Latest Episodes for this Channel
Fri October 31 2008
What is the chief concern of chief information officers? According to the a recent annual survey by the Society for Information Management, the number...
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What is the chief concern of chief information officers? According to the a recent annual survey by the Society for Information Management, the number one concern of CIOs is attracting, developing,
and retaining good IT professionals. So, if you’re looking to move up the corporate IT ladder or you’re a first time IT job seeker, consider sharpening your enterprise software skills at
SAP...
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What is the chief concern of chief information officers? According to the a recent annual survey by the Society for Information Management, the number one concern of CIOs is attracting, developing,
and retaining good IT professionals. So, if you’re looking to move up the corporate IT ladder or you’re a first time IT job seeker, consider sharpening your enterprise software skills at
SAP, or working for a SAP partner, or getting SAP training and then going to work for an SAP customer. With revenues of about $10.5 billion and 50,000 employees, SAP ranks as the world’s second
largest business software company and the third largest independent software provider in revenues. SAP ERP deployments can be found in more than 41,000 companies, in more than 25 industries, and in
about 120 countries. Unlike Oracle which has grown through 30 acquisitions, SAP has grown organically by hiring people. No one knows more about the SAP hiring picture, as well as the hiring needs of
the IT industry, than Mark Steinke, vice president of global recruiting at SAP. He oversees SAP’s recruiting and staffing for professionals, senior executives, university graduates, interns,
and contingent staff. According to Steinke, the demand for IT professionals with SAP knowledge has never been greater than today. He says, “The quantity of IT candidates has dropped off because
of the demands of skills in our space.” While Steinke strongly suggests that IT candidates at all level consider SAP training, he says that technical skills might get you in the door, but
won’t give you staying power. He says that today’s business needs demand that IT employees at all levels know how to manage change, to think strategically, and to communicate effectively.
He says, “Universities do a good job of incorporating the IT skills in the curriculum, but fall short in those other areas."
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Mon October 27 2008
The Web 2.0 revolution has moved from the college campus to corporate America. While Web 2.0 makes lots of headlines, can it make lots of money for co...
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The Web 2.0 revolution has moved from the college campus to corporate America. While Web 2.0 makes lots of headlines, can it make lots of money for companies? Amy Shuen, a former professor at the
Wharton School of Business, answers this question in her new book, Web 2:0: A Strategy Guide. She explains what's different about Web 2.0 and how those differences can improve the bottom line. Rather
than...
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The Web 2.0 revolution has moved from the college campus to corporate America. While Web 2.0 makes lots of headlines, can it make lots of money for companies? Amy Shuen, a former professor at the
Wharton School of Business, answers this question in her new book, Web 2:0: A Strategy Guide. She explains what's different about Web 2.0 and how those differences can improve the bottom line. Rather
than focus on the technology, she looks at the importance of creating a Web 2.0 strategy and integrating those strategies within the existing business. She says, "You have to create places online
where people like to come together to share what they think, see, and do. When people come together over the Web, the result can be much more than the sum of the parts. The customers themselves help
to build the site, as old-fashioned word of mouth becomes hyper growth.
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Tue October 14 2008
When John E. McDermott joined Xerox as chief strategy officer, the $18 billion copier and printing giant was in recovery mode. He worked along side An...
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When John E. McDermott joined Xerox as chief strategy officer, the $18 billion copier and printing giant was in recovery mode. He worked along side Anne Mulcahey, Xerox's CEO, to crystallize the
business strategy and the turnaround strategy. In 2007, with the business in good shape, Mulcahey decided that the company needed to do a faster job of carrying out certain aspects of the business
strategy...
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When John E. McDermott joined Xerox as chief strategy officer, the $18 billion copier and printing giant was in recovery mode. He worked along side Anne Mulcahey, Xerox's CEO, to crystallize the
business strategy and the turnaround strategy. In 2007, with the business in good shape, Mulcahey decided that the company needed to do a faster job of carrying out certain aspects of the business
strategy. McDermott says, "To do that, we had to build new business processes, which are dependent of critical relationships between the business and IT." To bridge the gap between the IT
organization and the business, McDermott moved into the CIO role when Patricia Cusick, the former CIO, retired. McDermott spent his first few months on the job asking customers' CIOs how much they
spend per seat to do printing and copying activities. He says, "Most CIOs can't come up with an answer. They can tell you down to the very nickel how much they spend per seat to provision
workplace-computing services. The print and copier world has been treated as a second-class citizen by the IT organization." Xerox's biggest challenge today is to fulfill the needs of its large
customers that want services offerings around their Xerox copier and printing devices. McDermott says, "If you start to manage these devices as an infrastructure, then you have the tremendous
capacity to use their scanning capabilities as an on-ramp to a company's digital workflow." To this end, Xerox has begun to build significant value-added services on top of the infrastructure
management business that helps customers to deal with document-intensive business processes.
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Fri October 03 2008
During her climb up the corporate ladder at SAS, the world's largest privately held software company, Suzanne Gordon, SAS's vice president of informat...
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During her climb up the corporate ladder at SAS, the world's largest privately held software company, Suzanne Gordon, SAS's vice president of information technology and CIO, developed an air-tight
strategy for how IT could work in lockstep with internal SAS customers to reinforce the company's success. A roadblock stood in the way of selling her idea to management. Meanwhile, she decided to
move o...
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During her climb up the corporate ladder at SAS, the world's largest privately held software company, Suzanne Gordon, SAS's vice president of information technology and CIO, developed an air-tight
strategy for how IT could work in lockstep with internal SAS customers to reinforce the company's success. A roadblock stood in the way of selling her idea to management. Meanwhile, she decided to
move out of IT and into the sales consulting side of SAS. It was here that she saw IT from the customer's perspective. In 2003 when the CIO position came opened at SAS, a company that provides 44,000
customers with analytics software, Gordon got the job. She now could turn her vision into a reality with her IT staff of more than 300 employees. In fact, that same year, Computerworld recognized
Gordon's leadership talents by including her in the list of Premier 100 IT Executives for that year.
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Wed September 24 2008
Since joining Scottrade as CIO in 2005, Ian Patterson has racked up a series of IT accolades for the stock brokerage firm, which manages $55.7 billion...
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Since joining Scottrade as CIO in 2005, Ian Patterson has racked up a series of IT accolades for the stock brokerage firm, which manages $55.7 billion in assets. In both 2008 and 2007, Computerworld
named him to its Premier 100 IT Leaders, a list of the country top IT executives. In 2007, under Patterson's leadership, Scottrade got named to the CIO magazine's CIO 100, an award that recognizes
outs...
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Since joining Scottrade as CIO in 2005, Ian Patterson has racked up a series of IT accolades for the stock brokerage firm, which manages $55.7 billion in assets. In both 2008 and 2007, Computerworld
named him to its Premier 100 IT Leaders, a list of the country top IT executives. In 2007, under Patterson's leadership, Scottrade got named to the CIO magazine's CIO 100, an award that recognizes
outstanding strategic IT leadership. Scottrade has also made it on the InformationWeek 500 list of the most innovative users of IT in the U.S. What has made Patterson so successful? As a former
consultant with Deloitte, Patterson realized that many companies view the IT organization as an outsider, different from other business units. He says, "This never made any sense to me. Why should IT
be treated any differently from marketing or finance?" At Scottrade, Patterson created an environment to converge IT into the overall corporate strategy to promote growth and profitability. He says,
"Of course, a strategy without execution is just a dream. Our leadership meets regularly to review our five-year plan and to make any adjustments to it."
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Large Numbers Podcasts
