Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »June 01, 2001 — CIO —
Relevance is an important word for Dawn Lepore, one that the vice chairman and CIO for San Francisco-based The Charles Schwab Corp. says often and effortlessly. During a meeting with colleagues about the company’s website, Lepore speaks about the relevance of enabling customers to manage their finances online. On the way to lunch, she reveals her fear of letting the IT division become irrelevant to the business as a whole. She even applies the word to child-rearing: Despite the intense demands of work, she must stay relevant in the life of her 3-year-old son.
Without a doubt, relevance is Lepore’s mantra, one she adopted since graduating from Schwab’s IT legions to become chief technologist in 1993. "A CIO is nothing if she doesn’t make sure IT continues to stay responsive to customers and the business overall," she says. "As far as I see it, management is entirely about evolution."
To understand Lepore’s management and leadership philosophy, you needn’t look further than Schwab.com, a website she helped launch with co-CEO Dave Pottruck and other key executives three years ago. Back then, Schwab was just another financial services company, struggling to retrofit a Web-based service to compete against traditional competitors and pure-play upstarts for a share of the online trading market. Pottruck and Lepore collected input from several high-volume customers, asked what they want from a new website, then set out to build just that. The results astonished even Lepore. Today, thanks to a site that serves 4.3 million active accounts every day, the company is a $5.8 billion giant. According to various market research companies?Gomez and Forrester, to name two?it has become the hands-down leader in online trading worldwide.
These changes did not happen overnight, of course. Creating the site was the easy part; Lepore says that with support from the entire executive committee, a team of 100 developers built and launched the effort in a matter of weeks. Engineering the effort, however, was an entirely different matter. Lepore says that several Schwab insiders encouraged her to outsource the project to consultants who have expertise in taking businesses online. They wondered why Schwab would go to the trouble of training its own people when it could simply pay someone else. Lepore was undeterred.
"Talk about relevance. Taking this exciting job and giving it to outsiders would have been the fastest way to make my organization irrelevant," she says. "I knew right away we were dealing with more than just technology on this thing. I wanted my people to have a chance to do the best work of their lives. And they did."