What’s next.

Accelerating local innovations while boosting

global synergiesThe 2014 Digital Leadership Report

2

MethodologyThe findings in this report are based on two principle sources of original data: survey data from 89 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) from 10 European countries and in-depth interviews with 18 of Europe’s CIOs.

The survey questions are in part based on the seminal work of Weill and Worner (2009) studying how the roles of CIOs have changed, on ques-tions developed last year in collaboration with Joe Peppard, professor at the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, as well as on questions developed in collabora-tion with Jeanne Ross, Director and Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School’s Center for Information Systems Research. The brief survey asked participating CIOs to estimate what percentage of their time in 2013 they and their team spent across three general activities: Managing and innovating delivery of IT services; Managing and innovating business processes; and Improving and innovating products and services for external customers. In addition, participants were asked to estimate what percentage of the time spent on each of the three areas of activity involved working with colleagues from the rest of the business. Another set of questions asked them about digitization. From April to May of 2014, CIONET country offices solicited members to participate in the brief survey. Over 110 member CIOs participated. The results were first cleaned (e.g., incomplete surveys were removed) and then analyzed in detail.

In addition to the survey data, the authors con-ducted in-depth interviews with 18 CIOs. These CIOs were selected by CIONET Country Offices based on the winners of national awards for CIOs of the Year. Building on their survey responses, the authors asked interview participants for examples of how they lead teams to achieve and sustain a significant range of accomplishments. Another set of questions was around what key skills are necessary to fulfill each type of activity effectively and how their organizations foster such skills.

AcknowledgementsThis report was authored by Frederic De Meyer,

Program Director at CIONET, and Nils Olaya

Fonstad, Associate Director, INSEAD Faculty &

Research. This report and the research it is based

on would not have been possible without the

generous support of many people. The authors

greatly acknowledge the CIOs who took the time

to complete the survey and especially the CIOs

who took time from their busy schedules to be in-

terviewed and their colleagues who helped review

the profiles. Special thanks to Hendrik Deckers,

Amandine Gatelier and Mieke Pauwels of CIONET,

along with the many leaders of CIONET’s Country

Offices. The authors are also grateful for the sup-

port of colleagues at INSEAD, Virginie Bongeot-

Minet, Nurina Merdikawati, Aung Myint Thein, and

Eduardo Rodriguez Montemayor as well as for

Karel and his team at Echtgoed for designing the

report.

Table of Contents

Introduction .................................................................................. 3

Survey Results ............................................................................ 4

Profiles of Digital Leaders ........................................................ 7

Fabrice Benaut, IFR ....................................................................... 8

Paolo Daperno, illycaffè SpA ..................................................... 9

Federico Florez, Ferrovial ........................................................... 10

Mark Foulsham, esure ................................................................. 11

Anita Gjesbakk, National Collection Agency of Norway ...... 12

Rui Gomes, Hospital Fernando Fonseca E.P.E. ...................... 13

Cécile Gonfroid, Radio Télévision Belge Francophone ........................................................................ 14

Agustín González, Prosegur Compañía de Seguridad S.A. ....................................................................... 15

Maarten Hillenaar, the Central Government of the Netherlands ................................................................... 16

Vincent Léaux, City of Vélizy-Villacoublay .............................. 17

Eric Lippert, Lombard International Assurance S.A. .............. 18

Fernando Lucero Batalla, IBERDROLA S.A. ............................. 19

Nuno Miller, Farfetch Ltd. .......................................................... 20

Alexandre Ramos, Lusitania Companhia de Seguros, SA and N Seguros ......................................... 21

Daniele Rizzo, Autogrill spa ....................................................... 22

Frank Stockx, ING Belgium ......................................................... 23

Jeroen Tas, Philips Healthcare .................................................. 24

Günter Weinrauch, ADAC e.V. ................................................... 25

Next Steps: Building a results-driven CIO community ....... 26

3What strikes us when reviewing the

profiles of the 18 finalists of this year’s

‘CIO of the year’ contest included in this

report, is the extent with which these

CIO’s are now embedded in all the

aspects of the operational and strategic

evolution of their organization. Some

have moved on to other (non-IT re-

lated) leadership roles, others have been

granted with additional responsibilities

that go well beyond the management

of ICT. Still others have initiated new

projects and ideas that have a substan-

tial impact on the bottom line business

growth of their companies.

