Digital leadership report 2014

Accelerating local innovations while boosting global synergies The 2014 Digital Leadership Report

What’s next.

Table of Contents Methodology Introduction ................................................................................... 3 2

Survey Results ............................................................................. 4 Profiles of Digital Leaders ......................................................... 7 Fabrice Benaut, IFR........................................................................ 8 Paolo Daperno, illycaffè SpA ...................................................... 9 Federico Florez, Ferrovial ............................................................ 10 Mark Foulsham, esure .................................................................. 11 Anita Gjesbakk, National Collection Agency of Norway ...... 12 Rui Gomes, Hospital Fernando Fonseca E.P.E. ....................... 13 Cécile Gonfroid, Radio Télévision Belge Francophone ......................................................................... 14 Agustín González, Prosegur Compañía de Seguridad S.A. ........................................................................ 15 Maarten Hillenaar, the Central Government of the Netherlands .................................................................... 16 Vincent Léaux, City of Vélizy-Villacoublay .............................. 17 Eric Lippert, Lombard International Assurance S.A. ............... 18 Fernando Lucero Batalla, IBERDROLA S.A. .............................. 19 Nuno Miller, Farfetch Ltd. ........................................................... 20 Alexandre Ramos, Lusitania Companhia de Seguros, SA and N Seguros .......................................... 21 Daniele Rizzo, Autogrill spa ........................................................ 22 Frank Stockx, ING Belgium ......................................................... 23 Jeroen Tas, Philips Healthcare ................................................... 24 Günter Weinrauch, ADAC e.V. .................................................... 25

Next Steps: Building a results-driven CIO community ....... 26

The findings in this report are based on two principle sources of original data: survey data from 89 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from 10 European countries and in-depth interviews with 18 of Europe’s CIOs. The survey questions are in part based on the seminal work of Weill and Worner (2009) studying how the roles of CIOs have changed, on questions developed last year in collaboration with Joe Peppard, professor at the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, as well as on questions developed in collaboration with Jeanne Ross, Director and Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Information Systems Research. The brief survey asked participating CIOs to estimate what percentage of their time in 2013 they and their team spent across three general activities: Managing and innovating delivery of IT services; Managing and innovating business processes; and Improving and innovating products and services for external customers. In addition, participants were asked to estimate what percentage of the time spent on each of the three areas of activity involved working with colleagues from the rest of the business. Another set of questions asked them about digitization. From April to May of 2014, CIONET country offices solicited members to participate in the brief survey. Over 110 member CIOs participated. The results were first cleaned (e.g., incomplete surveys were removed) and then analyzed in detail.

In addition to the survey data, the authors conducted in-depth interviews with 18 CIOs. These CIOs were selected by CIONET Country Offices based on the winners of national awards for CIOs of the Year. Building on their survey responses, the authors asked interview participants for examples of how they lead teams to achieve and sustain a significant range of accomplishments. Another set of questions was around what key skills are necessary to fulfill each type of activity effectively and how their organizations foster such skills.

Acknowledgements This report was authored by Frederic De Meyer, Program Director at CIONET, and Nils Olaya Fonstad, Associate Director, INSEAD Faculty & Research. This report and the research it is based on would not have been possible without the generous support of many people. The authors greatly acknowledge the CIOs who took the time to complete the survey and especially the CIOs who took time from their busy schedules to be interviewed and their colleagues who helped review the profiles. Special thanks to Hendrik Deckers, Amandine Gatelier and Mieke Pauwels of CIONET, along with the many leaders of CIONET’s Country Offices. The authors are also grateful for the support of colleagues at INSEAD, Virginie BongeotMinet, Nurina Merdikawati, Aung Myint Thein, and Eduardo Rodriguez Montemayor as well as for Karel and his team at Echtgoed for designing the report.

Introduction What strikes us when reviewing the profiles of the 18 finalists of this year’s ‘CIO of the year’ contest included in this report, is the extent with which these CIO’s are now embedded in all the aspects of the operational and strategic evolution of their organization. Some have moved on to other (non-IT related) leadership roles, others have been granted with additional responsibilities that go well beyond the management of ICT. Still others have initiated new projects and ideas that have a substantial impact on the bottom line business growth of their companies.

Chief Information Officers are earning their role as business leaders first and foremost We see this as a genuine sign that through their vision and accomplishments, today’s digital leaders are considered to be business leaders first and foremost. But more than this, we also see this as an indication of a fundamental shift in the way organizations perceive the role of technology in general, and digitisation more specifically, in their overall strategy.

Now more than ever, so it seems, the digital strategy is at the core of the business strategy. This dramatic shift originates from a renewed focus of the CIO’s. The survey we conducted for this report shows that CIOs, in average, spend at least 40% of their time working with people outside of their IT

organization. They expect this amount to increase in the coming years.

However, our in-depth interviews with the finalists uncovered many more ways in which CIO’s drive their IT team closer to ‘the business’. Most of them require from their IT employees to physically sit next to non-IT employees for a couple of days per year, in order to increase their business acumen. Others go even further and organize genuine ‘hackaton’ days with employees from other divisions, working together on strategic technological initiatives, with quite some impressive results.

Reflecting on our conclusions from the previous editions of this report, we see plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the future of digital leaders.

As the examples in this report show, these leaders and their teams are now an integral part of the business. Not merely a reactive support function, but a proactive strategic asset that brings their businesses to the next level.

We hope the examples in this report will inspire other companies to put their digital strategy at the forefront of their business, and provide ideas to other digital leaders on how to shape the future successes of their organisations.

Frederic De Meyer Program Director, CIONET Nils Fonstad Associate Director, INSEAD

3

Survey Results 4

Consistent with the past three years of surveying CIOs, and contrary to traditional perceptions of what CIOs do, our data show that CIOs spend a significant percentage of their time outside of managing ICT services.

A

B C

As organizations increasingly depend on ICT for both their operations and their innovations, they need digital leaders that can simultaneously lead teams in the following three areas.

Ensuring ICT services are delivered across the organization at the desired cost and service levels; Managing and innovating business processes; and Improving and innovating products and services for external customers.

We have identified three types of CIOs, depending on what general areas of activities they spend a greater than average time percentage of their time in. Please note that in the majority of the cases, CIOs spend some percentage of their time in all three activities. The key distinction is in what activity they tend to focus on most, relative to their peers.

1

2

3

Technology-focused

Business Process-focused

External Customer-focused

CIOs and IT Groups that are primarily focused on ensuring that IT infrastructure, applications, and related services are delivered across the organization at the desired cost and service levels.

CIOs and IT Groups who spend a greater than average percentage of time managing and innovating business processes, such as shared services, global supply chain, and operations.

B B

+

C

+

< 50% B

>= 50% and - C >0 C

Types of CIOs in 2014 and anticipated in 2016 1 36%

3 25%

36+39+25A 15+49+36A 2014

2016

2 39%

3 36%

1 15%

2 49%

CIOs and IT Groups who spend a greater than average percentage of time improving and innovating products and services for external customers.

B

+ B

>= 50% and - C <= 0 C

In 2014, the 2 most common types of CIO were Technology-focused and Business Process-focused CIOs, representing respectively 36% and 39% of the total CIO population. A majority of CIOs reported that over the next couple of years, they anticipate that they will be expected to spend more of their time either managing and innovating business processes or improving and innovating products and services for external customers. Several reported that they expect their time to shift so significantly that they will become a different type of CIO. As a result, by 2016, only a sixth of CIOs will be Technology-focused; about half expect to be Business Process-focused; and just over a third expect to become External Customer-focused. As CIOs expect to take on more responsibilities, the skills they and their teams will need to draw on to accomplish those responsibilities will also expand.

3-D Expertise

As the survey data and profiles of CIOs illustrate, effective digital leaders have developed a “t-shaped” portfolio of skills, representing three dimensions of expertise.

-- A vertical set of competences that represents expertise or “deep knowledge” in systems of ICT, such as enterprise architecture; IT governance; application development; security and data analytics; -- An overlapping vertical set of competences that represents expertise in business operations, such function and operational expertise; product expertise; customer and sector expertise; and -- A horizontal set of “transversal competences” that represents expertise

in developing organizations, such as developing a compelling vision; design and experimentation; and negotiation and change management. This set of competences is relevant across a variety of situations and enable them collaborate effectively across multiple boundaries (e.g., organizational, geographic, occupational, etc.).

Digital leaders spend on average 40 percent of their time engaged with nonIT colleagues. Our data reveal that for all 3 types of CIOs, working with non-IT colleagues is an important aspect of ensuring ICT services are delivered across the organization at the desired cost and service levels; managing and innovating

business processes; and improving and innovating products and services for external customers. Both Technologyfocused and Business Process-focused CIOs, spend at least 45% of their time managing and innovating business processes with non-IT colleagues. All three types of CIOs spend at least a third of the time they spend improving and innovating products and services for external customers engaged with non-IT colleagues. In short, the data underscore a point made by all of the 18 CIOs profiled in this report: organizations that want to enhance the business value of IT must share that responsibility with IT.

Last year, % of total time working with non-IT colleagues spent on A B C

1

ICT services business processes external customers A B C

2

A B C

3

A B C

370+630= 450+550= 350+650= 230+770= 550+450= 390+610= 280+720= 450+550= 490+510=

37% 45% 35%

23% 55% 39%

28% 45% 49%

5

Digital leaders are best qualified to orchestrate competitive agility.

6

As organizations rely more and more on digital technologies to operate and innovate, more of what they do becomes interdependent and they must contend with a fundamental paradox of agility: sustained local agility requires global coordination. In highly digital and interdependent environments, those who can sustain competitive agility are those who have figured out the optimal balance between providing local project teams with the autonomy to develop solutions specific to local needs and coordinating synergies across local solutions. When local project teams within an organization are not suffi-

ciently coordinated with each other, the organization accumulates disparate IT solutions, creating “digital spaghetti” – islands of technology, digitized business processes and data that are increasingly expensive to maintain, difficult to integrate and scale, and paradoxically, inflexible. In fact, this “digital spaghetti” soon presents a significant source of operational, financial, and strategic risk to the organization. Yet, if global coordination consists of too many standards and governance processes, then local project teams are unable to innovate solutions that are sufficiently specific to local needs. The challenge

then is for organizations to quickly and continuously learn the optimal balance between local autonomy and global coordination.

The profiles of the 18 successful digital leaders in this report offer several examples of how Chief Information Officers help organizations achieve and sustain competitive agility.

Our survey data reveal several factors that distinguish competitively agile firms.

Two of the most significant factors that distinguish competitively agile firms are digitized platform maturity and program management.

Digitized Platform Maturity The degree with which the components of a firm’s digitized platform have been accumulated in a coordinated manner, with sufficient standardization and sharing of technologies, digitized business processes and data across business units. (from a scale of 1-5)

An important distinction is digitized platform maturity, which refers to the degree with which the components of a firm’s digitized platform have been accumulated in a coordinated manner, with sufficient standardization and sharing of technologies, digitized business processes and data across business units. When a firm has “digital spaghetti,” it has an immature digitized platform.

Many of the digital leaders profiled in the report inherited immature digitized platforms and focused a significant part of their time in maturing their organization’s digitized platforms. In order to

72+28+ 61+39+ 3,62

Competitively Agile Organizations

3,06

Insufficiently Agile Organizations

64+36 45+55+ 2,57

Program Management Grouping of interdependent projects under a single manager who can trade off resources among them. (from a scale of 0-4)

1,80

accelerate the maturity process, they worked closely with non-IT colleagues to speed up the necessary organizational changes.

Another important distinction is program management, which is an effective mechanism to ensure that non-IT leaders learn how to and share responsibility for prioritizing resources. When local projects are insufficiently coordinated, IT is often burdened with doing too many at once, thereby risking all with delays, over budgeting, and poor execution. Several of the CIOs profiled

in this report draw on program management to help the rest of the business take responsibilities for prioritization.

Organizations often mistake agility with simply local autonomy, yet Chief Information Officers know too well that sustained competitive agility requires both rapid local innovations and global synergies, such as digitized platform maturity. Our survey data underscore that any organization struggling to become competitively agile would do well to seek digital leaders such as those profiled in this report.

Learning from Accomplished Digital Leaders In this section, we present 18 profiles of CIOs who clearly illustrate how digital leaders are essential to the success of their organizations and how they are creating value for their customers and partners. Featured in the following profiles is an impressive range of

business value created by the CIOs, their ICT departments, and colleagues from the rest of their organizations.

