Sales Laundry

Posts Tagged ‘CIO’

Dennis Strong, Senior Vice President and CIO of McCoy’s Building Supply has signed on as part of the Advisory Board for the inaugural Austin IT Symposium. Dennis is a big part of the regional IT community as part of the Austin AITP (Association of Information Technology Professionals) chapter, the Texas State University AITP chapter, and supporting the larger business community through the McCoy College of Business Administration on the Texas State University campus.

“We are very excited to have Dennis as part of this group. Dennis has been with McCoy’s every step of the way as they have embraced technology to make the leap from manual cash registers to the integrated network and supply chain in place today” said Val King, with event sponsor ThinOps Consulting. “Dennis also understands the fundamentals of the business that his IT organization serves and as such, has earned additional oversight responsibilities for the Marketing and Merchandising groups within McCoy’s.”

About Dennis Strong

As Senior Vice President and CIO of McCoy’s Building Supply, Dennis leads the information services group guiding every technology initiative the company undertakes. Dennis continues to leverage technology to improve the retailers business, driving business process improvements throughout the company and into the hands of McCoy’s most important partner, the customer. In addition to his technology responsibilities, he also holds oversight responsibility for both the Marketing and Merchandising departments.

Prior to joining McCoy’s Building Supply in 1997, Dennis was Vice President of Information Technology for McLane Company leading data, security, communications and operations support of 16 distribution centers, 4 domestic manufacturing divisions and 3 international distribution centers.

He was named 2009 AITP Private Sector Information Technology Executive of the Year, most recently leading McCoy’s Building Supply past many retail giants to #1 in Specialty Retailing and #26 overall on the InformationWeek 500 in 2010.

About ThinOps Consulting

ThinOps Consulting specializes in assisting organizations streamline costs and manage risk associated with IT expenditures with two business units. Business Advisory serves C-level management by assessing where the company is, where the company wants to be, and developing a roadmap to help executive management reach those objectives. Technology Consulting serves IT organizations primarily through virtualization and remote access technologies designed to improve efficiency, lower support costs and ultimately deliver IT as a service.

About efm Events

efm Events, a division of Executive Functions Management, Inc. www.efminc.com is an information technology-focused event management and production company with 18 IT Symposiums across the Midwest and Rocky Mountain Region.

I heard an interesting quote today on a CIO Magazine webcast from Steven John, Strategic CIO of Workday, speaking about “The Cloud.”

“If you are doing what someone else can do then what only you can do is not getting done.”

Steven John, Strategic CIO, Workday

Steven’s point, that if another organization is more capable of doing what you are doing, give or take some due diligence, push the work out and focus your efforts on what you are uniquely skilled to do as an individual or a company, makes sense.

So much sense, in fact, corporations in this country have been following the strategy of pushing out jobs to the other side of the border and the other side of the world because the skill is there, the pay is low and they work while we sleep.  In short it does not make sense or cents to do the work here.

C-level executives are wrestling with this “Cloud” problem figuring out answers to “Cloud 101″ questions today like how to best deploy their human capital.  Tomorrow they will also be fighting upstart competitors in “Cloud 201: How not to get eaten by the little guy that has a lower cost basis than you and no legacy gear to work around.”

OK, so what does this have to do with you?

It is time for you to take stock and figure out what “only you can do” and get busy getting good at it before the Cloud comes and rains on your parade.

If you are an IT executive, look for opportunities to free up your IT resources.  Create an internal cloud; use a public provider or some hybrid model pitched by VMware and Citrix to push the things you don’t need to be doing, the commodities, to the line of business or a strategic partner.

Consultant?  Find and focus on your niche and push off everything else including and mowing the grass on those days you work from home to specialists if your revenue stream permits.

There are real live schools contemplating replacing teachers with computers in some specific test cases, how far could behind could a sales or consulting job be that is built on the model of being paid to educate others and demonstrate expertise?

As I build up the territory I am in, I am facing a similar problem today.  To hit my self-imposed targets for the year the math tells me I need to do more research and make more new contacts than it is practical for me to make in a day and still work on the rest of what I do.

I spent four hours building a nine page spreadsheet detailing every aspect of my business and defining the ratios I need to monitor to stay on track.  (in retrospect, probably should have farmed that task out)  Now I am faced with three choices.

1.  Keep doing what I was doing, and go look for my Ignorance is Bliss T-shirt.

2.  Focus on where I am strongest, building my community of customers and growing those relationships, pawn off low level client research and paperwork tasks, and follow my plan.

3.  Try to straddle the fence and will myself to do it all, not let anything fall through the cracks, maintain exceptional customer service, toss a hand grenade into my personal life and get “We miss you” cards from my kids at work because I am never home.

The quote I led off with and my spreadsheet exercise really opened my eyes.  This morning I would have said I was on track to have a great year.  Now I realize to hit my personal stretch-goal I need an assistant to help me find and research 2200 prospect firms with at least one of ten pain points, with a certain organizational structure and head count so I can have 200 meetings to earn 43 net new clients.

And I need to streamline my process so that this activity level will be practical and my own best intentions do not blow up in my face.

Can you make the changes that will let you find and focus in on what only you can do?

I’m ready.  Are you?  To the Cloud!

I am working with Gary Peyton at efm Events to help bring the Austin IT Symposium to life.  efm Events did a similar event in San Antonio in late 2010 that Jay was apart of.

I was not a lot of help, but Jay was a great resource for efm and one of the reasons Austin is getting a shot at building its own Executive IT Symposium.

My job now is to inform the general IT community about the event and to help find more great people for our Advisory Board, the break out sessions and the CIO panel that closes the event .

The Advisory Board is a very important part of this event.  Our Advisory Board adds credibility to the event, helps shape the agenda and keeps us focused on creating breakout sessions that address some of the problems that are top-of-mind in the IT community today.