Chief Information Officers are earning their role as business leaders first and foremost

We see this as a genuine sign that

through their vision and accomplish-

ments, today’s digital leaders are con-

sidered to be business leaders first and

foremost. But more than this, we also

see this as an indication of a fundamen-

tal shift in the way organizations per-

ceive the role of technology in general,

and digitisation more specifically, in

their overall strategy.

Now more than ever, so it seems, the

digital strategy is at the core of the

business strategy. This dramatic shift

originates from a renewed focus of the

CIO’s. The survey we conducted for

this report shows that CIOs, in aver-

age, spend at least 40% of their time

working with people outside of their IT

organization. They expect this amount

to increase in the coming years.

However, our in-depth interviews with

the finalists uncovered many more ways

in which CIO’s drive their IT team closer

to ‘the business’. Most of them require

from their IT employees to physically sit

next to non-IT employees for a couple

of days per year, in order to increase

their business acumen. Others go even

further and organize genuine ‘hackaton’

days with employees from other divi-

sions, working together on strategic

technological initiatives, with quite

some impressive results.

Reflecting on our conclusions from

the previous editions of this report, we

see plenty of reasons to be optimis-

tic about the future of digital leaders.

As the examples in this report show,

these leaders and their teams are now

an integral part of the business. Not

merely a reactive support function, but a

proactive strategic asset that brings their

businesses to the next level.

We hope the examples in this report

will inspire other companies to put their

digital strategy at the forefront of their

business, and provide ideas to other

digital leaders on how to shape the

future successes of their organisations.

Frederic De Meyer

Program Director, CIONET

Nils Fonstad

Associate Director, INSEAD

3

Introduction

4

Survey Results

Consistent with the past three years of

surveying CIOs, and contrary to tradi-

tional perceptions of what CIOs do, our

data show that CIOs spend a significant

percentage of their time outside of

managing ICT services.

As organizations increasingly depend on

ICT for both their operations and their

innovations, they need digital leaders

that can simultaneously lead teams in

the following three areas.

Ensuring ICT services are delivered across the organization at the desired cost and service levels;

Managing and innovating business processes; and

Improving and innovating prod-ucts and services for external customers.

We have identified three types of CIOs,

depending on what general areas of

activities they spend a greater than

average time percentage of their time

in. Please note that in the majority of the

cases, CIOs spend some percentage of

their time in all three activities. The key

distinction is in what activity they tend

to focus on most, relative to their peers.

Technology-focused

+ < 50%

CIOs and IT Groups that are pri-

marily focused on ensuring that

IT infrastructure, applications, and

related services are delivered across

the organization at the desired cost

and service levels.

CIOs and IT Groups who spend a

greater than average percentage

of time managing and innovating

business processes, such as shared

services, global supply chain, and

operations.

CIOs and IT Groups who spend a

greater than average percentage

of time improving and innovating

products and services for external

customers.

Business Process-focused

+ >= 50% and

- > 0

External Customer-focused

+ >= 50% and

- <= 0

A

B

B

B

B

B

B

C

C

C

C

C

C

Types of CIOs in 2014 and anticipated in 2016

15+49+36+A 1

1

3

3

2

2

15%

36%

49%

In 2014, the 2 most common types of CIO were

Technology-focused and Business Process-focused

CIOs, representing respectively 36% and 39% of the total

CIO population. A majority of CIOs reported that over

the next couple of years, they anticipate that they will

be expected to spend more of their time either manag-

ing and innovating business processes or improving and

innovating products and services for external custom-

ers. Several reported that they expect their time to shift

so significantly that they will become a different type

of CIO. As a result, by 2016, only a sixth of CIOs will be

Technology-focused; about half expect to be Business

Process-focused; and just over a third expect to be-

come External Customer-focused. As CIOs expect to

take on more responsibilities, the skills they and their

teams will need to draw on to accomplish those respon-

sibilities will also expand.