These profiles highlight the importance of fostering digital leaders for European organizations to succeed and compete in today’s global and digital economy.

Fabrice Benaut IFR

Paolo Daperno illycaffè S.p.A

Federico Florez Ferrovial

Mark Foulsham esure

Anita Gjesbakk National Collection Agency of Norway

Rui Gomes Hospital Fernando Fonseca E.P.E.

Cécile Gonfroid Radio Télévision Belge Francophone

Agustín González Prosegur Compañía de Seguridad S.A.

Maarten Hillenaar The Central Government of the Netherlands (CIO from 2009-2013)

Vincent Léaux City of Vélizy-Villacoublay

Eric Lippert Lombard International Assurance S.A.

Fernando Lucero Batalla IBERDROLA S.A.

Nuno Miller Farfetch Ltd. (CIO from 2011 until 2014)

Alexandre Ramos Lusitania Companhia de Seguros, SA and N Seguros

Daniele Rizzo Autogrill S.p.A

Frank Stockx ING Belgium (CIO from 2011-2014)

Jeroen Tas Philips Healthcare

Günter Weinrauch ADAC e.V.

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Fabrice Benaut IFR

8

IFR

A selection of recent accomplishments

IFR is a global market intelligence company supplying marketing intelligence to Fortune 500 manufacturers, retailers, distributors and advertising agencies around the world.

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-IFR is fully integrated into the GfK Group of companies. GfK is a global market research firm headquartered in Germany. In 2013, GfK generated 1,5B€ in turnover and employed over 13,000 employees. It is the 4th biggest company of its kind, and has presence in over 100 countries.

A 360° approach to collaboration With 30 years of experience within the same company, during 16 of which he has served as CIO, Benaut had the chance to develop a solid and original vision of his role as a CIO, and develop himself as a thought-leader on his favourite subject: Big Data.

Throughout his years as a CIO he has seen the role evolve tremendously. “It is undoubtedly the function that has been subject to the greatest changes”, he explains. And according to Benaut, this function will even become more important in the future. Where the CIO is now very often a musician, he will become the orchestrator in the future. However, this demands a very new approach from the CIO, where he is not necessarily leading projects any longer, but participates and contributes in multiple others, sometimes as a leader, and sometimes not. He increasingly needs to function in a matrix system, and contribute according to the match between his specific skills and the concrete requirements of the project.

But what essentially will drive the increased relevance of the CIO function, according to Benaut, is Big Data. The key is not in maintaining and storing data, but to make them ‘talk’ and answer business questions that previously were not asked. It is only in this way that IT can maximize its relevance to the business.

“The new task of the CIO is to simplify what, at first, looks complicated” Benaut says.

This vision is certainly influenced by the professional environment in which Benaut evolves, since data –and the comprehension of data- is the liveblood of the company

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Developed a 360° approach to his organization, which changes organically according to the skills and resources needed for specific projects; Developed an award-winning Big Data solution for GfK and constantly works with external clients (sometimes in cocreation) to help them in their Big Data needs; Integrated ICT environment of 16 acquired companies spread over 60 countries.

Benaut works for. Unsurprisingly, Benaut has spent major parts of his time as CIO with the clients of IFR and its mother company GfK. For instance, in close partnership with these clients, Benaut and his team developed dedicated software to analyse the entertainment market, and co-created a platform to provide marketing reports for the book, video and music markets.

But Benaut took on some important internal challenges as well. From 2011 to 2013 the major focus of Benaut was on the harmonization of the 16 companies IFR acquired throughout its history, spread over 60 countries, as well as the integration of IFR into GfK. In this capacity Benaut had the overall responsibility over product-services definitions, catalogue of services and usage improvements, and the reduction of duplicate processes and platforms.

The biggest realization of Benaut, however, concerned the implementation of a complex data integration platform to address Big Data issues, such as data variety, volume, velocity and veracity, at IFR and GfK. This new editor solution was co-created by Benaut and a software company, and received several awards. Thanks to this new solution business users can now provide their own business rules that enable them data collected into relevant, decision-driven knowledge.

his organization works. This entails a holistic view of the skills and expertise, the resources available (including crowdsourcing), the value (including things like brand image and reputation) as well as the opportunity to co-create and co-produce projects and solutions.

In the highly organic type of organization Benaut created the CIO can be project leader or provide support, dependent on the type of projects and the stage in which the project resides. “The common goal of the project team is the best way to ensure its success”, according to Benaut.

Benaut has since collaborated on 2 books about Big Data, and is a frequent speaker about this topic at international events. He is also involved in designing job definitions for Big Data. Although he calls himself an intrapreneur, he is also increasingly involved with external startups in the field of IT and big data.

The fundamental role of the CIO is changing dramatically from a musician to an orchestrator.

His experience and expertise in terms of Big Data led Benaut to develop what he calls a “collaborative 360° approach” to the way

Paolo Daperno illycaffè S.p.A

illycaffè S.p.A

A selection of recent accomplishments

In 1933, Francesco Illy developed the modern espresso machine in Trieste, Italy, the Adriatic port town where coffee first entered Europe. In 2013, it had over 1000 employees worldwide and its gross revenue reached 373.9 M€.

Available in over 140 countries, with more than 200 espressamente illy coffee bars locations worldwide and more than 1500 independent cafes participating in its global Artisti del Gusto network, 60% of illy coffee is enjoyed outside of Italy. The company also runs over 20 Università del caffè (“University of Coffee”), providing hands-on instruction to coffee growers, and guarantees above-market prices to growers who meet its quality standards.

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Boosting the digital caffeine of the business Since joining illycaffè in 2008, as both CIO and Business Process Director, Paolo Daperno and his team of about 25 employees have focused IT on strengthening the company’s ability to sense and respond quickly to the demands of consumers and customers. “Our fundamental role,” explains Daperno, “is to connect the business to technology by explaining how technologies can be exploited to serve business objectives.” In 2011, as part this objective, they launched the Global Web Platform project to build a robust web platform to support a variety of digitally-enabled capabilities: provide a rich, seamless and cohesive brand experience across illy sites, e-shops and social networks; establish one-to-one relationships with customers, leveraging “Circolo illy” (a vast online community for illy fans) and other social networks; consolidate e-shops on a single, global platform; and create a single, unified business-to-consumer (B2C) database with CRM capability. Within a year, they had accomplished all but the B2C database. By 2013, the database was in place, enabling illy to connect internal and external data, from external partners such as suppliers and logistics partners. With the new platform, the company has been able to develop greater intelligence on customers. It is now a key platform for B2C marketing campaigns; next steps will be connecting on and off line business and supporting the coffee cluster experience at Expo 2015 (Milan).

With the Global Web Platform in place, Daperno and his team have been able to introduce more quickly and more robust capabilities. Illy recently decided to develop the capabilities to focus the retail strategy,

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Implemented a Global Web Platform from which the IT team then helped illy provide a rich, seamless and cohesive brand experience across illy sites, e-shops and social networks; establish one-to-one relationships with customers; consolidate e-shops on a single, global platform; and create a single, unified B2C database with CRM capability.

Any new business functionality can now be applied to more than one country (e.g. coffee continuity program for consumers) is only paid once.

Collaborated in the development of two new models of digitally enhanced coffee machines.

Built illy’s capabilities to enhance operations by generating and analyzing data.

requiring integration of the Point of Sales (POS) in each store with the on line experience. First, Daperno and his team integrated the POS with their ERP and reporting system for the directly managed stores. Now, they are implementing cross channel functionality. Daperno emphasizes that he and his team “would not have been able to react to business requirements without having a clear vision and state of the art of the Global Web Platform. The next step will be to strengthen consumer loyalty management. It’s a process of continuous improvement.”

As part of the process introducing digitallyenabled capabilities, Daperno and his team have played a critical role in redesigning processes. They helped shape an efficient process to manage payment from consumer and logistics/shipping to fulfill customer orders.

They have also promoted collaboration across business units, such as helping direct channel managers/ directors in Italy, Europe and China coordinate their strategies and leverage more from each other.

They also helped to better integrate teams sitting in US with those in Italy.

the committee in 2011 and it meets 8-10 times a year.

As illy learns to innovate with IT, Daperno has developed his IT team to better support digital innovation. Within the IT group, he created a new unit to support digital innovation, ecommerce development and customer-relations management. Members of Daperno’s team collaborated in the prototyping of two new coffee machines. They contributed in two fundamental ways. First, they helped the team exploit the latest machine-to-machine, WiFi, and data warehousing technologies.

Second, they are creating a data gathering and standardizing process that was independently of the model of the machine, avoiding ad-hoc infrastructure development per each machine.

Daperno insists that these types of fruitful collaborations “confirm that only when IT and business work hand in hand do projects succeed beyond expectations.”

We are agile and continuously improving because we took the time to develop a digital platform and governance model

Another way Daperno promotes synergies across the company is by hosting an IT Steering Committee where business colleagues, such as the CEO, the CFO, as well as those responsible for supply-chain management and customer relations, meet to share how they are using IT; prioritize projects and facilitate their execution; and allocate resources: people, time, money. Daperno introduced

Finally, as part of their collaborative process, the IT group continuously seeks to improve how it operates. For each new project, for example, members challenge themselves to simplify existing processes and organization in order to increase efficiency and flexibility; rationalize infrastructure and business systems; and increase collaboration among countries and departments, centralizing activities and involving everyone in common business projects. In this manner, Daperno and his team aim to enhance even further the digital capabilities of illy.

9

Federico Florez Ferrovial

10

Ferrovial

A selection of recent accomplishments

Ferrovial is a Spanish group operating in infrastructure projects.

The group has four areas of activities: Services (including facility management and waste services); Toll roads; Construction and Airports (among which Heathrow). In 2013, its revenues grew 9% to reach €8,2b. It employs over 66,000 people worldwide, and 78% of the ebitda comes outside of its home market Spain.

Ferrovial’s goal as a leading developer and operator in the infrastructure and services sector is to continue to shape the future of society with a continuous focus on talent, integrity, safety, excellence and innovation.

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Leading by innovating digitally In 2008, when Federico Florez was appointed as CIO of the industrial giant Ferrovial, he faced a tremendous challenge. Due to the huge number of historical acquisitions there was no such thing as a centralized IT department.

Rather, Florez inherited a heterogeneous set of 10 local IT departments, each working with its own systems and different vendors and serving over 500 internal companies. Furthermore, these IT divisions were purely IT-focused organisations, rather than business-driven ICT organisations.

Florez took a very structured approach to tackle this challenge. His first step was to simplify, align and integrate all the IT functions into one coherent, central business unit.

To achieve this, he undertook a vast array of initiatives. One such initiative was to externalize several functions like infrastructure and communications, resulting in savings of up to 20%. For this project Florez and his team received the Award of best outsourcing project from the European Outsourcing Association.

Florez also centralized all the IT purchases at group level to benefit from synergies and fully leverage the buying power of Ferrovial. This resulted in a cost savings of 25%. This effort was so successful that Ferrovial decided to nominate Florez as chairman of its Purchasing Committee with responsibilities over all purchases at Ferrovial.

Florez also developed a highly strategic approach to cloud services. He transferred two key functions, Human Resources and Purchasing, onto the cloud. Transferring HR –

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Cost savings of 15-20% in infrastructure and communications with outsourcing; Moved all HR and Purchasing systems in the Cloud in just 6 months; Ensured business alignment of IT by creating a ‘business IT’ function, resulting in an customer satisfaction increase from business customers for 4 to 7 (on a scale of 10) in three years; Established a new culture and process of innovation, leading to 500 new ideas every two years, of which 35 become new projects with impact in the P&L.

and 70,000 employees – to the cloud took 6 months instead of the anticipated 18 months for such a project. This time-saving resulted from observing a simple yet hard-to-follow rule: not to be misled into believing that cloud service providers have no limits to their offering.

As Florez put it himself, “We adapted ourselves to the services in the cloud, and not the other way around”.

approach, taking some risks, and eliminating projects early if they showed no value to the P&L of Ferrovial. In many cases the projects implied working with startups, establishing new types of partnerships and experimenting with new business models such as open innovation.

To rapidly innovate internally and with external partners, we streamlined and consolidated our operations and developed a global ICT-based platform

However, the major challenge Florez needed to tackle was to turn IT from a cost center into a business enabling and supporting function.

