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Companies Took IT Risks and Succeeded

By Christopher Lindquist

August 01, 2005 — CIO —

EARLY ADOPTER:

ABNA

EXECUTIVE IN CHARGE: Mysia Benford, information systems and logistics director

PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY: Outdated, inefficient logistics were a money sink

SOLUTION: Service-oriented architecture (SOA) and enterprise service bus from Sonic Software

YEAR IMPLEMENTED: 2002

RISK: Technology was unproven; some end users strongly resistant to change

MITIGATION: Found forward-thinking sponsors willing to prove SOA would work, then used their success as leverage with other groups

REWARD: 5% to 10% logistics savings and more flexibility

EARLY ADOPTER:

Cox Communications

EXECUTIVE IN CHARGE: Mark Cotner, database architect

PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY: Needed a high-speed database to collect data from millions of broadband subscribers’ modems

SOLUTION: MySQL open-source database

YEAR IMPLEMENTED: 2001

RISK: Product was new

MITIGATION: Extensive testing before implementation; making sure in-house staff could manage most support issues; disciplined monitoring changes to software

REWARD: Faster than commercial alternatives, with dramatically lower acquisition costs

EARLY ADOPTER:

PPG Industries

EXECUTIVE IN CHARGE: Jim Johnston, IT director of enterprise architecture and advanced technology

PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY: Needed a way to discover and manage ideas for new products

SOLUTION: MindMatters idea-tracking system

YEAR IMPLEMENTED: 2000

RISK: Very small company with a limited track record; failure would have created employee resistance and hurt flow of new ideas

MITIGATION: Exhaustive prepurchase research; source code escrowed

REWARD: Collaboration facilitation extended to all PPG employees; functionality expanded beyond discovering new product ideas

EARLY ADOPTER:

Pilkington North America

EXECUTIVE IN CHARGE: Bill McCreary, VP, CIO and operating excellence; Doug Wait, plant manager

PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY: New sales contract required Pilkington plant to increase output dramatically and quickly

SOLUTION: JRG’s hosted supply chain management software

YEAR IMPLEMENTED: 2004

RISK: Small vendor with short track record; product failure would dramatically reduce profit margins on new contract

MITIGATION: Limited rollout to single plant

REWARD: Rapid deployment—took only five months from first contact to live app

EARLY ADOPTER:

Epsilon

EXECUTIVE IN CHARGE: Mike Coakley, VP of marketing technology products

PROBLEM/OPPORTUNITY: Small company needed technology to leapfrog much larger competitors

SOLUTION: Netezza data-mining device

YEAR IMPLEMENTED: 2002

RISK: Epsilon would be Netezza’s first customer

MITIGATION: Careful vendor vetting by non-IT groups, including finance

REWARD: New product features increased sales; turned off expensive mainframe system

 

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