36+39+25+A3

1

2

25%

36%

39%

2014

2016

5

Last year, % of total time working with non-IT colleagues spent on

ICT services

business processes

external customers

A

A

A

A

B

B

B

B

C

C

C

C

1

2

3

As the survey data and profiles of CIOs

illustrate, effective digital leaders have

developed a “t-shaped” portfolio of

skills, representing three dimensions of

expertise.

- A vertical set of competences

that represents expertise or “deep

knowledge” in systems of ICT, such

as enterprise architecture; IT gov-

ernance; application development;

security and data analytics;

- An overlapping vertical set of com-

petences that represents expertise in

business operations, such function

and operational expertise; product

expertise; customer and sector

expertise; and

- A horizontal set of “transversal com-

petences” that represents expertise

in developing organizations, such

as developing a compelling vision;

design and experimentation; and

negotiation and change manage-

ment. This set of competences is

relevant across a variety of situations

and enable them collaborate ef-

fectively across multiple boundaries

(e.g., organizational, geographic,

occupational, etc.).

Digital leaders spend on average 40

percent of their time engaged with non-

IT colleagues. Our data reveal that for

all 3 types of CIOs, working with non-IT

colleagues is an important aspect of en-

suring ICT services are delivered across

the organization at the desired cost and

service levels; managing and innovating

business processes; and improving and

innovating products and services for

external customers. Both Technology-

focused and Business Process-focused

CIOs, spend at least 45% of their time

managing and innovating business

processes with non-IT colleagues. All

three types of CIOs spend at least a

third of the time they spend improving

and innovating products and services

for external customers engaged with

non-IT colleagues. In short, the data

underscore a point made by all of the

18 CIOs profiled in this report: organiza-

tions that want to enhance the business

value of IT must share that responsibility

with IT.

370+630=450+550=350+650=

230+770=550+450=390+610=

280+720=450+550=490+510=

37%

45%

35%

23%

55%

39%

28%

45%

49%

3-D Expertise

6 As organizations rely more and more

on digital technologies to operate and

innovate, more of what they do be-

comes interdependent and they must

contend with a fundamental paradox

of agility: sustained local agility requires

global coordination. In highly digital and

interdependent environments, those

who can sustain competitive agility are

those who have figured out the optimal

balance between providing local project

teams with the autonomy to develop

solutions specific to local needs and

coordinating synergies across local

solutions. When local project teams

within an organization are not suffi-

ciently coordinated with each other, the

organization accumulates disparate IT

solutions, creating “digital spaghetti” –

islands of technology, digitized business

processes and data that are increas-

ingly expensive to maintain, difficult to

integrate and scale, and paradoxically,

inflexible. In fact, this “digital spaghetti”

soon presents a significant source of

operational, financial, and strategic

risk to the organization. Yet, if global

coordination consists of too many

standards and governance processes,

then local project teams are unable to

innovate solutions that are sufficiently

specific to local needs. The challenge

then is for organizations to quickly and

continuously learn the optimal balance

between local autonomy and global

coordination.

The profiles of the 18 successful digital

leaders in this report offer several exam-

ples of how Chief Information Officers

help organizations achieve and sustain

competitive agility.

Our survey data reveal several factors

that distinguish competitively agile

firms.

An important distinction is digitized

platform maturity, which refers to the

degree with which the components of

a firm’s digitized platform have been

accumulated in a coordinated manner,

with sufficient standardization and shar-

ing of technologies, digitized business

processes and data across business

units. When a firm has “digital spaghetti,”

it has an immature digitized platform.