To achieve this, Florez created business line IT functions, whose mission consists of working together with business unit to make sure IT serves the needs of that business. As a result, in just three years, customer satisfaction scores for the IT division (another process introduced

by Florez) rose dramatically from 4 to 7 on a scale of 10.

Having accomplished significant cost reductions and enhancing the business impact of IT, Florez was in a stronger position to expand the strategic role of IT at Ferrovial. He proposed to the CEO of Ferrovial to establish an innovation function. Today, it consists of 50 employees who investigate about 100 ideas and launch 30 innovation projects a year. To achieve this success, Florez introduced a new approach to innovation at Ferrovial. The new culture of innovation implied implementing a startup

Making this happen in a risk-averse environment took extensive efforts in educating both executives and middle management in the value and process of innovation.

This new approach to innovation has led to the creation of new and profitable business lines.

One example is the development new ways to monitor and benchmark the energy usage of buildings, which is now being commercialized and which accelerated Ferrovial’s entrance into the energy efficiency market worldwide.

The combination of his IT and innovation roles has led to a new job title for Florez. He is now the ‘Chief Information and Innovation Officer’ of Ferrovial. In the future Florez expects to leverage both technology and innovation even further to strengthen the competitive position and sustain the business growth of Ferrovial.

Open innovation will be a vital aspect to his future work since, as he mentions: “99% of the ideas for our business growth sit with the customers”.

Mark Foulsham esure

esure

A selection of recent accomplishments

In 2000, Peter Wood CBE, founded esure to offer competitive insurance coverage using the Internet as its primary sales channel. His aim was to harness internet efficiency to give a better deal to responsible drivers and careful homeowners. From the outset, esure’s goal was to offer superior service - on both the internet and phone - while using technologically advanced systems and underwriting to keep premiums low.

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-In just a few years, esure became one of the fastest growing insurers ever, with over 1 million customers joining them before its 5th birthday and less than 13 years after launching the company floated on the London Stock Market with a market capitalisation of over £1.3bn.

How IT and business go hand in hand Operating in a multi-channel environment is always challenging to anyone responsible for IT. So what to think about an IT team that deliberately creates an additional sales channel for its organization?

This is what happened at insurance company esure, where the IT team undertook the complete transformation of the customer-facing web platform in order to make it mobileenabled and optimised for ‘small screen sales’.

Foulsham and his team saw mobile commerce as a growing demand of esure’s customers and hence an early mover opportunity for the organization. An IT team anticipating new business opportunities is no small feat, but the true innovation was the unique way Foulsham managed this dramatic transformation.

Firstly, the transformation was realized on top of the existing legacy web platform. Foulsham and his team found ways to prepare the platform for esure’s mobile customers without re-engineering any of the previous investments it had made on its web platform. This dramatically reduced the total cost of this transformation by re-using the historic investment in the company’s systems.

More impressive is how the transformation itself was realized. Foulsham and his team organized a series of ‘hackathons’ to manage this project from the scoping phase through to testing. This hackathon involved employees from different business units of esure, all of which were selected based on their specific expertise and ability to provide maximum input

Created a new (mobile) quote and buy channel for esure in just three months, a project that would have taken over a year using a traditional project approach ; Adopted a unique ‘hackathon’ methodology which includes employees from multiple disciplines in the organization to design and deploy new technology projects in short, intensely focused timescales; Alignment of IT with business strategy by requiring his team to constantly look for best practices in other companies and industries, and have them sit next to business functions at least once a year.

to the project. Foulsham: “We recognized that this ultra-agile approach needed to be co-located, iterative and resourced by the best subject matter experts with a ‘can-do’ attitude”. This team then came together in three intensive 4-day sessions to work on all aspects of the project and make sure it would align smoothly with the business imperative.

Most of all, the distinct approach ensured a delivery of the project in just three months.

“A classic approach could have meant over a year’s worth of project work. On completion we had overtaken our competitors in the level of mobile sophistication,” says Foulsham, “the way in which everyone worked collaboratively towards a common goal was fantastic!”

This effort has resulted in a marked growth in mobile sales revenue for esure at a time when key competitors are still working to develop truly mobile optimised journeys. Just as important to Foulsham, it created a genuine team-spirit across the multidisciplinary employees involved that the company was able to draw on for subsequent projects.

The team continues to deliver innovation opportunities that social media may bring to esure, such as enabling customers to purchase insurance through Facebook.

The diversity of this team, in tandem with business colleagues, is certainly key to the success it generates. After all, as Foulsham puts it, “there is no monopoly on good ideas”.

the culture at esure, where the executives – including Foulsham – meet every morning for half an hour to go through the previous day’s results, all using iPAD to assess business performance. It is also an embodiment of the way Foulsham perceives his role and responsibility as an IT leader, where “simplicity is key”.

“I spend a lot of my time with the business”, Foulsham told us. It certainly helps that in the nine years he has been in the company, he has been in direct touch with many parts of the organization, from Sales and Operations, Customer Service, Fraud and Cyber criminality to Procurement, which he still heads today.

This also explains a lot about how he sees the mission of IT at esure: Foulsham aspires to have IT completely correlated with the business strategy of esure. To realize this, Mark and his team relentlessly look for lessons from other companies and industries both within and outside its business sector. He tasks his team with staying in touch with market trends and opportunities, but equally important is he requires from his team to physically set next to a business function for at least one day a year.

Be prepared to fail fast and move on

The hackathon ethic is a fine example of

As an IT leader he also deems it critical to think ahead on which parts of the overall business will be affected by the changes initiated by IT, and he is constantly on the outlook for synergies between all the requests he receives from the business.

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Anita Gjesbakk National Collection Agency of Norway

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National Collection Agency

A selection of recent accomplishments

The Norwegian NCA’s task is to collect debt for 35 agencies in the Norwegian government. In addition they operate collection systems for the bailiffs and manage accounting the Police. The NCA is a subordinate agency organized under the Ministry of Finance. The NCA’s task is to collect on various state claims, such as police fines, debt collection from defaulted government taxes or other government debts. With 370 employees, the NCA collects about 480M€ per year from the management of more than 190 different types of claims from 35 clients.

The NCA has bailiff authority.

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Designing a self-service based government services Governments all over the world are under tremendous pressure to deliver more and better services to their citizens, at an ever-decreasing cost. To further complicate matters, citizens are demanding to communicate with governmental institutions through a variety of new channels. Face-to-face and telephone are no longer the most sufficient nor efficient ways of communicating – for both citizens and government institutions.

The National Collection Agency of Norway forms a fine example of how a government agency is effectively responding to this challenge. The web-based, self-service system it has built enables debtors to the Norwegian state to grant themselves installment plans and arrange deferred payments, but also automises to a great extend the complaints and claims citizens have with the administration. Through a transparent system, the debtors can now see the status of their claims, the payment rate and the salary deduction performed by the state. This project has been rewarded with the “Rosing Award”, the Norwegian Computer Society’s award for the most user-friendly webpage.

However, the aim of this transformation was not only to smoothen the services brought to the citizens, but to optimize the internal processes as well. As part of the second endeavor, Gjesbakk and her team initiated a project to simplify the management and maintenance of over 1000 letter templates the agency used to generate. All of these are now managed on a single module, and are optimized through

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Implemented a self-service tool for debtors of the Norwegian state to manage their claims, complaints and communication with the agency in an automated way, resulting in less complaints and overall transparency to the citizens; Simplified processes and documents for internal use through technology, hereby increasing the level of service to the clients while reducing the number of customer service agents needed; Ensured a strong collaboration with the business part of the organization, through constant evaluation and communication, by having the CIO as a member of the top management group, by making sure to recruit people from business to work in IT, and by asking IT people to physically sit next to customer-facing employees in order to understand their challenges and needs.

integration with email, text messages and invoices.

The vision of Gjesbakk has no doubt been instrumental to this success. The tools and processes that were created were preceded by extensive research about the exact wishes and behavior of the end customer. While during the design phase, the systems were regularly tested by fictitious customers. The exact and profound knowledge of the user was absolutely key, according to Gjesbakk, but so were other factors.

challenges and problems they are facing, and provide a technological answer to these.

Lots of things have improved thanks to the work of Gjesbakk and her team. The selfservice tool for customer service has enabled a better service with a reduced customer service team, since this team now receives around 12% less phone calls, letters and emails to handle.

The number of inquiries received through the website has increased by 50%, at the cost of inquiries through other channels.

The self-service system is likely the reason why the voluntary phase of the debt collection At least as important for this project just as for has increased, while the number of instances other projects Gjesbakk is leading, is the very where debt was collected by coercive measstrong collaboration between her IT division ures has actually decreased. The system has and the business side of the agency. This is done a great deal in making the salary deduckey to success – from the start the mission of tion from the state more transparent, allowing the agency was to be technology-driven, as the debtors to check the calculation basis well as to the IT mindedness of its CEO who, of that deduction and acting whenever the without being a gadget freak, understands the information proves to be wrong – but these importance of IT in the digital transformation cases have been reduced significantly since of government services and provide strong the system was put in place. Overall, Gjesbakk support to these transformations. But the feels the eService reinforced the legal protecstrong collaboration is also fostered by some tion of the debtors. The decline in number of of the agility concepts Gjesbakk introduced. complaints the agency receives is certainly a Her emphasis is on continuous communicasolid indication of this feeling. Moreover, the tion, evaluation and improvement. Equally NCA has attained a reduction in collection cost important is the business per money unit at 35 % acumen of the profesover the last five years. At Continuous sionals working in IT. To the same time the colcommunication, maximize this, Gjesbakk lection per man year has often recruits people increased by 50 %. evaluation and from the ‘business side’ improvement are of her organization, and Going forward Gjesbakk essential to achieve and demands from her staff and her team will continue sustain string alignment that they would sit next to be instrumental in the between IT and the rest to employees who deal overall strategy of NCA with customers, for them – particularly its digital of the organization. to understand the real strategy.

Rui Gomes Hospital Fernando Fonseca E.P.E.

Hospital Fernando Fonseca E.P.E.

A selection of recent accomplishments

Hospital Prof. Doutor Fernando Fonseca (HFF) was created as a public institution in October 2008, after 13 years under private management. Currently, it has 2900 employees and about 750 beds serving the areas of Amadora and Sintra, near Lisbon (about 600,000 inhabitants). While under private management, the hospital had accumulated a series of problems. Since becoming completely public, the hospital has made a complete turn-around. It is integrated with the country’s National Health Services and has become a national role model to other hospitals and to the industry.

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Using IT to significantly enhance patient care during tough economic times In 2009, when Gomes first joined Hospital Fernando Fonseca, the institution had just changed from a privately managed to a completely public hospital. Under private management, investments in IT were low and uncoordinated and the IT landscape had become “chaotic,” reflecting the inefficient and unsustainable manner in which the hospital was operating more broadly. When the government took complete control of the hospital, the hospital’s Board of Directors saw it as an opportunity to use IT to transform the hospital into a role model for the industry. Unfortunately, at the same time, a global financial crisis was affecting Portugal especially negatively and in response, the government slashed HFF’s budget for CAPEX and OPEX by over 50%. Gomes and his colleagues at HFF had to transform HFF with significantly fewer resources than originally planned and IT was a fundamental part of the solution.

Although HFF was working under significant budget constraints, a clear indication of the strategic importance of IT to the senior management team of HFF is that the IT group increased from 4 to 19 full-time equivalents.

To eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen IT’s capacity to deliver, Gomes and his team set out to rationalize the IT landscape. They centralized all databases and application servers by adopting a private cloud within the organization. They moved 80 percent of all the hospital’s 160 application servers onto the cloud and replaced 500 desktops with cloud-enabled ultra-thin clients, thereby allowing health pro-

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Developed a low-cost high-quality Electronic Clinical Process that enhanced patient and professionals safety and enabled analysis of data to improve healthcare.

Rationalized and virtualized the IT landscape, and in the process saved over 200K€ per year since 2010.

Established CI2, an internal competence unit that incubates technological projects, fosters partnerships with universities and the industry, and stimulates the health information systems market in Portugal.

fessionals to use their identify card to quickly access, enter and share from and across hospital departments. These changes also helped reduce the hospital’s carbon footprint.

In parallel, Gomes and his colleagues also succeeded in deploying a high quality Electronic Clinical Process across all specialized clinical services (about 30), accessible to over 500 health professionals and supporting staff working in Emergencies, Inpatient and Outpatient Services. Traditionally, processes were too bureaucratic and from the point of view of patients, too uncoordinated. For example, a simple request like purchasing inventory needed around 3 weeks to be approved and included a review by the Board and multiple approvals from several departments. During the process of receiving care from HFF, patients interact with several stakeholders, from doctors, to administrative staff, to nurses and managers.

