Posts Tagged ‘HP’

« Older Entries

CIO Strategy Tips From Randy Mott

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
Image CreditRandy Mott is a CIO who knows a great deal about strategy

Randy Mott is a CIO who knows a great deal about strategy

You wouldn’t think that a CIO who just got fired from his job at HP would have a lot to teach us about IT strategy, but that’s where you’d be wrong. Randy Mott is a CIO who has been around the block a few times. He’s worked for Wal-Mart, Dell, and he was CIO at HP. When HP’s CEO, Mark Hurd, got fired Randy had to go because he was too close to Mark. However, that all doesn’t mean that we can’t learn a thing or two from how Randy runs an IT department when he’s in charge…

IT Projects Have To Deliver Results

The IT department is a cost center, right? This belief is almost built in to everyone’s definition of information technology. It can’t be expected to actually “make” money can it? It turns out that if you make the effort, you can measure the money that the IT department brings in for the company. Mott believes that for the 12 months after an IT project goes live, the benefits of that project should be measured in both hard dollar and intangibles. How to measure the value of an IT project should be agreed to by the business unit leaders and their finance teams before the project is started so that there is buy-in on the numbers.

Technology moves fast. This means that new technology is always showing up and if the IT department isn’t careful, they’ll be seen as a roadblock that is standing between a new technology and the rest of the company.

IT needs to develop processes that allow it to get new technology out into end users hands as quickly as possible. It doesn’t have to be a company-wide rollout, a trial to evaluate the new technology will do. However, the IT department needs to clearly show that they are out in front of evaluating every new technology.

Finally, I think that all IT departments suffer from the same problem – we seem to try to take on too many tasks all at once. Randy Mott believes that this is a key reason why so many IT projects end up failing. His approach is to have an IT department work on fewer projects, but to have them finish them faster. While Randy was running the IT department at HP they were able to get their average IT project delivery time down to 6 months.

Time Can Be An IT Project’s Greatest Enemy

If you can think back to the last IT project that you worked on, at some point in time you probably wished that you had more time. I know that I have. It’s a good thing that we didn’t work for Mr. Mott. He believes that if you give an IT more time to complete a project, you won’t get any higher quality. He also believes that not delivering an IT project on time hurts IT’s credibility with the rest of the company.

Everyone in the company always wants the IT department to do everything all at once. This means that the CIO often has to make some painful decisions – what areas are going to take priority over the others? Randy took a bold path when it came to this: he moved forward in all areas at once. It was his belief that if he chose one area to focus on, he’d end up not meeting the IT department’s customer’s needs. A great deal of risk is associated with this decision, but if you can pull it off you’ll come away with everyone viewing you as a hero.

What All Of This Means For You

Randy Mott certainly has a great deal of experience at how to do the job of being a modern CIO. He seems to have a bit of difficulty hanging on to his job, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t teach the rest of us in the IT sector a thing or two about how to be a successful CIO.

Randy points out that IT does bring in revenue for the company, we just need to find out how to measure it. He believes that it is IT’s job to deploy new technology as quickly as possible and that this should be done by working on fewer simultaneous projects, but finishing them faster. Finally, Randy does not believe that having more time makes an IT project any better and he thinks that taking too much time to make a decision on what to work on can cost the company time and money.

No, you don’t necessarily have to agree with the way that Randy chooses to see the world. However, due to the importance of information technology I do think that we should all understand why he sees it that way. He’s been on the front line of this CIO thing and so he’s got a pretty good understanding of what the job requires. Give it some thought and then keep your eyes open – Randy might be working at your company next!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™

Question For You: Do you agree with Randy’s view that all IT projects should be worked on simultaneously or do you think that they should be done sequentially?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

You wouldn’t think that a CIO who just got fired from his job at HP would have a lot to teach us about IT strategy, but that’s where you’d be wrong. Randy Mott is a CIO who has been around the block a few times. He’s worked for Wal-Mart, Dell, and he was CIO at HP. When HP’s CEO, Mark Hurd, got fired Randy had to go because he was too close to Mark. However, that all doesn’t mean that we can’t learn a thing or two from how Randy runs an IT department when he’s in charge…

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in CIO | No Comments »

Video: IT Value How To Measure The Revenue Of IT

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

We all know that IT provides value to the rest of the company, but how much value? That’s the question that CIOs are always trying to answer.

Dr. Jim Anderson tackles this issue by taking a look at what HP’s former CIO Randy Mott did. It turns out that he found a way to solve this problem. Dr. Anderson explains and shows you how you can use Randy’s technique.

Get a free subscription to The Accidental Successful CIO newsletter by visiting the sign-up page at: http://goo.gl/NOfh2

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in videos | No Comments »

Lab Rats Invade A CIO’s World

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
What Is A CIO To Do With An R&D Lab?

What Is A CIO To Do With An R&D Lab?