Many of the digital leaders profiled in

the report inherited immature digitized

platforms and focused a significant part

of their time in maturing their organiza-

tion’s digitized platforms. In order to

accelerate the maturity process, they

worked closely with non-IT colleagues

to speed up the necessary organiza-

tional changes.

Another important distinction is pro-

gram management, which is an effec-

tive mechanism to ensure that non-IT

leaders learn how to and share respon-

sibility for prioritizing resources. When

local projects are insufficiently coordi-

nated, IT is often burdened with doing

too many at once, thereby risking all

with delays, over budgeting, and poor

execution. Several of the CIOs profiled

in this report draw on program manage-

ment to help the rest of the business

take responsibilities for prioritization.

Organizations often mistake agility

with simply local autonomy, yet Chief

Information Officers know too well that

sustained competitive agility requires

both rapid local innovations and global

synergies, such as digitized platform

maturity. Our survey data underscore

that any organization struggling to

become competitively agile would do

well to seek digital leaders such as those

profiled in this report.

Digital leaders are best qualified to orchestrate competitive agility.

Two of the most significant factors that distinguish competitively agile firms are digitized platform maturity and program management.

Digitized Platform Maturity

The degree with which the

components of a firm’s digitized

platform have been accumu-

lated in a coordinated manner,

with sufficient standardization

and sharing of technologies,

digitized business processes and

data across business units.

(from a scale of 1-5)

Program Management

Grouping of interdependent

projects under a single manager

who can trade off resources

among them.

(from a scale of 0-4)

72+28+ 64+3661+39+ 45+55+

Competitively Agile

Organizations

Insufficiently Agile

Organizations

3,62 2,57

3,06 1,80

7

Learning from Accomplished Digital Leaders

In this section, we present 18 profiles of

CIOs who clearly illustrate how digital

leaders are essential to the success

of their organizations and how they

are creating value for their customers

and partners. Featured in the follow-

ing profiles is an impressive range of

business value created by the CIOs,

their ICT departments, and colleagues

from the rest of their organizations.

These profiles highlight the importance

of fostering digital leaders for European

organizations to succeed and compete

in today’s global and digital economy.

Fabrice Benaut

IFR

Paolo Daperno

illycaffè S.p.A

Federico Florez

Ferrovial

Mark Foulsham

esure

Anita Gjesbakk

National Collection Agency of Norway

Rui Gomes

Hospital Fernando Fonseca E.P.E.

Cécile Gonfroid

Radio Télévision Belge Francophone

Agustín González

Prosegur Compañía de Seguridad S.A.

Maarten Hillenaar

The Central Government of the Netherlands (CIO from 2009-2013)

Vincent Léaux

City of Vélizy-Villacoublay

Eric Lippert

Lombard International Assurance S.A.

Fernando Lucero Batalla

IBERDROLA S.A.

Nuno Miller

Farfetch Ltd. (CIO from 2011 until 2014)

Alexandre Ramos

Lusitania Companhia de Seguros, SA and N Seguros

Daniele Rizzo

Autogrill S.p.A

Frank Stockx

ING Belgium (CIO from 2011-2014)

Jeroen Tas

Philips Healthcare

Günter Weinrauch

ADAC e.V.

8

Fabrice BenautIFR

A 360° approach to collaboration

With 30 years of experience within the same

company, during 16 of which he has served

as CIO, Benaut had the chance to develop a

solid and original vision of his role as a CIO,

and develop himself as a thought-leader on

his favourite subject: Big Data.

Throughout his years as a CIO he has seen

the role evolve tremendously. “It is undoubt-

edly the function that has been subject to the

greatest changes”, he explains. And according

to Benaut, this function will even become

more important in the future. Where the CIO

is now very often a musician, he will become

the orchestrator in the future. However, this

demands a very new approach from the CIO,

where he is not necessarily leading projects

any longer, but participates and contributes

in multiple others, sometimes as a leader,

and sometimes not. He increasingly needs to

function in a matrix system, and contribute

according to the match between his specific

skills and the concrete requirements of the

project.

