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How to Build an IT Team That Helps Your Company Make Money

Generating revenue for his company is the focus for the CIO of pharmaceutical testing company MDS.

By Tom Gernon

July 03, 2008 — CIO — In today's weak economy, companies tend to think of IT mainly as an engine for cost reduction and increased efficiency. But in many industries, including the pharmaceutical testing business in which MDS operates, IT can and should drive top-line growth. The path to being an effective partner in growth begins with an IT team that has a strong understanding of the business, a commercial orientation and a focus on the end customer.

A commercially-oriented team needs a core of program managers and business analysts. They can sit down with the business, understand what business users are asking for, and then translate that to our internal and external technology partners. Your reputation as the right group to deliver commercial solutions rests on their shoulders.

I've been involved in delivery of big applications, including, in 1996, the first customer website at Fidelity Investments. Projects that fail, I have found, are most often the ones in which IT has an internal mind-set. The successful ones tend to have IT staff involved who appreciate the external customer. For example, as I learned early in my career, it's one thing to have a bug that affects internal people. You can quickly react to it and have direct dialogue with the end users about the problem. That's not the case with external customers, which has bigger ramifications. When I know what we do will affect a customer, I look for people who have good business sense and who understand what it means to have a commitment to the customer.

The Competitive Advantage

When I started at MDS two and a half years ago, we had a key project that had gotten off to a rocky start. We were developing a system to help manage customersâ¬" clinical trials and deliver results from these trials. It seemed that whenever we got the technology side working, the business side broke, and when we got the business side right, the technology side broke.

To set the project right, we paired a good high-level project manager from the business with one from IT to get a more focused view of the features this application needed. The IT manager brought a good understanding of the business, strong skills in managing the necessary compromises and a drive to see the project completed.

Within six months we had it ready. The expectations within the business were that this system would put us only at par in the marketplace. But customers have said this system is the gold standard in the marketplace and a competitive differentiator. We are winning customers—and growing the top line—with this system.

 

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