Unfortunately, there was poor coordination across the stakeholders.

The results of the Electronic Clinical Process were impressive. Overall, Gomes estimates over 200K€ per year since 2010, were saved due to operational efficiencies. In addition, the collaboration and data sharing enabled by the platform fostered synergies, such as the monitoring of influenza epidemics. In 2013, the Emergency Department was able to track and predict flu peaks and allocate resources accordingly needed in advance for treatment, thereby improving the treatment of outbreaks.

Gomes and his colleagues at HFF believe that key to sustaining the transformation of HFF and achieving even more with IT at the hospital is to ensure HFF has digital leaders – people who understand both how hospitals operate and how develop systems of IT. In 2010, they established within the hospital CI2 (http:// www.ci2.pt), an internal competence unit where hospital employees work with software vendors and universities to develop healthcare applications. Teams representing a variety of stakeholders and occupations collaborate on achieving target and measurable results. In the process, CI2 aims stimulate the development of health information systems market in Portugal. Since 2009 until 2014, about 24 graduate students had completed internships at CI2, of which 20% were employed by the hospital and the rest are working in the healthcare sector.

The real value and the real challenge of virtualization is changing, simplifying and integrating the business processes that rely on IT.

To correct these problems, Gomes and his colleagues at the hospital redesigned and integrated key processes into a single portal.

The online portal allows for important supplies to be approved within a day rather than several weeks. For example, if the cardiology department needs to buy equipment, such as an imaging workstation for daily diagnosis, the directors who need to approve the request will get an e-mail and with a click of the button the requisition will be granted. The Electronic Clinical Process also enhanced the process of tracking and managing complaints.

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Cécile Gonfroid Radio Télévision Belge Francophone

Radio Télévision Belge Francophone (RTBF) 14

RTBF is the public broadcasting company of the French-speaking community in Belgium. RTBF has the mission to provide its audience with radio and television services that value news, cultural development, continuous education as well as entertainment. The programs of RTBF are primarily based on its own production as well as the promotion of original productions that enhance the culture and heritage of the French community and its regional specificities. As a public company, RTBF is funded for 75% by the French Community, which is also its supervisory authority. The remaining 25% of its revenue originates from advertisement income and distribution rights.

Taking charge of IT to become that strategy engine of the business Her passion for sports drove Gonfroid to start her career at the French speaking public broadcast company RTBF. There, she quickly developed professionally, taking on a variety of positions leading different aspects of managing TV channels. As she took on increasingly challenging positions at RTBF Gonfroid developed another passion: technology. In 2009, her profound knowledge of managing TV broadcasting, in combination with her drive for technological excellence, got her to lead the freshly created ‘DGTE’ division, a result of the integration of the technology teams in IT and in Broadcasting.

From the start this was a highly strategic position. The emergence of new competitors with different business models, such as Netflix and Google, was putting tremendous pressure on traditional broadcasters to realize substantial efficiency improvements and to use technology in highly agile and innovative ways.

Gonfroid’s first priority was to get the basics right. She was now heading a division that consisted of two very distinct cultures and set of processes, so she need to streamline both in order to create a coherent, value added service to the business.

At the core of this transformation Gonfroid put forward the governance tool COBIT 4.1, which she used for 15 internal processes. At the start of her mission the division scored a meager 1.2 on a scale of 5 on the maturity index of COBIT. Within a year, with the new processes Gonfroid put in place, the score already increased by a full point. More important, the changes have led to other substantial

improvements, such as a 50% reduction of the resolution time of the more than 2000 incidents and demands her team receives each year.

A selection of recent accomplishments --

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Completely digitalized the content platform and workflow of news, sports, magazines and entertainment production at RTBF, a project that has been awarded by the International Broadcasting Convention; Integrated the IT and the technology team in broadcasting into one coherent, customer-centric service; Revamped the core mission of IT, which is now the strategic engine of RTBF instead of its enabler.

so Gonfroid made sure to have an effective communication plan in place in order to realize this. Last but not least, Gonfroid installed a culture of (internal) customer centricity in her teams by making sure they listen carefully to business needs in all the stages of the project as well as implementing a constant feedback loop with the users throughout the rollout of the project.

We have passed the state of alignment with the strategy and have become the strategy engine of our company.

With the basics improving, Gonfroid was ready to tackle the strategic challenge of digitalizing the workflow of RTBF. This was a highly critical project, since the tape-based video production system lead to excessive production time, and simply didn’t match the requirements of the speed at which news, sports, magazines and entertainment needs to be delivered in the digital age.

Furthermore, with its 60 years of broadcasting history, the RTBF owned a wealth of content that needed to be leveraged efficiently in order to keep its competitive position.

This digitization project, called ‘NumProd’, lead to a productivity increase of 30%. RTBF is now able to integrate heterogeneous media sources in its workflow, and has now integrated all its content creation into one simplified system that allow it to publish on multiple channels, such as website, mobile, and video-on-demand. Gonfroid and her team have even been awarded by the International Broadcasting Convention for this project.

One of the key elements of the success of Gonfroid and her team was the clear set of Key Performance Indicators she put forward in her transformation mission. First and foremost she ensured the buy-in of the highest levels of the hierarchy for her project, to make sure everyone within the organization realized the strategic relevance of her project.

This relevance needed to be communicated extensively to all the stakeholders internally,

Looking forward the short-term agenda of Gonfroid and her team contains multiple other strategic challenges, such as the digitization of the archives of RTBF, as well as the digitization of the workflow of other divisions such as finance and HR. Her biggest priority, however, if the enhancement of the digital platform she put in place: improving its user friendliness and implementing a proactive monitoring system to further improve its impact on RTBF’s business. However, since the media business is undergoing so much transformation, it is virtually impossible to anticipate what the business priorities of the RTBF will be in the future. Hence, Gonfroid’s major concern, and focus, lies in keeping a maximum agility within the IT operations.

Thanks to Gonfroid’s efforts RTBF is now a modern broadcaster where journalists have access to a vast array of research information anywhere, anytime, and where the workflow is optimized in ways to ensure the smooth and fluent production of news and entertainment for its audience. As a result, RTBF is ready to face its new breed of competitors. As Gonfroid puts it: “IT is driving the business […]

There are no boundaries in an organization, only competences.”

Agustín González Prosegur Compañía de Seguridad S.A.

Prosegur Compañía de Seguridad S.A.

A selection of recent accomplishments

Founded in 1976, Prosegur provides integrated security solutions, which consist of Manned Guarding services, such as airport security, security in large events, geotracking and GPS monitoring; Cash Management, which includes Cash in Transit and covers the entire value chain of cash management, such as correctly supplying automated tellers; Technology, such as integrated security and fire protection systems; and Residential, where it offers a wide range of security products and services for residential homes and businesses. In 2013, with a presence in 17 countries across 4 continents and more than 150.000 employees, Prosegur’s sales amounted to 3,695M€.

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Building and protecting the global competitiveness of the business Six years ago, Augustin González joined Prosegur as its CIO for Europe and within 3 years was promoted to Global CIO. González is most proud of how he has transformed the role of IT within Prosegur from 12 IT organizations functioning independently to a single integrated Global IT department that serves as more pro-active and flexible partner with the rest of the business. The transformation was ambitious yet necessary for Prosegur to enhance its global agility and defend its competitiveness as it expanded internationally.

To accomplish the transformation, González and his team launched several action lines in parallel: information systems, infrastructure, and organization. With regards to information systems and infrastructure, they developed 19 corporate platforms for each line of business, as well as for support areas (they plan on developing 3 more). This enabled them to optimize maintenance costs of applications; standardize core technologies (e.g., they deployed an Enterprise Data Warehouse, eliminating 31 independent Data Marts, and centralized 18 datacentres into 4 global datacentres); and eliminate over 21 legacy systems since 2011. The overall result has been a considerable increase in systems flexibility and cost efficiency. For example, shifting service to 4 global datacenters has allowed them to decommission many local facilities in each country, delivering significant improvements in reliability, flexibility and cost efficiency.

Creating a single truly global services organization from 12 traditionally independent groups

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Transformed IT from 12 IT organizations functioning independently to a single integrated Global IT department.

Saved over 14M€ through a series of changes, centralizing, simplifying and upgrading the global digital platform.

Significantly enhanced several key business processes, such as reducing the life cycle of managing new contracts from 3 days to less than 1 day; reducing the surveillance planning scheduling process from 1 week to 2 days; automated the reconciliation process of ATM electronic journals, thereby reducing the process from 1 day to 2 hours; and by virtualizing the global infrastructure, improved provisioning time from 2 months to 15 minutes.

proved especially challenging. There were significant barriers to transform the department, such as the existing inertial culture, insufficient language skills and entrenched positions of certain key stakeholders. In some cases the existing teams didn’t know how to collaborate effectively, and could not grasp the fundamental challenges at corporate level, much less resolve them efficiently. They were accustomed to work in constrained silos, defaulting to traditional boundaries and frequently losing valuable time and effort to turf battles.

per line of Business), and reduce geographic dependency encouraging global services.

Another area in which González and his team are playing an increasingly strategic role is in mergers and acquisitions. During the last 3 years, Prosegur acquired and integrated more than 30 new companies, some of them in new markets and countries. Several of the acquisitions brought in a considerable volume of employees, IT systems and platforms. When González first started, the IT group had not developed any best-practice capabilities to To address these issues, González and his team address M&A operations. González and his centralized the IT budget, taking full control team developed a new framework to specifiover all IT investment and running costs from cally deal with M&A projects, which consisted a central point. This provided senior manageof a specialised methodology; identifying ment with a holistic view of IT across the firm, and addressing key business continuity issues vastly improving corporate decision-making early on, and deploying appropriate actions to and prioritization. They also created several support new scenarios; developing new roles Shared Services Centres. González explained and skillsets within the IT organization; and that “pooling, industrialising and optimising the adapting the vendor / provider engagement localisation of commodity services provided us strategy and relationship model accordingly. higher flexibility and significant cost reduction.”

Today, González and his team play a key role This change also involved moving a number of in ensuring the success of M&A transactions by people to different locations. simultaneously providing quick, flexible and effective integration capabilities; exercising tight To address internal resistance to change, control of the entire IT budget throughout the González pursued a transparent and robust M&A operation, especially regarding transitioncommunication strategy focusing on flexibility, related investments; and optimising the inherteam-collaboration, crossing boundaries and ited organisations and technologies to lower collective leadership. He also overall operating costs. developed a new organiGonzález is proud of the sational structure based on fact that he and his team are As the entire company global and functional intersuccessfully providing global is learning new ways to ests. This enabled them to services to 4 lines of busicollaborate with IT and eliminate redundancy and/ ness in 17 countries across develop solutions that or overlap between local, 4 continents while also are simultaneously local regional and global roles, improving the way Prosegur and global, it continues present a more cohesive integrates acquisitions and to grow and expand customer-focused interface expands globally. (one IT Business Partners throughout the world.

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Maarten Hillenaar Central Government of the Netherlands (CIO from 2009-2013)

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The role of ICT in the Central Government of the Netherlands In November 2011, the Dutch Government released its “iStrategy,” a key component of a broader programme to use ICT to increase the effectiveness and efficiencies of services provisioned by 11 ministries, while reducing the costs of provisioning them. The iStrategy outlines the role to be played by ICT, including unifying the current fragmented ICT infrastructure, establishing a single Central Government ICT security authority, and digitalising services provided by Central Government to the public. The Dutch Government relies on ICT to respond flexibly to new trends and developments; control costs; and enable ministries to work more efficiently together.

Making IT matter for the better of citizens On January 1st, 2009, Maarten Hillenaar was officially appointed as the first Chief Information Officer for central government of the Netherlands (CG-CIO). The creation of a CG-CIO was part of a series of efforts to significantly strengthen the role of IT, after a series of IT project failures that were widely covered in the press and addressed in Parliament. The main immediate objective was to have no more accidents with ICT-projects.

Fortunately, with a series of critical changes and accomplishments, there was success.

During Hillenaar’s 5-year tenure, from 20092013, there were no accidents with IT projects started in this period and funded by the Central Government.

One of the fundamental changes that Hillenaar led was to develop a government-wide information infrastructure (the ‘i-infrastructure’).