But what essentially will drive the increased

relevance of the CIO function, according to

Benaut, is Big Data. The key is not in maintain-

ing and storing data, but to make them ‘talk’

and answer business questions that previously

were not asked. It is only in this way that IT

can maximize its relevance to the business.

“The new task of the CIO is to simplify what,

at first, looks complicated” Benaut says.

This vision is certainly influenced by the

professional environment in which Benaut

evolves, since data –and the comprehen-

sion of data- is the liveblood of the company

Benaut works for. Unsurprisingly, Benaut has

spent major parts of his time as CIO with the

clients of IFR and its mother company GfK.

For instance, in close partnership with these

clients, Benaut and his team developed dedi-

cated software to analyse the entertainment

market, and co-created a platform to provide

marketing reports for the book, video and

music markets.

But Benaut took on some important internal

challenges as well. From 2011 to 2013 the

major focus of Benaut was on the harmo-

nization of the 16 companies IFR acquired

throughout its history, spread over 60

countries, as well as the integration of IFR

into GfK. In this capacity Benaut had the

overall responsibility over product-services

definitions, catalogue of services and usage

improvements, and the reduction of duplicate

processes and platforms.

The biggest realization of

Benaut, however, con-

cerned the implementation

of a complex data integra-

tion platform to address Big

Data issues, such as data

variety, volume, velocity

and veracity, at IFR and GfK.

This new editor solution

was co-created by Benaut

and a software company,

and received several awards. Thanks to this

new solution business users can now provide

their own business rules that enable them

data collected into relevant, decision-driven

knowledge.

His experience and expertise in terms of Big

Data led Benaut to develop what he calls a

“collaborative 360° approach” to the way

his organization works. This entails a holistic

view of the skills and expertise, the resources

available (including crowdsourcing), the value

(including things like brand image and reputa-

tion) as well as the opportunity to co-create

and co-produce projects and solutions.

In the highly organic type of organization

Benaut created the CIO can be project leader

or provide support, dependent on the type of

projects and the stage in which the project

resides. “The common goal of the project

team is the best way to ensure its success”,

according to Benaut.

Benaut has since collaborated on 2 books

about Big Data, and is a frequent speaker

about this topic at international events. He is

also involved in designing job definitions for

Big Data. Although he calls himself an intra-

preneur, he is also increas-

ingly involved with external

startups in the field of IT and

big data.

A selection of recent accomplishments - Developed a 360° approach to his organization, which

changes organically according to the skills and resources

needed for specific projects;

- Developed an award-winning Big Data solution for GfK and

constantly works with external clients (sometimes in co-

creation) to help them in their Big Data needs;

- Integrated ICT environment of 16 acquired companies spread

over 60 countries.

IFR IFR is a global market intelligence company supplying marketing

intelligence to Fortune 500 manufacturers, retailers, distributors

and advertising agencies around the world.

IFR is fully integrated into the GfK Group of companies. GfK is a

global market research firm headquartered in Germany. In 2013,

GfK generated 1,5B€ in turnover and employed over 13,000

employees. It is the 4th biggest company of its kind, and has

presence in over 100 countries.

The fundamental role of the CIO

is changing dramatically from a musician to an

orchestrator.

9

Paolo Dapernoillycaffè S.p.A

Boosting the digital caffeine of the business

Since joining illycaffè in 2008, as both CIO and

Business Process Director, Paolo Daperno and

his team of about 25 employees have focused

IT on strengthening the company’s ability to

sense and respond quickly to the demands of

consumers and customers. “Our fundamental

role,” explains Daperno, “is to connect the

business to technology by explaining how

technologies can be exploited to serve busi-

ness objectives.” In 2011, as part this objective,

they launched the Global Web Platform project

to build a robust web platform to support

a variety of digitally-enabled capabilities:

