing functionality is detected. agement, please refer to Infosec Island.

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Cloudy Nerdy

My Playlist for techie group

Politi- movements have their anthems. Starbucks has its background music brand. But I thought it might be fun to collate a playlist that specifically appeals to the techie/ cloudy group.

So here goes. Some of these are pretty funny... others leave a bit to be desired. And if you know of more (or have favorites of your own) send them my way and I’ll add them...

Songs about Clouds Get Off Of My Cloud The Rolling Stones Clouds The Jayhawks Clouds Django Reinhardt (awesome rendition w/a Spanish guitar) Clouds The Go-Betweens Clouds The Submarines In The Clouds The Cult Death Cloud Cloud Control

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July 2012

Cloudy Average White Band (not the greatest audio/video)

Other (mostly funny) songs about IT Nerd Lust Schaffer & The Darklords She Blinded Me With Science Thomas Dolby Nrrrd Grrrl MC Chris. Hi-grade lyrics. Low budget production.

(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar The Guild The SysAdmin Song Wes Borg - A classic.

IT Administration Song To the tune of “A few of my favorite things” The Computer Song Dare you to memorize all of these acronyms. And this was just 2007.

Cookie Computer Song Classic Sesame Street. Primitive.

1974!

Happy System Administrator Day (one of my fave Animes) Features “The SysAdmin Song” above

About the author: Ken Oestreich is a marketing and product management veteran in the enterprise IT and data centre space, with a career spanning start-ups to established vendors.

Networking Tips – Don’ts Sheryl Nicholson (a short Hip-Hop style interlude) Object-oriented Programming Song - #7 from Design Minstrel (great lyrics, horrific delivery) The Computer Scientist Code Play (awesome indie creation. but delivery also leaves something to be desired) The Computer Error song A fun sampling/mashup... or listen to the remix. (Windows listeners only) Maybe this’ll be the V0geball psyche-up tune next year.

The Day the Routers Died Had to end with this one from RIPE 55 conference, 2007. Freakin’ brilliant tribute to IPv6. Not sure who sang, tho. But picture a room full of geeks singing the final stanza...

Techy Poetry Horton Hears Hadoop Joe Onisick Horton Hears a Hadoop Tom Keske (I need more here... ).

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