I work in the telecommunications field a lot and the gold standard of corporate R&D labs has always been Bell Labs. These guys have created amazing things that we all take for granted today: transistors, fiber optics, etc.

Since most firms have no idea about what to do with their corporate research facilities, responsibility for the labs often falls under the control of the CIO (because most firms don’t know what to do with IT either). Great. So what’s a CIO to do when he/she is responsible for a corporate R&D lab?

The Times They Are A Changing

So why did companies set up their research labs in the first place? Simple, they needed a source of innovation that they could harness in order to become more successful. Unfortunately, the Internet came along and the wheels have fallen off this truck.

In the old days (the early 90′s), researchers used social networks to exchange information and drive their research forward. No, not Facebook or Twitter – we’re talking about the early 90′s here. They used the REAL social networks that formed when researchers went to conferences or met in the lunchroom.

The arrival of the Internet has turned this world upside down. If you can connect with anyone over the Internet, then why would you even bother to have a corporate R&D lab?

It turns out that there is still a reason for corporate R&D lab, it’s just that they are going to be much smaller and the value of even having an R&D lab will go down.

CIO’s And The New Era Of R&D

Steve Lohr over at the New York Times has been talking with folks in the corporate R&D world to find out what the future of R&D Labs is going to look like.

Pull the cover off an R&D lab and you’ll discover a machine that can turn ideas into products. In the future, the ideas that a business can turn into a product (which is what a business is in business to do) won’t come from a lab, instead they will be coming from all over. Wow, what a mess.

In the future companies aren’t going to be able to afford to have the old style R&D labs. These labs were paid for by corporate profits. Once again, that dang Internet thing has come along and leveled the playing field and those corporate profits are now under pressure from everywhere. Now that they are gone, there’s no way to pay for old-style R&D.

The new way (practiced  by HP, GE, and IBM) is for CIOs to transform what a corporate R&D lab does. The new role for an R&D lab is for it to act as a communications hub between researchers who can all be located at remote locations.

The sources of new ideas can be universities, start-ups, other businesses, and even government labs. Researchers will have to start acting like human Googles and start sucking up all of the information that they need to create products that their firms can sell.

Final Thoughts

CIOs who find themselves in charge of a company’s R&D labs have a delicate challenge on their hands. No matter how successful the labs have been in the past, the past is the past and what worked then will no longer work. CIOs need to move aggressively to transform how R&D research is done.

Realizing the Internet changes everything, CIOs will have to create an R&D “hub and spoke” logical design where the corporate R&D team funnels communications between multiple parties in order to move innovation along. Ultimately, when enough information has been gathered to allow a product to be created, then a CIO will know that his / her R&D lab is doing what it needs to do.

My question to you is do you think that today’s CIOs have the skill that is need to pull this kind of R&D lab transformation off?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Ok CIO wannabe, we’re right in the middle of a global financial crisis and your IT budget has gotten slashed so much it looks like Freddie Krueger has come back and had his way with it. What are you going to do about your spending on security programs: cut ‘em, hold the line, or spend more. Whoops – that was a trick question: all of the answers will get you in trouble…

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in innovation | No Comments »

HP Can’t Pay Its Salespeople – Another CIO Failure?

Monday, September 14th, 2009

HP's Sales People Have Not Been Getting Paid On Time <p> <div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" about="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixieclipx/308927905/"><a rel="cc:attributionURL" href=Being a salesperson is a hard job. More often than not they live from quarter to quarter and if you don’t make your numbers, then you end up getting shown to the door. Hewlett-Packard is a huge IT products and services company that lives and dies by the actions of its sales teams. Making sure that the sales teams get paid should be a simple task right? Think again…

The Problem With Pay At HP

HP’s CIO Randy Mott has a problem on his hands. Within HP, payments for the HP’s business-technology group sales teams are handled by a software application called Omega (which is sorta funny when you think about the fact that Omega is the last letter in the Greek alphabet – it sure doesn’t seem to have the last word on calculating pay).

Omega has been around for a long time. It was born back at Digital Equipment Corporation (anyone remember DEC?), got picked up and used by Compaq Computer Corporation, and then finally found its way into HP. It must either be a well designed program to have had that long of a life or else it’s so dang complex that nobody is willing to tinker with it.

The problem with Omega is that it is struggling to deal with HP’s growing amounts of sales data. It was never originally designed to deal with this much volume. What’s happening is that Omega is now malfunctioning. Some HP salespersons are not getting paid on time – they are ending up waiting up to seven months to get paid!

Fixing The Omega Problem

HP is aware of the problem and they’ve tried unsuccessfully to fix it. As a stopgap measure, HP has been automatically paying its salespeople 60% – 70% of what they should be getting for meeting their sales quotas. One suspects that this is being done in order to allow employees to meet house payments and keep food on the table.