provide a rich, seamless and cohesive brand

experience across illy sites, e-shops and social

networks; establish one-to-one relationships

with customers, leveraging “Circolo illy” (a

vast online community for illy fans) and other

social networks; consolidate e-shops on a

single, global platform; and create a single,

unified business-to-consumer (B2C) database

with CRM capability. Within a year, they had

accomplished all but the B2C database. By

2013, the database was in place, enabling illy

to connect internal and external data, from

external partners such as suppliers and logistics

partners. With the new platform, the company

has been able to develop greater intelligence

on customers. It is now a key platform for

B2C marketing campaigns; next steps will be

connecting on and off line business and sup-

porting the coffee cluster experience at Expo

2015 (Milan).

With the Global Web Platform in place,

Daperno and his team have been able to

introduce more quickly and more robust

capabilities. Illy recently decided to develop

the capabilities to focus the retail strategy,

requiring integration of the Point of Sales (POS)

in each store with the on line experience. First,

Daperno and his team integrated the POS with

their ERP and reporting system for the directly

managed stores. Now, they are implement-

ing cross channel functionality. Daperno

emphasizes that he and his team “would not

have been able to react to business require-

ments without having a clear vision and state

of the art of the Global Web Platform. The next

step will be to strengthen consumer loyalty

management. It’s a process of continuous

improvement.”

As part of the process introducing digitally-

enabled capabilities, Daperno and his team

have played a critical role in redesigning

processes. They helped shape an efficient pro-

cess to manage payment from consumer and

logistics/shipping to fulfill customer orders.

They have also promoted

collaboration across busi-

ness units, such as helping

direct channel managers/

directors in Italy, Europe

and China coordinate their

strategies and leverage

more from each other.

They also helped to better

integrate teams sitting in

US with those in Italy.

Another way Daperno

promotes synergies across

the company is by hosting

an IT Steering Committee where business

colleagues, such as the CEO, the CFO, as well

as those responsible for supply-chain manage-

ment and customer relations, meet to share

how they are using IT; prioritize projects and

facilitate their execution; and allocate resourc-

es: people, time, money. Daperno introduced

the committee in 2011 and it meets 8-10 times

a year.

As illy learns to innovate with IT, Daperno has

developed his IT team to better support digital

innovation. Within the IT group, he created a

new unit to support digital innovation, ecom-

merce development and customer-relations

management. Members of Daperno’s team

collaborated in the prototyping of two new

coffee machines. They contributed in two

fundamental ways. First, they helped the

team exploit the latest machine-to-machine,

WiFi, and data warehousing technologies.

Second, they are creating a data gathering and

standardizing process that was independently

of the model of the machine, avoiding ad-hoc

infrastructure development per each machine.

Daperno insists that these types of fruitful

collaborations “confirm that only when IT and

business work hand in

hand do projects succeed

beyond expectations.”

Finally, as part of their col-

laborative process, the IT

group continuously seeks

to improve how it oper-

ates. For each new project,

for example, members

challenge themselves to

simplify existing processes

and organization in order

to increase efficiency and

flexibility; rationalize infra-

structure and business systems; and increase

collaboration among countries and depart-

ments, centralizing activities and involving

everyone in common business projects. In this

manner, Daperno and his team aim to enhance

even further the digital capabilities of illy.

A selection of recent accomplishments - Implemented a Global Web Platform from which the IT team then

helped illy provide a rich, seamless and cohesive brand experience

across illy sites, e-shops and social networks; establish one-to-one

relationships with customers; consolidate e-shops on a single, global

platform; and create a single, unified B2C database with CRM capability.

- Any new business functionality can now be applied to more than one

country (e.g. coffee continuity program for consumers) is only paid

once.

- Collaborated in the development of two new models of digitally en-

hanced coffee machines.

- Built illy’s capabilities to enhance operations by generating and analyz-

ing data.

illycaffè S.p.A In 1933, Francesco Illy developed the modern espresso

machine in Trieste, Italy, the Adriatic port town where cof-

fee first entered Europe. In 2013, it had over 1000 employ-

ees worldwide and its gross revenue reached 373.9 M€.

