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Using IT to Transform the Business: Three Keys to Success

See how award winners Flowserve, Delphi, Merrill Lynch, Johnson & Johnson and the Air National Guard generated companywide excitement for their projects that touched every aspect of their organizations and built the strategic foundation they needed to get results.

By Cindy Waxer

August 06, 2007 — CIO —

For a company that manufactures products that protect the flow of materials, Flowserve was having a tough time pumping standardized technologies and business processes throughout its 300 global locations. The culmination of a series of mergers and acquisitions, the company, based in Irving, Texas, found itself saddled with a whopping 68 ERP systems, scattered data center structures, and fragmented voice and data networks.

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Faced with mounting operational and regulatory pressures, Linda Jojo, Flowserve’s CIO, knew it was time to simplify the company’s entire IT infrastructure—an endeavor that would bring about sweeping changes across an enterprise spanning more than 56 countries. How she accomplished this task helped the company earn a 2007 CIO 100 Award. Applying IT in innovative ways at the enterprise level is certainly no small feat. Implementation headaches, configuration nightmares and employee backlash are only a handful of obstacles that are bound to arise. And for companies such as Flowserve that choose to forgo a piecemeal approach in favor of a complete IT overhaul, the challenges can seem insurmountable.

What’s the best way to determine a project’s scope? How should investment dollars be divvied up? What steps must be taken to win the support of senior-level executives and frontline employees alike? And how can you even begin to capture the impact of a project that touches every aspect of an organization? These are questions that Jojo, along with fellow CIO 100 honorees from Delphi, the Air National Guard, Johnson & Johnson, and Merrill Lynch had to ask themselves before tackling one of the largest undertakings of their IT careers.

Transformation is tricky stuff, after all. So it’s not surprising that Andy Woyzbun, lead analyst at Info-Tech Research Group, refers to today’s expansive IT undertakings as the “Big Bang.” “The reason why a lot of organizations don’t propose the ‘Big Bang,’” he says, “is because they don’t feel that they can generate sufficient excitement, belief or faith [among senior-level management]. Therefore, they decide to tentatively chip away at problems a bit at a time.”

That doesn’t have to be the case though. Translating an IT project into business terms, developing a strategic communications plan, building a solid business case and creating a governance team to oversee change are all steps that can lead to a successful IT overhaul, as proven by these CIO 100 honorees.

Get Everyone on Board
At Flowserve, Jojo’s assignment was heavy on IT change as the company sought to update processes and systems: establishing a common IT infrastructure, introducing global help desk capabilities and cutting dozens of disparate ERP systems. But that didn’t stop her from taking a decidedly business approach to simplifying Flowserve’s IT footprint.