During the 1980s and 1990s, ministries were not required to use centrally developed facilities and instead were free to choose their own service providers. As a result, each ministry developed and managed ICT in an independent and uncoordinated manner, and a patchwork of different ICT facilities and suppliers/providers gradually emerged. The “stovepiping” led to growing costs, risks and failures.

To reduce the stovepiping, Hillenaar developed and relied on the CIO-Council. At the same time Hillenaar’s position was created, every Ministry had to appoint its own CIO. Together the CIOs formed a CIO-Council chaired by Hillenaar. Having all started at the same time, Hillenaar developed the council in several ways. They went to school together to develop a common language and held regular

A selection of recent accomplishments --

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Orchestrated a government-wide strategy for the use of ICT that was approved by Parliament and is used by all ministries.

Designed and implemented major parts of a governmentwide information infrastructure (the ‘i-infrastructure’) that reduces costs and mitigates risks due to unnecessary variation and improved the control and delivery of project delivery and IT services.

Created the ‘Central Government’s ICT Dashboard’ where information about all large-scale and high-risk ICT projects is published on a dedicated public access website.

meetings, once a month for half a day and every 6 months for a 2-day meeting for more in-depth discussions. Every departmental CIO (e.g., Defense) was made responsible for a government-wide objective (e.g., Information Security). As Hillenaar explained, “We became a team that worked on a team-mission.”

respective ministries, and with the public, they were also implementing the ‘i-infrastructure.’

They succeeded, for example, to consolidate 66 datacenters into 4, saving an approximate 100M€. The impact of consolidation went beyond cost savings. Doors were opened to many more consolidation opportunities, such as applications, being each other’s backup, creating a uniform set of rules on information security, and pooling expertise, such as project managers. It also is the basis for the Closed Government Cloud.

The CIO-Council also developed the iStrategy for the Dutch Government that eventually became approved by Parliament. “We made sure that we told the story over and over to the IT-community and –more importantly – to top management. Top management accepted Finally, when Hillenaar started as CG-CIO, ICT as a ‘boardroom-matter’. It became clear one of his objectives was that a public servto them that they couldn’t stay away from ant should be able to work anywhere, with ICT-issues.” The CIOs aimed to help top manany device, at any time. Today, an important agement within their respective ministry take aspect of the existing i-infrastructure, is the control of ICT and count on IT to do better shared National Government Digital Work and for less. They increased transparency by Environment that enables civil servants to have publishing information about all large-scale access to the information and functionality and high-risk ICT projects on a dedicated pubthey need to do their work from any device, lic access website (‘The Central Government’s any place, any time. All the ministries are able ICT Dashboard’ available in to use the services, the maDutch at www.rijksictdashjority finished the migration. board.nl). This helped creTo accomplish this required Now that we have taken ate attention with both the harmonizing the design control of ICT, ICT is no press and the parliament. As and use of software. One longer a subject that is a result, each ministry now intranet portal replaced avoided. There’s a lot of discusses its ICT-portfolio eleven separate intranets. positive energy; meetings every three months during the general board of direcand conferences are more During the five years that tors meeting. After reviewHillenaar served as CG-CIO, fun; and participating is ing the accomplishments he and his colleagues sucmuch more attractive. of the CIO-Council, the ceeded in turning-around Dutch national accounthow others in government ability office (Algemene and the public viewed ICT, Rekenkamer) concluded “the CIO-system from an expensive source of risk to a fundaworks (yet it isn’t finished yet)” mental source of value. This is best exemplified in an observation that Hillenaar made, “For top As CIO-Council members were developing management knowing the impact of ICT on stronger relations with each other, with their their job is now part of their profile.”

Vincent Léaux City of Vélizy-Villacoublay

Vélizy-Villacoublay Vélizy-Villacoublay is a French town in the South-Western suburbs of Paris, 3 km from the Versailles, and contains 22,000 inhabitants. The town consists of six residential neighborhoods, all on edge of the Meudon national forest.

It is home to the renowned business park, INOVEL PARC. More than 43,000 employees work in INOVEL PARC, representing over a thousand companies, including some of the biggest names in industry, such as EADS, MessierBugatti, Alcatel-Lucent, Inéo, Thalès, Bouygues Telecom and PSA Peugeot Citroën, and Dassault Systèmes. The budget of the administration of the city is €76M. In 2010 the city went through a crowdsourcing project, asking its citizens to submit ideas to make the city more ecological, promote solidarity and combat pollution. This project resulted in the ‘Agenda21’, a concrete roadmap for a sustainable future.

Strengthening and expanding local government services When Vincent Léaux started his function as CIO of the French city Vélizy-Villacoublay three years ago, he inherited a rather dramatic situation. The IT team of 4 people had no particular IT skills and the service it provided to internal customers was so poor that clients hesitated to call it when they experienced trouble. There was no backup system at all for the HR and financial data of the city, and no particular security system for this data.

Furthermore, coming from the private sector, Léaux had to adapt to the slow and cumbersome processes of the public administration.

It was a discouraging situation. What was needed was a complete rebuilding of the IT organization, from scratch!

It took Léaux 3 years of hard labor to revamp the IT organization into a high-performing and accountable service to both internal clients and citizens of the city.

His first priority was to build a coherent and reliable infrastructure, connecting all the systems and applications in a secure way.

Easier said than done, with a small team of people that didn’t have the right skills and were primarily firefighting issues rather than working on long-term projects. Hence the need for Léaux to rebuild and expand his IT team. Since processes in public administration tend to be slow and cumbersome, Léaux was looking for professionals who were patient and perseverant, confident in working on operational issues as well as strategic projects and who were both communicative

A selection of recent accomplishments --

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Revamped the complete IT organization from scratch to enable a seamless, efficient administration and back-office; Implemented a series of services for citizens, such as electronic boards in classrooms, electronic fines and online administration services; Installed a culture and practice of IT governance that resulted in 94% of customers expressing satisfaction and an IT budget increase of 300%.

and customer-centric. With such a complex profile, it took him 18 months to find the right professionals and expand his team threefold.

equipped with digital white board, a number that will increase to 100% by September 2015, including maternity schools.

In the meantime, Léaux needed to put new processes and practices in place, to professionalize the IT operations, but also to communicate to the major stakeholders what the IT department was doing at what it aimed to achieve. As part of the IT governance culture Léaux put in place, he established numerous performance dashboard, project and services catalogues and tasks and responsibility matrices.

Léaux impacted the security of his town as well, by installing a video surveillance system in the major streets of Vélizy-Villacoublay. He also equipped the police force with electronic devises to manage fines more quickly and reliably. “Something the citizens are not necessarily extremely happy about”, jokes Léaux.

As a CIO you don’t realise anything without a close partnership with all the stakeholders

The town’s administration was so impressed by all that Léaux and his team had accomplished that it agreed to increase of the IT budget by 300%. This paid off in a number of ways. Customer satisfaction reached at an all-time high of 94%, and digitization projects led to substantial cost reductions and efficiency increases.

But the most striking results of Léaux and his team’s work have been the services provided to the citizens of Vélizy-Villacoublay. Before, inquiries to the town’s administration could easily take up to four weeks before they received a response. Today, after Léaux and his team streamlined and automated key backoffice functions, citizens receive responses in less than a week. Léaux is keen to reduce the response time even further.

Léaux also undertook to install digital white boards in the schools of his city. At this day, 95% of the classes in primary schools are

Looking at the future, Léaux still has numerous plans to increase the impact of his IT organization on the services the administration provides to its citizens.

Optic fiber that he deployed throughout the city will serve to connect all the public institutions seamlessly and has already resulted in saving of €180K per year. Léaux also intends to deploy Wi-Fi throughout the city as a service to the inhabitants. Finally, his team will focus its efforts on getting as many administrative processes online, to permit citizens to manage their relationship with the administration from home.

But Léaux is looking into more innovative services to the citizens as well. One such thing is a crowdsourced reporting system of minor problems citizens are facing –such as holes in the road or illegal dumping sites. The app would permit citizens to report these issues, whereby it would automatically be directed to the right public service in order to fix the issue, and once the issue is fixed the app would automatically inform the citizens of the fact.

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Eric Lippert Lombard International Assurance S.A.

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Lombard International Assurance S.A.

A selection of recent accomplishments

Lombard International Assurance S.A. is Luxembourg’s leading pan-European, unit-linked life assurance company. The company uses life assurance in combination with wealth structuring to provide solutions to high and ultra-high net worth individuals. In 2013, total assets under administration reached a record high, in excess of €24 billion (a 4% increase) and new business premium income reached €2.34 billion.

We do not market directly to end clients but collaborate with a strong international distribution network of private banks, wealth managers and independent financial advisers. Over 350 employees work in the Grand Duchy’s head office, with teams of consultants spread across 14 markets.

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Orchestrating a sustained competitive advantage In 2011, about a year after joining Lombard International Assurance as CIO, Eric Lippert was asked to be directly involved in designing and implementing an ambitious transformation of the organisation. In May 2011, the senior management team had a “20/20 moment”, with the company reaching its 20th anniversary and holding over €20 billion of policyholder assets. The senior management team decided it was the right moment to hold an off-site retreat and take a critical look at the company’s past and future, asking themselves “if we were to start this all over, how would we do it even better?” They realised that as Lombard International Assurance had grown, new demands had been addressed in ways that made sense at that point in time but, in the long-term, were insufficiently coordinated to support future synergies. They were concerned that operating costs would eventually overtake profits and that the quality and relevance of their solutions to partners and their clients could be put at risk. They agreed to significantly and rapidly transform how Lombard International Assurance operated.

During the first 5 months, Lippert worked closely with other senior managers to define the vision of the transformation. They then spent about 8 months designing the realisation of the vision. According to Lippert, “a critical success factor was that stakeholders from all over the company spent time up front to define the vision and design an agile execution.”

A main pillar of the transformation effort was a complete rethink of the IT platform and core business activities. Lippert and others

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Annual reduction of €8.4 million in operating costs; Increased automation and productivity of all processes linked to Fund Administration. For example, a 72% decrease in the number of manual transactions and a 20% increase in terms of number of funds administrated per headcount.

Increased efficiency and effectiveness of client-facing processes linked to policy administration (from on-boarding new business to lapses and surrender). For example, average time per transaction was reduced by 50% and user experience rating doubled.

IT infrastructure landscape was simplified and transformed in close collaboration with the business without any service outage or negative business impact.

redesigned and implemented a series of key services and their corresponding IT platform.

They structured their efforts around guiding principles such as Maximise Benefit to the Enterprise; Reuse – Buy – Build; and Business Process Simplification. For Client and Policy Servicing, for example, they reduced handoffs, delegated data capture to partners and reduced administrative paper management.

For Investment Administration, they simplified the way they manage data and produce daily valuation reports for the 17,000+ funds they administer.

mation of the IT landscape was the catalyst for a complete business restructure and change of operating model for our company.”

It resulted in enhanced efficiency and flexibility for the company’s partners and their clients, a significantly smaller carbon footprint and significant financial savings. By simplifying the Investment Administration platform from 15 software systems to 1, the company saved €100,000 in licensing costs. Technical interfaces within the IT platform were reduced from 279 to 94, significantly lowering operational risks and costs. The new functional monitoring platform allowed business users to be independent and, thus, more efficient in their daily activities. As a major consequence, the company can detect and fix functional issues earlier in the process (e.g. at capture instead at reconciliation) which lowers the risk and impact of issues.

With very clear targets of what they wanted to achieve, Lippert and others applied “the best of SCRUM methodology” to realise their targets. The process enabled multiple stakeholders from different parts of the business to collaborate closely and communicate regularly. Amongst the Finally, to sustain The new role of the CIO is many changes they acthese changes, Lippert to raise awareness and listen complished, Lippert and introduced a varito the business (because his team migrated the ety of committees and very good ideas emanate company’s IT infrastrucgovernance mechafrom the business) and to ture (datacentres, hardnisms. For example, to orchestrate their demands. If ware, network, storage) ensure both immedibusiness owners pursued their without any service ate and long-term own technologies without outage or negative objectives are met business impact; simpli(and to manage any someone to coordinate and fied the Investment trade-offs between prioritise across their demands, Administration platform; them), a Change Team there would be a much less and introduced an is in charge of both structured approach. end-to-end business managing the current oriented monitoring/ portfolio of projects repairing platform. and maintaining the long-term target operating model for the Within 18 months of intense collaboration company. Overall, costs dropped by 35 % between IT and the rest of the business, the over 3 years and IT are now considered an massive transformation of IT was completed essential partner in developing competitive successfully. Lippert explained, “the transforadvantages to the business.