Available in over 140 countries, with more than 200 es-

pressamente illy coffee bars locations worldwide and more

than 1500 independent cafes participating in its global

Artisti del Gusto network, 60% of illy coffee is enjoyed

outside of Italy. The company also runs over 20 Università

del caffè (“University of Coffee”), providing hands-on in-

struction to coffee growers, and guarantees above-market

prices to growers who meet its quality standards.

We are agile and continuously

improving because we took the time

to develop a digital platform and

governance model

10

Federico FlorezFerrovial

Leading by innovating digitally

In 2008, when Federico Florez was appointed

as CIO of the industrial giant Ferrovial, he faced

a tremendous challenge. Due to the huge

number of historical acquisitions there was

no such thing as a centralized IT department.

Rather, Florez inherited a heterogeneous set of

10 local IT departments, each working with its

own systems and different vendors and serving

over 500 internal companies. Furthermore,

these IT divisions were purely IT-focused

organisations, rather than business-driven ICT

organisations.

Florez took a very structured approach to

tackle this challenge. His first step was to

simplify, align and integrate all the IT func-

tions into one coherent, central business unit.

To achieve this, he undertook a vast array of

initiatives. One such initiative was to external-

ize several functions like infrastructure and

communications, resulting in savings of up

to 20%. For this project Florez and his team

received the Award of best outsourcing project

from the European Outsourcing Association.

Florez also centralized all the IT purchases at

group level to benefit from synergies and fully

leverage the buying power of Ferrovial. This

resulted in a cost savings of 25%. This effort

was so successful that Ferrovial decided to

nominate Florez as chairman of its Purchasing

Committee with responsibilities over all pur-

chases at Ferrovial.

Florez also developed a highly strategic

approach to cloud services. He transferred

two key functions, Human Resources and

Purchasing, onto the cloud. Transferring HR –

and 70,000 employees – to the cloud took 6

months instead of the anticipated 18 months

for such a project. This time-saving resulted

from observing a simple

yet hard-to-follow rule:

not to be misled into

believing that cloud

service providers have

no limits to their offering.

As Florez put it himself,

“We adapted ourselves to

the services in the cloud,

and not the other way

around”.

However, the major

challenge Florez needed

to tackle was to turn IT

from a cost center into

a business enabling and supporting function.

To achieve this, Florez created business line IT

functions, whose mission consists of working

together with business unit to make sure IT

serves the needs of that business. As a result, in

just three years, customer satisfaction scores

for the IT division (another process introduced

by Florez) rose dramatically from 4 to 7 on a

scale of 10.

Having accomplished significant cost reduc-

tions and enhancing the business impact of IT,

Florez was in a stronger position to expand the

strategic role of IT at Ferrovial. He proposed to

the CEO of Ferrovial to establish an innovation

function. Today, it consists of 50 employees

who investigate about 100 ideas and launch

30 innovation projects a year. To achieve this

success, Florez introduced a new approach

to innovation at Ferrovial. The new culture of

innovation implied implementing a startup

approach, taking some risks, and eliminating

projects early if they showed no value to the

P&L of Ferrovial. In many cases the projects

implied working with

startups, establishing new

types of partnerships and

experimenting with new

business models such as

open innovation.

Making this happen in a

risk-averse environment

took extensive efforts in

educating both execu-

tives and middle manage-

ment in the value and

process of innovation.

This new approach to

innovation has led to the

creation of new and profitable business lines.

One example is the development new ways to

monitor and benchmark the energy usage of

buildings, which is now being commercialized

and which accelerated Ferrovial’s entrance into

the energy efficiency market worldwide.

The combination of his IT and innovation roles

has led to a new job title for Florez. He is now

the ‘Chief Information and Innovation Officer’

of Ferrovial. In the future Florez expects to

leverage both technology and innovation even

further to strengthen the competitive position

and sustain the business growth of Ferrovial.

