“IT began in the back office of the business, it moved to the front office, and now it has deeply penetrated all aspects of the business,” says Louie Ehrlich, CIO of $204 billion oil company Chevron (CVX) and president of its information technology unit. “Everything is connected to everything. You have to be integrated.”
Of course, if you had a dime for every time a CIO talked about how there are no IT projects, there are only business projects, you’d be retired by now. The difference is “people really mean it now,” says Edward Hansen, a partner in the law firm Baker and McKenzie,
Dee Waddell is group information officer of marketing, sales and customer service with $2.3 billion Amtrak. Waddell meets with his business partners once a year to discuss expectations and develop business-focused service-level agreements (SLAs) for IT to meet. His IT group also publishes an annual report of its business results. Traditional technical metrics like network use and applications supported are still tracked, but Waddell doesn’t use them to elucidate IT’s business contribution. SLAs for the website include the percentage of time that bookings can be made successfully or that train statuses can be retrieved. “These are availability metrics,” says Waddell, “but much more relevant to our business customers.”
Codack of TD bank says. “Everyone spends a fair amount of time [working] to improve gross and margin. You have to defend [IT costs], but it’s more about your contribution versus your spend.”
