Global CIO: Suicide Strategy For CIOs: Aligning IT With The BusinessGlobal CIO: Suicide Strategy For CIOs: Aligning IT With The Business

Inspiration Comes From Aligning With Customers, Not Hiding From Them

I then offered about a dozen examples of companies whose IT teams are intertwined with the business and are accelerating and enhancing connections with customers instead of sitting back and waiting to be told by someone else what's happening out in the world and what, in turn, the IT organization's reactive response should be as it tries to keep up and stay relevant.

• Progressive Insurance: Their new online "Name your own price" business lets customers, well, customize their policies based on needs and budgets. Powerful and externally oriented IT systems allow Progressive to get away from the traditional insurance-company model of "here's what I'm selling; which one are you buying?"

• CME (formerly Chicago Merc Exchange): Customers today do more trading, demand more options, require more speed, and insist on greater security than ever before. And they expect global scope with no jitter. Building on its longtime willingness to lead with new technologies and capabilities, CME--the #1 company on the information 500 list--has surged forward to exceed its customers' demands: five years ago, CME's monthly trading volume was about 30 million trades; today, it has reached 6.5 billion. And during that time of massively scaling out, it has also scaled up just as impressively: over those five years, it has cut execution time per trade from 180 milliseconds to 6 milliseconds. (It takes 300 milliseconds to blink.) They've also intereconnected with Brazil's top exchange to allow trading across both marketplaces. I'll bet the CME IT team is very proud of that, and very inspired by it: what's the value of employee morale like that in your quest for ongoing brilliant ideas and execution?

• JetBlue: After its peak summer months, the airline wanted to sustain its revenue momentum so it offered a fixed-price "all you can fly" promotion for $599. The campaign was expected to run for 14 days, but was sold out in three days. New business models, new power in the hands of customers, new revenue opportunities, new confidence to go beyond best practices into next practices: could your IT systems handle such an idea? • Valero: The Fortune 500 energy company has begun working so closely with SAP to push out new applications and capabilities that the two companies have begun sharing the IP they're developing together. Where do you have the opportunity to drive growth and accelerate processes by pursuing new relationships with strategic vendors?

• Coca-Cola Freestyle: It's hard to imagine that buying soft drinks can be an exciting experience, but just do a YouTube search on "Coca-Cola Freestyle" and watch some of the videos from young people as they confront this breathtakingly cool, innovative, customer-centric, and tradition-shattering device that oh by the way is jammed with IT and useless without it. It also marks the first time in the 100-plus-year history of the company that its IT team worked with its R&D team. Are some organizational silos preventing you and your team from doing fabulous things? Do you think your company's products just aren't the type that can ever engage customers? Did you ever think a soda-dispenser could be cool?

Realign, Redefine, And Shine

"Aligning IT with the business" is an old-fashioned idea that needs to be put away in the museum with the other outdated antiquities from this business, from 8-inch floppy diskettes to punch cards to luggable "portable" computers. It's time has come and gone, and it is hurting many more CIOs than it is helping.

One of the most-intelligent and wonderful people I've met in this business is Professor Jerry Luftman of Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Jerry is a huge proponent of align-with-the-business and he recently said that there's 30 years' worth of material documenting the ongoing struggle to make that business/IT connection, and that body of work cannot be ignored as future solutions are explored.

But I think that's exactly the problem: the reason this riddle has been under study for 30 years and is still unsolved is because it can't be solvedit's a theory in search of validation, and three decades have shown the answer remains out of reach. I say that with the greatest of respect and admiration for Prof. Luftman, who has surely forgotten more about IT than I will ever know, and I hope he will turn his prodigious talents toward exploring the power IT can unleash when it is focused on, engaged with, and aligned with customers.

If you want to move yourself and your team permanently away from the Kids' Table and up to the Grown-Ups' table, the best place to start is by dropping the sclerotic "align IT with the business" bromide and joining the rest of your organization in the relentless effort to excite and delight your customers. That's the real future of the CIO profession.

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