Fernando Lucero Batalla IBERDROLA S.A.

IBERDROLA S.A.

A selection of recent accomplishments

Over 150 years old, IBERDROLA is the world leader in wind power, one of the top electric utilities in the world, and Spain’s number one energy group. Since 2007, its strategy has been marked by strong international expansion, with the integration of ScottishPower, Energy East (today Iberdrola USA), and Brazil’s Elektro. By 2013, IBERDROLA had achieved total installed capacity of 45,009 MW (61% of which was CO2-free) and supplied 211,000 GWh a year to around 100 million people globally. The Group’s net profits reached €2.572 billion and the company employed 30,680 people in almost 40 countries.

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Energizing innovation with ICT In 2010, Fernando Lucero Batalla was asked to join IBERDROLA as group CIO. IBERDROLA had been expanding globally and consisted of a matrix of over a dozen large business units located across in 39 countries, mainly in Spain, UK, Brazil, USA, and México. In such a complex organization, it is especially challenging to manage the tension between local and global interests – i.e., between rapidly developing solutions tailored to the specific needs of business units and achieving synergies across business units that take advantage of IBERDROLA’s scale and scope. Lucero’s accomplishments are proof that he and his colleagues are managing that tension successfully.

At such a diverse energy company such as IBERDROLA, IT is strategic for a variety of reasons. IT continues to play a fundamental role in helping the company achieve operational efficiencies and cost reductions. IT is also essential for developing innovative ways to streamline and automate a vast volume and diversity of data into mandatory reports and in the process, minimize the resources required for achieving compliance. In addition, Lucero explains, “We have different IT strategies, depending on the business, because each has a distinct strategic focus and operates along a distinct set of business processes.”

Within Networks, for example, IT is focused on increasing the quality of services that the business provides to its customers by helping it optimize its processes. For example, IT developed a geo-referenced information integration system that enables Networks to mine the data that exists in various systems supporting core

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Over €12 million saved and €70 million in revenues generated as a result of accomplishments involving the IT Group.

Significantly enhanced the experience of customers of key business groups: increase of end customer satisfaction; increase of end customer web site visits; reduction of customer calls for issues resolution; and increase of number of end customer offers accepted.

Put into practice a new process for innovating collaboratively with multiple stakeholder groups, including external suppliers. Has led to several significant innovations and prevented resources from being wasted in promising yet ultimately not valuable innovations.

processes and integrate them with graphic features and advanced operations.

almost 30 ideas were developed, of which 11 were eventually developed into proof of concepts. In the end, 7 were selected to deWithin Renewables, IT worked with the rest velop further into projects. These all involved of the business to develop a comprehensive representatives from IT, the business, and from weather station management platform for onsuppliers, collaborating iteratively, using agile shore wind farms that enables immediate availmethods. Electric vehicle charging stations opability and reliable storage of eration, mobile app for retail meteorological data, in addicustomer, information kiosk, tion to effective data processfraud detection systems, IT has succeeded ing, rapid incidence detection smart meters customer load in becoming a key and the automated generation curves are resulted from this of statistical analyses. They process. driving force for rapid also introduced drones to local innovation, capture meteorological data, internationalization and In addition, the IT Group as well as information about is structured in a way that Group-wide synergies. the wind generators. The data enables both engagement at is used it to calculate when it the local level to understand makes most sense to accomthe business and subsequent plish a maintenance of the generator without demand, and engagement at the global, corhaving to stop the generator (if a generator is porate level, to analyze demand globally and stopped during a specified period, the business identify enterprise-wide synergies. Business would incur a penalty from regulators).

Relations Directors (one dedicated to each of major business units) serve as a critical linking Soon after joining IBERDROLA, Lucero mechanism between the interests of local realized that the IT Group was “simply takand global stakeholders. During a monthly ing orders.” To be more proactive and be in meeting the Business Relations Directors share a stronger position to both foster innovation and discuss their portfolio of projects in the and orchestrate synergies across solutions and pipeline and explore synergies across existacross the enterprise, Lucero strengthened IT ing and past projects, including ways to reuse governance. He introduced a series of comsolutions. For example, for the Network group mittees to increase engagement between IT in Spain, IT had developed a solution that enaand the rest of the business. To enhance digital bled them to collect data from smart meters innovation, Lucero introduced an IT Innovation and the produce consumer load curves that Committee, which consists of people from could be viewed by customers on the web. within the business (“Business Delegates”) A few months later, the IT team realized that who champion new ways of innovating within the technology used for that solution could their respective business groups. In collabobe applied to other, very different business ration with external technology suppliers, (e.g., within Renewables, use the solution to they explore ways of applying promising new collect, integrate, predict and display weather technologies to enhance the business. In 2013, information).

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Nuno Miller Farfetch Ltd. (CIO from 2011 until 2014)

Farfetch 20

Farfetch is an innovative e-commerce company that brings together over 350 independent fashion boutiques from around the world and provides their range of unique products, representing over 1000 fashion labels, to fashion lovers globally. Customers can shop from any boutique within Farfetch’s network and then have their orders delivered directly to their door, wherever they are in the world. Launched in 2008 by Jose Neves, Farfetch rapidly became a global company back by investors such as Advent Venture Partners, Index Ventures, and Condé Nast International.

By October 2013, the site had 4.3 million visits a month and an average order of around 500€.

Enhancing the competitiveness of an innovative business model during rapid growth Farfetch is an e-commerce marketplace, whose sales depend totally on its websites uptime. If a website is down or faces a performance issue for even a couple of minutes, visitors won’t buy goods and Farfetch must contend with a non-recoverable loss of sales and decrease in customer satisfaction. IT is fundamental to Farfetch’s operations and growth. About a fifth of Farfetch’s 370 employees are in the IT group.

In 2011, when Nuno Miller became Chief Information Officer of Farfetch, he discovered that most of its servers were inadequately serviced. Miller and his team reorganized and transformed the company’s storage services in two different datacenters. The most critical services and tools, such as those supporting Farfetch’s transactions and payments were given to one of most robust and advanced hosting companies based in London. All other services and tools were hosted at a different hosting company, in a private cloud model, with lower yet sufficient service level.

The entire project – from creating a service catalog, defining each service’s impact on the business, defining the required architecture, and implementing both types of solutions – took just over a year.

During the process, Miller and his team also transformed several processes that were using internal tools into processes that could be accomplished with cloud-based software services. For example, they changed how incidents, problems and change requests

A selection of recent accomplishments ---

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Strengthened e-commerce site availability from 99,5% to 99,95% Increased ability to support and increase of 300% in the number of visitors, with peeks up to 1000% - essential capabilities for an e-commerce marketplace.

Enhanced the performance and availability of back-office tools, thereby increasing team efficiency by 10%.

Saved 200K€/year and generated more than 140M€ in 2 years.

were reported and tracked; how customer service tickets were handled, as well as how the Business Development team managed potential business partners.

As a result of the changes, the new ecommerce platform was able to support an average increase of daily visits by 300%, with peeks around 1000% and the availability of key services increased from 99,5% to 99,95%.

The increase in availability and speed led to an increase in productivity of the back office teams (mostly production, operations and boutique management), resulting in an estimated savings of 200K€ per year. The enhanced digital platform helped support a significant increase in volume of sales, from 27,5M€ in 2011 to 75M€ in 2012 and 140M€ in 2013.

avoid reprocessing, by introducing a series of checkpoints and features to the product creation process. As a result, around 25% of products are being identified as duplicated in early stages, resulting in 20% productivity increase in the production team.

While upgrading and improving the reliability of Farfetch’s digital platform and steamlining operational processes, Miller and his team were also helping Farfetch manage its yearly growth rate of over 100%. In a 3 year period, the total number of employees at Farfetch increased from 150 to 370, as the company added new functions, teams and managers. To address the corresponding growth of demands on IT, the IT team increased its size from 13 to 75 people. This fast pace required a change on the IT governance model and on project manageMiller and his team were ment methodologies. Miller Critical to sustaining also instrumental in organized the IT group into growth of more than streamlining Farfetch’s different teams and exper100% a year has been product management tizes and adopted SCRUM balancing the need to process. Product creation as the main methodology. respond rapidly to new process is done jointly by In order to align priorities opportunities with the Farfetch and the boutiques. with the company strategy need to have an effective All of the products are and operational needs, and efficient global catalogued, categorized Miller creates a yearly roadand photographed by map, with quarterly reviews, platform.

Farfetch. Until a product for all strategic projects. All is photographed and its projects have prioritization attributes are catalogued it remains ofmeetings every 3 weeks, with main business fline. With each season, around 50 000 stakeholders, in order to define the cross-team products were catalogued. However, due priorities. Each sprint lasts for 3 weeks, meanto process inefficiencies, there are several ing that every 3 weeks they deliver a set of duplicates – products that have already been new features (designed, developed, tested and photographed by one boutique and are reapproved). In this manner, Miller and his team photographed by another. Farfetch wanted to have ensured that Farfetch can continue grow reduce the resources (including time) necesand respond rapidly to new opportunities while sary to get products online. Miller helped improving the effectiveness and efficiency of develop a process to identify duplicates and its core operations.

Alexandre Ramos Lusitania Companhia de Seguros and N Seguros

Lusitania Companhia de Seguros, SA and N Seguros

A selection of recent accomplishments

Based in Lisbon, Lusitania was founded in 1986 and by 2014, was one of the largest insurers operating in Portugal. It is part of the Montepio Group, the largest mutual association in Portugal and one of the largest mutual associations in Europe. Lusitania provides insurance in five key areas: Accident and Health; Aviation; Automobile; Maritime Transportation; and Fire and Other Damages. In early 2008, N Seguros was established as a separate company within the Montepio Group, focused solely on the direct insurance market in Portugal, in the areas of Automobile, Motorcycle, Personal and Health.

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Focusing multiple stakeholders on the most valuable IT-enabled innovations Since joining Lusitania in 2008, Ramos has played a central role in synchronizing the focus of key stakeholder groups on what matters most to the business. Through a series of weekly and monthly engagements with Board and first-line directors, Ramos translates the strategic business objectives into action plans, assigns key performance indicators (KPIs) to each action plans, and translates KPIs into projects (most involving IT, however not necessarily). The process enables Ramos and participants to identify and remove any projects that do not support the strategic business objectives. Ramos explains, “If a project does not add value, then it needs to be dropped out.” By linking IT so closely with the rest of the business, prioritization is now shared by all business leaders.

To effectively align IT with the rest of the business, Ramos spent considerable effort ensuring that his team of 35 was prepared to deliver significantly higher levels of service.

“First we align IT; then we align with the business,” is a motto that Ramos strongly believes in. “If IT cannot deliver then alignment efforts are useless.”

Once Ramos was sure that his team was capable of practicing proper methodologies, controls, and project management, they succeeded in developing in just 6 months e+ Plans, a system that changed how business units throughout Lusitania operated.

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More than 1M€ in savings An increase in revenue of 2.7% The number of policies per customer increased from 1,33 to 2,0 The number of cancelations decreased by 40%

The idea for e+ Plans was deceivingly simple.

On the one hand, the basic idea was, similar to a monthly bank statement, to provide customers with a single monthly statement of all their activities within Lusitania. Each month, each customer would receive a statement describing what insurance policies the customer has with Lusitania, as well as how much the customer needs to pay by the first day of the next month.

On the other hand, to provide such a service required a completely new and fundamentally different relationship with customers. A key feature of the e+ Plan was that a customer that signed-up for insurance during the start of a month would not need to start paying for it until receiving the monthly statement.

In addition, for each policy that a customer signed up for with Lusitania, the customer could decide when and how they wanted to pay for the policy (e.g., monthly, yearly, credit, debit, etc.). In other words, this new service required that Lusitania provide customers insurance services before they had paid for them – i.e., essentially, it required Lusitania provide insurance credit. While banks provide credit to their customers, insurance companies traditionally do not.

could support these new services in such a manner that from the point of view of customers, the services were simple and reliable.

Operational efficiency and effectiveness was essential to manage credits, mitigate operational risks, and provide competitive pricing to customers. Coordination of policy data and payments across traditionally independent business units was key to provide customers with a single and integrated view of all their policies. To accomplish all this, marketing and IT collaborated closely with each other and with the other business units, negotiating changes every day – from transforming and integrating the collection process to the redesigning the layout of the monthly statement.