In the past HP has tried to fix Omega by adding new software that was intended to smooth out the flow of sales data. However, back in November of 2008 when HP closed its books for the year, they discovered that some of the data in Omega was both incorrect and incomplete. Clearly the band-aid approach to dealing with the problem had not worked.

What Should HP Do?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that at a HP sales meeting in 2008, one of HP’s senior vice presidents of sales, Randy Runk, got up on stage and promised the sales teams that they would all be paid on time. Clearly that is not happening.

As CIO, Randy Mott (are all HP senior executives named Randy?) is responsible for fixing this problem – he’s already let it go on for far too long. Let’s say what HP is clearly not willing to say themselves: Omega’s time has come and gone and it must be replaced.

Mott needs to do two things immediately: he needs to campaign to have all HP sales reps who’s compensation is handled by Omega to be automatically paid at the level that they would be if they met their sales quotas. This should continue until the Omega issue is resolved. Any bonus will be calculated and paid with interest once the Omega issue has been resolved. Doing this will calm the sales forces and prevent them from leaving en-mass.

Next, Mott needs to start building a new replacement system for Omega. Why this has not been started already is beyond me. You would think that when HP took a look at the 6,500 that they were using and decided to slim it down to just a mere 1,500 systems, that Omega replacement would have been identified as being a high priority.

Based on the age of the Omega application, I’m willing to bet that its a single monolithic solution. Clearly a modular design is called for. I’m also willing to bet that HP doesn’t have a clear idea of all of the things that Omega does. No problem, if Mott and his IT team sits down with HP’s finance team they can come up with system requirements that may be much simpler than the twisted requirements that Omega now implements.

Final Thoughts

Randy Mott has been doing some amazing things at HP. However, somehow the way that he’s been prioritizing what his IT teams need to be working on skipped over the Omega problem. Clearly the prioritization of IT projects needs to be re-looked at.

Mott needs to take immediate steps to resolve the problems that this IT issue has created and then he needs to fix the problem once and for all by creating a replacement solution for the out-of-date and overworked Omega system. If he can do this quickly, then he will have found a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Innovation, innovation, innovation – everyone wants it, but nobody seems know know how to get and keep it. CIOs are under a lot of pressure to do more with less these days and being able to nurture an environment of innovation sure would help. The trick is HOW to do this…

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in crisis | No Comments »

CIO Cloud Computing: What The Future Holds

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009
When CIOs Look Into Cloud Computing's Future, What Do They See?

When CIOs Look Into Cloud Computing's Future, What Do They See?

Cloud computing is hot – there’s no denying that. However, as with all things in the information technology field, cloud computing isn’t standing still. Even as  you read these words, engineers are hard at work defining and refining just exactly what a cloud computing architecture looks like and how it behaves. Let’s take a peek at what the future holds…

Where The New Ideas Are Being Born

Although cloud computing research is going on in a number of small start-ups as well as at universities world-wide, the work that is being followed the closest is that which is being done by the very large firms. Here’s a quick run down of what they are doing:

  • HP /Intel / Yahoo: These three powerhouses have come together to launch the Cloud Research Testbed. The goal is to allow academic researchers to have access to supercomputing resources in order to try out new ideas such as computing chips that have been designed for cloud computing.
  • IBM Research: IBM has taken the global approach and launched its Research Compute Cloud. This cloud will be used to support business processes.

The 5-Year Plan

Something that has helped to propel cloud computing to the forefront of discussion in many IT departments is the simple fact that due to the economic downturn, there is no money left to design and build expensive computing architecture.

IT has for too long been seen as a department that simply maintains computing “boxes”. This adds very little value to the rest of the firm. It’s expected that small and midsized firms are going to be the ones jumping on the cloud computing bandwagon. The larger firms are expected to be setting up their own private clouds and only using public clouds when they temporarily need the extra capacity.

Improvements in cloud computing both this year and in the next few years should center around moving your applications from one cloud to another, have companies communicate better while in the cloud, and even sharing data in the cloud.

Final Thoughts

In the end, the best way to think about cloud computing is probably to view it as being yet another type of application deployment architecture. The real boon will be to software developers who will no longer be shackled by limited availability of computing hardware.

If the challenges that cloud computing is facing today, such as security, can be overcome then CIOs that discover how to best make use of this new resource will have found yet another way to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Questions For You

Do you think that Yahoo and IBM are in a race to be the ones to define the cloud computing standards? Do you think that large firms will be successful in building their own private clouds? When do you think that public clouds will be “ready for prime time” and firms will start to use them over building out their own infrastructure? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

It can be a long and lonely journey through a recession for anyone, including CIOs. The company’s very survival may be at stake, the CIO’s job may be at risk, and of course there is that big unanswered question about what needs to be done to prepare for life AFTER the recession is over. Maybe Cisco’s John Chambers can offer us some insights…

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in cloud computing | 7 Comments »

« Older Entries