Scenario One The Rise Of The CIO

By 2010, the road to corporate success will run right through IT

Last year, David Bernauer became the chairman and CEO of Walgreens, the $32.5 billion drugstore chain. An accountant and pharmacist by training, he started his Walgreens career two decades ago as an assistant manager in one of the company’s stores. His rŽsumŽ?a few years running a shop, a few more in finance, a stint in marketing, three years as COO?is typical of many ambitious corporate execs. But Bernauer isn’t your average chief executive at all. He’s a former CIO.

During Bernauer’s four-year tenure in the mid-’90s as Walgreens’ CIO, he oversaw the development and deployment of a central system for filling prescriptions and managing patient records that is widely credited with enabling the now 102-year-old company to stay at the top of the drugstore industry food chain. The system, which frees pharmacists from routine administrative tasks, has helped Walgreens keep costs down as it pursues an ever larger share of the prescription market. And with it, the company established a new standard for customer service?enabling customers to refill prescriptions at any outlet and schedule prescription refills in advance?that competing chains now shoot for. In short, Bernauer’s work as CIO has a lot to do with Walgreens’ current success.

Today, Bernauer’s is a rather singular story. Only a handful of CEOs have ever deployed an IT system, read the riot act to a software vendor, or put in a long night trying to get a mission-critical network up after a crash. But by 2010, plenty of chief executives will have put in a stint with IT, probably running it. There will be no doubt as to the power of the CIO as an architect of corporate success.


The Inevitability of the CIO
Because of the impact IT has had in the past decade on the way companies have grown and been managed, CIOs in 2004 have a unique opportunity to establish and fortify their leadership position in corporate America. Successful companies depend on IT to create competitive advantage, whether it’s by operating an efficient supply chain, delivering top-notch customer service, or using the Internet to enter new markets and create new products or services. "Technology has continually changed the underlying economics of the way the world does business," sums up John B.W. Cross, former CIO of energy company British Petroleum (BP) and current CIO and director of the U.K. Department of Work and Pensions.