First we align IT; then we align with the business. If IT cannot deliver then alignment efforts are useless.

Although the e+ plans project was led by marketing, Ramos and his team were fundamental to both redesigning how Lusitania operated and developing the systems that

Before, only banks provided customers with a consolidated view of their accounts. Now, Lusitania customers can see clearly what premium, what discount, what taxes are in any policy. In addition, all policies have the same renewal day (1st of the month).

Overall greater transparency enabled Lusitania to claim their policies had “no fine print” – i.e., that there were no hidden caveats. The results to the business were significant. The number of policies per customer increased from 1,33 to 2,0 and the number of cancelations decreased by 40%.The success of e+ Plans also set the foundation for new ways of engaging with customers. It has enabled a more efficient treatment of collecting and it will be the vehicle for total “paper free” communication.

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Daniele Rizzo Autogrill S.p.A

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Autogrill S.p.A

A selection of recent accomplishments

Autogrill is the world’s leading provider of food and beverage services for travelers. Active in 30 countries with some 55,000 employees, it has over 4,500 points of sale in more than 1,000 locations and operates prevalently under concession agreements in airports, on motorways and in railway stations, as well as in select shopping centres, trade fairs and museums. The Company has a portfolio of over 250 international and local brands, managed directly or under license. Listed on the Milan stock exchange, Autogrill is indirectly controlled by Edizione S.r.l., the financial arm of the Benetton family, with 50.1% of the share capital.

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Helping the company become even more customer centric By 2014, Daniele Rizzo had already worked 14 years at Autogrill, 12 of them as Chief Information Officer for Europe. In a company such as Autogrill, where stores are open 24 hours and business is highest when travel is highest, IT is a fundamental backbone for operational continuity. Many of these services can be done cheaper and more reliably by external service providers. As a result, about 75% of the IT budget is spent on external services providers. This enables Rizzo and his team of about 70 people to focus on strategic uses of ICT, such as improving business process efficiencies, enhancing the customer-focus of the firm, and enabling greater globalization of Autogrill.

With regards to business process efficiencies, in 2013, Rizzo was put in charge of a newly created shared services unit. Consisting of 33 employees, the unit was responsible for providing finance transactional services, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable and general ledger, to 14 business units operating in Italy, France and Spain. To accomplish the efficiencies expected from the unit, Rizzo led a team that transformed what were previously paper-based processes into mostly digital and automated processes. For example, more than 70% of the documents that are involved in accounts payable processes were switched to electronic data exchange (EDI), when before none had been. In addition, the entire accounts payable cycle was switched to a digital and integrated document management platform. Within account receivable, 25% of documents were moved to digital. In addition to achieving greater efficiencies, they were able

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Introduced an enterprise-wide shared services unit to provide administrative services such as accounts payable and accounts receivable. As a result, most of those processes are digitized and automated and internal productivity has more than doubled.

Significantly reduced processing time of invoices and consequently, improved customer satisfaction and relations with suppliers.

Developed significant trust with other departments such that the IT group is now an integral collaborator as departments, such as Marketing, become more customer-centric.

to reduce by half business process outsourcing implied closer interaction with relevant busi(BPO) costs, which accounted for more than a ness leaders (CEO, BU leaders, Marketing, third of overall processing costs, and improve Operations, etc.) in brainstorming sessions, etc. internal productivity accordingly. An estimated As a result, customer centricity roadmaps were 700K€ has already been saved. In 2014, they developed and put in place. expect to eliminate BPO costs completely.

Productivity also increased because digitizaToday, for example, together with other detion enabled personnel to spend less time partments, the IT group is collaborating closely auditing processes and more time on controls, with the Marketing department to develop and reconciliations, and quality checks. As a result, implement a new marketing plan that, accordthe employee engagement index also rose ing to the Chief Marketing Officer, Ezio Balarini, from 23% (2012) to +90% (2014). Finally, by “fundamentally changed our attitude of how to improving services such as accounts payable do business … today, IT is the glue of all of our and account receivable, they also improved activities.” In January 2014, they embarked on relations with suppliers by tracking and reduca program to develop wider analytical knowling processing backlogs by 60% and reducing edge about our customers’ purchasing habits, supplier’s invoice processby leveraging new statistical, ing pass-through time from marketing and IT capabilities; 39 to 22 days and to just develop new capabilities and I now expect two 2 when they could be acresources in order to manthings from IT: to complished using EDI. age customer information and interaction (e.g. mobile challenge us and to While the recent and still touchpoints); and develop and support us. ongoing economic downlearn from tailored customer (Ezio Balarini, Chief turn has affected the flow campaigns. As part of the Marketing Officer of of travelers in Europe, and collaboration, the Marketing Autogrill) consequently consumers department has agreed to take demand and revenues in responsibility for prioritizing Europe, Rizzo’s IT organisawhile it expects IT to challenge tion has helped implement Autogrill’s ongoing them, based on their understanding of what strategic transformation from a traditional high customers want from Autogrill and how they volume, efficiency oriented food service proexperience digital technologies, be accountvider to a more customer centric organisation. able, to support integration. As the Chief Marketing Officer explained to the IT Group, Since 2012, Rizzo and his team have worked “This is not about one-way communication. on creating wider digital awareness within the This is about two-way communication.” business management community and connecting IT market opportunities with business The combination of business process efficiengrowth objectives through tailored innovation cies and strong alignment between IT and workshops. At the beginning of 2013 a more other departments places Autogrill in an even focused, customer centric strategic planning stronger position to expand internationally. process was set up through the partnership of a primary global system integrator, which

Frank Stockx ING Belgium (CIO from 2011-2014)

ING Belgium

A selection of recent accomplishments

ING Belgium is the Belgian subsidiary of the Dutch financial institution ING Group. The Belgian organization employs over 9000 persons, serving more than 500,000 clients in 749 branches. ING Belgium realized a turnover of over €3B last year.

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-ING Belgium is investing heavily in online banking. In 2011 ING was the first Belgian bank to launch a mobile app. Its ‘smart banking’ mobile app for smartphone and tablet has been downloaded over 448,000 times since its launch. In combination with PC banking ING is handing over 30 million online sessions per quarter.

Putting ICT on the agenda of the whole organisation When Stockx was appointed as CIO of ING Belgium in 2011, the bank was in the midst of a major shift in strategic focus. Its ambition was to become the first universal direct bank in Belgium, and technology needed to play a key role in fulfilling that ambition.

Stockx and his team have been instrumental in the fundamental transformation of how ING Belgium interacts with its customers, undertaking a vast array of projects along the way. The sales force of ING are being equipped with mobile technology that grants them access to state-of-the-art customer intelligence data, in order to close deals at the preferred location of the clients and answer requests while facing the clients. Customers can make appointments with an advisor online, indicating the topics they needed advise on, which enables the advisor to be fully prepared when he meets the clients. Business clients are allowed to sign lending agreements online, and can do their mandate management through a self-service tool. Furthermore, Stockx rolled our Wi-Fi to all ING’s branches and, driven by technology, revamped each one of them into a full service branch.

Under his leadership the bank was the first Belgian bank to offer a mobile app with innovative features like budget insights, which has been downloaded almost 450,000 times since its launch. The smartphone and tablet applications are becoming an increasingly vital new channel for ING Belgium.

Through the offshoring of its legacy system and commodity IT tasks, Stockx was able to

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Initiated a multitude of projects to make clients do transactions online, resulting in huge productivity improvements. Today, 43% of basic transactions are performed online by its clients, and the bank has now the highest Net Promoter Score of the 4 largest Belgian banks; Launched new services to support sales-force mobility with remote access to customer intelligence system. The sales people can now meet their clients wherever the clients wants, not where the bank wants; Installed a culture where IT projects are sponsored by non-IT business leaders, hence ensuring a better comprehension by both, as well as a coherent integration of IT in all business functions.

free the time of his team and make them work on strategic projects that impact the business.

This has helped tremendously in turning IT into an integral part of the business.

The results of all these projects have been impressive. The bank has the highest Net Promoter Score amongst the top four Belgian banks. About 43% of ING’s basic products are now being sold online, and the homepage of ING receives 3,5 million visitors per month. The technology now enables ING’s sales people to meet their clients wherever they want, instead of having to meet in the branches.

This resulted in tremendous efficiency gains.

Branches are now places to provide advise instead of places where transactions are made.

Hence, there is no need for branch directors anymore. In general, Stockx’s projects have enabled ING Belgium to reduce its workforce by 350 employees.

The key to the success of these projects is a unique approach to how IT projects are chosen and implemented.

The sponsors of these projects are not IT people, but leaders in other Business Units. This ensures that the IT projects respond to clearly defined business objectives, but it also ensures that business leaders understand the subtleties of the IT projects.

As Stockx put it, “All business units need to have an IT agenda”. As a result, the IT practices are closely aligned with the business priorities and strategy of ING Belgium. After all, as Stockx makes clear, “IT needs to support the future, not the past.”

This required a tremendous shift in culture at ING Belgium. Resources were dedicated to training and educating the business leaders on IT. Stockx wanted to ensure business leaders felt committed to and accountable for their additional responsibilities. Though this new approach does not work all of the times, it did help ING Belgium in staying ahead of the competition with the successful implementation of new technology, which now resides at the core of ING’s strategy.

From Stockx, implementing this new culture required a lot of diplomacy and drive.

Unsurprisingly, he frequently mentions soft skills as being key in his success, although it probably helps that he spent 20 years at ING in a multitude of functions and divisions before he became CIO. His three years as CIO of ING Belgium will no doubt help him in his future challenges, as he was recently promoted to head the product management and operations division of the bank. But before moving on, he had one vital task to accomplish: ensure his succession. As a true visionary, he knew he needed to find someone with very strong consultancy skills as much as experience with the banking sector. Fortunately Stockx found the right person for the job.

There are no boundaries in an organization, only competences.

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Jeroen Tas Philips Healthcare

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Royal Philips

A selection of recent accomplishments

Royal Philips is a diversified technology company, focused on improving people’s lives through meaningful innovation in the areas of Healthcare, Consumer Lifestyle and Lighting.

Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips posted 2013 sales of EUR 23.3 billion and employs approximately 112,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. The company is a leader in cardiac care, acute care and home healthcare, energy efficient lighting solutions and new lighting applications, as well as male shaving and grooming and oral healthcare. In 2013, Philips rose to 40th on Interbrand’s annual ranking of global brands, with its brand value increasing by 8% to close to USD 10 billion.

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Achieving local relevance through global scale In 2011, two weeks after becoming CEO, Frans van Houten hired Jeroen Tas as Philips’ CIO. Although IT was integral to innovation throughout the diversified-technology company, Philips had been operating for too long as a disparate set of business units working somewhat independently. As Tas explained, “We had to fundamentally change our approach to products and processes, how people work together, as well as the overall IT landscape.” To accomplish such extensive transformation, Philips launched the Accelerate! transformation program and Tas and his team were integral to all aspects of the program.

One of the most important aspects of the transformation was the cultural change: new mindsets and behaviors. Philips had to become an organization where collaboration in multi-functional teams was the norm.

The IT organization introduced news ways of collaborating closely with the business to develop solutions both rapidly and iteratively.

They built strong governance around business processes and related IT investments. The leadership style also changed from command and control to guide and coach.

Today, all of Philips’ development projects and problem-resolution projects apply Agile Scrum. To achieve this, over 1,000 employees followed a 3-day training to learn to work in self-directed, multi-disciplinary teams. Boston Consultancy Group has classified the Philips Agile Output-Based model as ‘Advanced’ and the speed and rigor in executing the transformation as ‘Best in class.’

Tas and his team, in close collaboration with

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All of Philip’s development projects in Delivery and problemresolution in Operations are applying Agile Scrum. Boston Consultancy Group has classified the Philips Agile OutputBased model as ‘Advanced’ and the speed and rigor in executing the transformation as ‘Best in Class.’

Set up the Digital Accelerator Lab where cross-functional teams are able to go from consumer insight to prototype in a shorter time.

Implemented an award-winning Enterprise Architecture Repository that documents Philips Business Models, Winning Value Chains, Processes, IT Architecture and Data Models.

business colleagues, co-created an architectural blueprint for business processes and corresponding IT systems and designed and delivered platforms that support the core processes, rather than point solutions for business units. As a result, IT costs were reduced.

mentation in Healthcare and by May 2014 had completed deployment in more than 100 countries across all sectors.

While transforming Philips, Tas and his team also helped Philips respond innovatively to increasingly rapid changes in the market.

With the transformation of Philips – including its digitized platform – well underway, To speed up Philips’ digital innovation, Tas set Tas focused next on strengthening the data up the Digital Accelerator Lab where specialdimension of “Philips’ real-time enterprise” ists from Design, R&D, Marketing, Sales and ambition. Before, customer information was IT co-produce innovation in self-managed scattered and consumer feedback months out teams. Teams in the lab are now able to go of date by the time it reached decision makfrom consumer insight to prototype much ers. Tas and his team established an Enterprise faster than in the past.

Information Management group to manage data models and take responsibility for In January 2014, Philips announced the data operations, performance measurement formation of Healthcare Informatics Solutions and advanced analytics. “We are controland Services, a new business group within ling data (like data on customers, products, Philips’ Healthcare sector that offers hospiemployees, suppliers, tals and health systems financials) separate from the customized clinical our systems and we are programs and advanced We are reshaping the rolling out “Information data analytics to implecompany to create solutions Factories” that manage ment new models of that are relevant to local master data and allow care. Reflecting the markets, while leveraging real-time monitoring and value of the accomplishour global scale. We are analysis of the business. ments he led as CIO, as standardizing our value This gives the business well as the importance the tools to perforof accomplished digital chains, while enabling mance manage, but also customer centricity and rapid leaders to new areas of get forecasts and new growth, Tas was selected innovation. We enabled this insights.” to lead the new business through IT. group as its CEO. A few They also rolled out months later, in a case a standard Sales and study they developed Service cloud solution, giving visibility into on Tas’ accomplishments, Forrester research customer information, sales, and other key recognized Tas as “one of the most renowned metrics. It helps customers track their orders technology visionaries in Europe.” and manage service requests, and it provides enhanced communication and coordination with channel partners. They started imple-

Günter Weinrauch ADAC e.V.

ADAC e.V. Headquartered in Munich, Germany, the Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club (ADAC) e. V. is Europe’s largest automobile club with almost 19 million members. Its key service offerings include roadside assistance and towing services provided by the ADAC Road Patrol and its road service partners and ambulance service.

Most Germans know the expression “Gelbe Engel” (“yellow angels”) in reference to the organization’s road assistance service.

Since 2013, ADAC employees from all branches of the company work in a new and energy-efficient building marked by architectural openness.

Business and IT jointly driving the organization in new directions When Günter Weinrauch was appointed CIO of ADAC in 2011, ADAC’s IT organization had some fundamentals well in place. IT systems were stable and cost-effective and the IT group provided functional enhancements to the IT systems only upon request from the user departments. This foundation enabled Weinrauch and his team of approximately 400 internal and external staff members to play a more strategic and proactive role in realizing ADAC’s new strategy.

In response to new challenges in the market, ADAC introduced a new corporate strategy focused on becoming more agile by combining cross-functional fields of action. The refinement and execution of the new strategy involved all departments within ADAC continuously collaborating and iterating between four key elements: observation, orientation, decision, and action. It also involved balancing two groups of interests: improving responses to new opportunities (“adequate response to new situations”) and improving internal operations (“keeping the house in order”).

Weinrauch has linked IT’s strategy closely with ADAC’s digital strategy to ensure that the target IT architecture was synchronized with technological developments such as the Internet of Things, connected vehicles, wearable technology and location-based services.

In addition, he insisted that IT and the rest of the business share responsibilities for keeping IT tightly aligned with ADAC’s strategy.

Today, according to Weinrauch, IT works so closely with project teams that “it is difficult

A selection of recent accomplishments ---

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Saved approximately 7M€ over a timeframe of 3 years through IT-strategy initiatives.

Enhanced the overall speed and effectiveness of the ITorganization, such as shortening time-to-market, improving business cases of new initiatives and reducing overhead.

ADAC became the largest non-consulting organization in Germany to implement such a comprehensive set of changes to its workplace, including flexible desks, BYOD, and work anyplace anywhere policies.

to tell who is from IT and who is not.” When IT identifies a promising new technology, they explore its potential business relevance jointly with the relevant business department. “In this respect,” explained Weinrauch, “the ADAC IT department now considers itself to be a “driver” of new topics, and no longer a “processor” of orders from other departments.”

Key to Weinrauch’s effectiveness is his approach to leadership. “If I tell my people what to do, I essentially tell them to shut off their brain and heart and just use both hands to fulfill my orders. Instead, I try to inspire people to use their skills and to perform beyond their abilities – to employ their hands, their brain and their heart at the same time. If I accomplish that, my role is to provide direction and guidelines, stand out of their way and clear any roadblocks.”

existing components rather than be customdeveloped. They used SCRUM agile development methods to enhance and integrate the new IT systems stack with mixed teams, consisting of business and IT staff members, as well as external experts. And they adapted business processes to fit the design principles of the new systems infrastructure instead of building constant customizations (“balconies”) that would limit the future flexibility of the systems. As a result, they significantly reduced complexity and business limitations due to an outdated systems infrastructure.

Weinrauch and the ADAC IT team have also been essential to support the company’s “Future Workplace,” consisting of flex offices and a clean desk policy for all workers, up to the top management levels, bring your own device (BYOD) policy for Smart Phones and Tablets, and a Mobile Working regime allowing employees (including call centre staff) to work anywhere inside and outside of the ADAC-premises according to personal and company needs without technical limitations while maintaining a high level of IT-security. ADAC became the largest non-consulting organization in Germany to implement such a comprehensive set of changes to its workplace.

IT is working handin-hand with the rest of the business, identifying new possibilities and bringing them to fruition.

One area where the ADAC IT team has made a notable difference is with the ADAC assistance business (roadside assistance and medical assistance).

Over the years, the IT-landscape for the ADAC assistance business had developed into several legacy systems that were increasingly inadequate for supporting current and future planned business activities. Instead of prolonging the lifespan of the existing legacy systems or planning a new custom development, Weinrauch introduced a completely new approach. They purchased and implemented a highly configurable systems platform where – apart from the integration with legacy applications – almost all business requirements can be configured from

In 2014, after enhancing the proactive capabilities of IT, Weinrauch and the ADAC IT-organization received the Handelsblatt ITStrategy Award for their accomplishments.

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Next Steps: 26

Building a results-driven CIO community As we see the strategic role of CIO’s increasing, we also observe that this role is perceived very differently from company to company, from industry to industry. There is still confusion on the exact nature of the role of a CIO. The question arises whether he or she should be driving the shift towards digitalization, or whether other divisions within the company should drive this.

There is even debate about who exactly a CIO should report into.

Amidst these discussion, it becomes clear that there is a strong need for CIO’s to benchmark their activities and performance with their peers, across industries and across countries. Sharing ideas, best practices and visions about the future becomes an imperative for every digital leader who wants to drive his organization to the next level.

The ‘European CIO of the year’ contest, as well as the publication of this report at the occasion of the contest, is a solid step in this direction. The examples of digital leaders included in this report might inspire others to become as successful in driving the growth of their businesses, and increase the business relevance of the CIO role.

But it does not stop here. What is needed is a platform for constant discussion and exchanges of ideas, the establishment of a community where CIO’s can share best practices among their peers in other industries and countries.

This is the core of CIONET’s mission.

For the last eight years we have been building on such a community, which now exceeds 4000 members across Europe and expanding to new regions beyond Europe.

Building on the future Looking at the future we plan to further enhance the international character of this community, and enable our members to leverage the knowledge and experience of their international peers through our platform. We plan to bring new services to our members, get them together around hot issues and offering them new ways to find solutions to their specific challenges.

This way CIONET will become a key instrument for CIO’s to lead their organization towards a successful and impactful future.

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Leading by example: Fostering more role models for succeeding in a digital global economy This year’s report findings reinforce both our findings from previous years and what many organizations are learning the hard way: any organization that does not strive to have at least one of the three types of digital leaders featured in this report is failing to pursue important opportunities to create value and be competitive in today’s digital global economy.

The good news is that within CIONET’s community, there are many digital leaders as accomplished as the 18 profiled in the report. The bad news is that, according to research that we have collaborated on with the European Commission, demand for digital leaders already exceeds supply and that the gap between demand and supply will only increase, as more organizations realize they need digital leaders.1 While this gap could evolve into a crisis, it is also a significant opportunity for employment.

Raising awareness of what digital leaders and their teams are doing to create myriad value for different types of organizations is core to increasing the supply, reducing the gap, and ensuring organizations have the leadership necessary to compete.

In several of the profiles featured in this report, a critical success factor to enhancing the strategic value and role of IT from a reactive order taker to a proactive orchestrator is raising awareness of how different aspects of IT from across the organization relate to the business interests of a local unit within the organization. An initial and fundamental task that many of the featured CIOs had to accomplish was to ensure the rest of the business was aware of what their organization’s digitized platform consisted of, including redundant and insufficiently compatible islands of technology, business processes, and data, so that the business (rather than simply IT) could decide whether to continue operating in that manner or change.

With regards to raising awareness outside of the organization, the European Commission is funding a variety of projects and events to raise awareness of e-skills and digital leadership, such as e-skills week (http://eskills-week. ec.europa.eu/) a project to help educational institutes develop graduates who are better prepared and enthusiastic to become digital leaders (http://eskillsguide.eu/home/), and a project to better understand and foster e-leadership for small and medium sized enterprises (http://eskills-lead.eu/home/). Students need more role models such as those featured in this report to inspire them to develop the skills to lead exciting endeavors. Finalists and winners from past European CIO of the Year events have already participated in several of these events and projects. Please contact us if you and your organization are interested in participating.

If you are interested in participating or learning more about what CIONET is doing to help CIOs raise awareness both within and outside of their organizations, please contact us.

1 INSEAD, empirica and IDC. (2013). “e-Leadership: Skills for competitiveness and innovation.” available at

The 2014 Digital Leadership Report Accelerating local innovations while boosting global synergies

The report represents results from indepth research which surveyed Chief Information Officers from 10 European countries and interviews with 18 of Europe’s most distinguished CIOs, as judged by their peers. Together, these findings help us better understand how organizations are taking control of information and communication technologies to create significant business value in myriad ways, such as operating globally, better and cheaper; collaborating more effectively; enhancing customer experiences; innovating services and products; and increasing the efficiency and success of mergers and acquisitions.

The report identifies three types of IT-enabled leaders who are helping a wide variety of organizations be more competitive and create more value: Technology-driven CIOs; Business process-driven CIOs, and Client-driven CIOs. As a whole, the report’s findings highlight the importance of fostering digital leaders. They suggest that any organization that does not strive to have at least one of the three types of digital leaders is failing to pursue important opportunities to create value and be competitive in today’s increasingly interdependent and dynamic global economy.

About CIONET CIONET is the biggest community of IT executives in Europe. Bringing together What’s next. over 4000 CIOs, CTO’s and IT directors from wide ranging sectors, cultures, academic backgrounds and generations, CIONET’s membership represents an impressive body of expertise in IT management. CIONET’s mission is to feed and develop that expertise by providing top-level IT executives with the resources they need to realize their full potential.

CIONET develops, manages and moderates an integrated array of tools and services from the online CIONET platform – the world’s first social network for CIOs – to a range of offline networking events, conferences, workshops and executive education programmes all tailored to top-level management. CIONET also provides exclusive access to the latest research through regular online and offline publications and a number of value adding partnerships with key players from the academic and corporate worlds.

Faced with the rapidly changing role of today’s IT executive, CIONET not only helps its members keep up with the pace of change but empowers them to take an active role in shaping the future of their field, always challenging them with “What’s next.”

Keep in touch: follow us on Twitter @cionet or through our LinkedIn page.

If you are a CIO and wish to become a member please contact mieke@cionet.com If you have relevant content for our CIO members please contact frederic@cionet.com If you are an IT vendor and wish to establish a close relationship with our CIO members please contact ilja@cionet.com

About INSEAD As one of the world’s leading and largest graduate business schools, INSEAD brings together people, cultures and ideas to change lives and to transform organisations. With campuses in Europe (France), Asia (Singapore) and Abu Dhabi, INSEAD’s business education and research spans three continents. Its

146 renowned Faculty members from 34 countries inspire more than 1,300 degree participants annually in our MBA, Executive MBA, Specialised Master’s degrees (Master in Finance, Executive Master in Consulting and Coaching for Change) and PhD programmes.

Design: echtgoed.be