Open innovation will be a vital aspect to his

future work since, as he mentions: “99% of

the ideas for our business growth sit with the

customers”.

A selection of recent accomplishments - Cost savings of 15-20% in infrastructure and communica-

tions with outsourcing;

- Moved all HR and Purchasing systems in the Cloud in just 6

months;

- Ensured business alignment of IT by creating a ‘business IT’

function, resulting in an customer satisfaction increase from

business customers for 4 to 7 (on a scale of 10) in three

years;

- Established a new culture and process of innovation, leading

to 500 new ideas every two years, of which 35 become new

projects with impact in the P&L.

Ferrovial Ferrovial is a Spanish group operating in infrastructure projects.

The group has four areas of activities: Services (including facility

management and waste services); Toll roads; Construction and

Airports (among which Heathrow). In 2013, its revenues grew

9% to reach €8,2b. It employs over 66,000 people worldwide,

and 78% of the ebitda comes outside of its home market Spain.

Ferrovial’s goal as a leading developer and operator in the infra-

structure and services sector is to continue to shape the future

of society with a continuous focus on talent, integrity, safety,

excellence and innovation.

To rapidly innovate internally and with external partners, we streamlined

and consolidated our operations and developed a global ICT-based platform

11

Mark Foulshamesure

How IT and business go hand in hand

Operating in a multi-channel environment

is always challenging to anyone responsible

for IT. So what to think about an IT team that

deliberately creates an additional sales channel

for its organization?

This is what happened at insurance company

esure, where the IT team undertook the com-

plete transformation of the customer-facing

web platform in order to make it mobile-

enabled and optimised for ‘small screen sales’.

Foulsham and his team saw mobile commerce

as a growing demand of esure’s customers

and hence an early mover opportunity for

the organization. An IT team anticipating new

business opportunities is no small feat, but the

true innovation was the unique way Foulsham

managed this dramatic transformation.

Firstly, the transformation was realized on top

of the existing legacy web platform. Foulsham

and his team found ways to prepare the

platform for esure’s mobile customers without

re-engineering any of the previous investments

it had made on its web platform. This dramati-

cally reduced the total cost of this transforma-

tion by re-using the historic investment in the

company’s systems.

More impressive is how the transformation

itself was realized. Foulsham and his team

organized a series of ‘hackathons’ to manage

this project from the scoping phase through

to testing. This hackathon involved employees

from different business units of esure, all of

which were selected based on their specific

expertise and ability to provide maximum input

to the project. Foulsham: “We recognized

that this ultra-agile approach needed to be

co-located, iterative and resourced by the

best subject matter experts with a ‘can-do’

attitude”. This team then came together in

three intensive 4-day sessions to work on all

aspects of the project and make sure it would

align smoothly with the business imperative.

Most of all, the distinct approach ensured a

delivery of the project in just three months.

“A classic approach could have meant over a

year’s worth of project work. On completion

we had overtaken our competitors in the level

of mobile sophistication,” says Foulsham, “the

way in which everyone worked collaboratively

towards a common goal was fantastic!”

This effort has resulted in a marked growth in

mobile sales revenue for esure at a time when

key competitors are still working to develop

truly mobile optimised journeys. Just as impor-

tant to Foulsham, it cre-

ated a genuine team-spirit

across the multidisciplinary

employees involved that the

company was able to draw

on for subsequent projects.

The team continues to de-

liver innovation opportunities

that social media may bring

to esure, such as enabling

customers to purchase in-

surance through Facebook.

The diversity of this team,

in tandem with business

colleagues, is certainly key to the success it

generates. After all, as Foulsham puts it, “there

is no monopoly on good ideas”.

The hackathon ethic is a fine example of

the culture at esure, where the executives –

including Foulsham – meet every morning for

half an hour to go through the previous day’s

results, all using iPAD to assess business per-

formance. It is also an embodiment of the way

Foulsham perceives his role and responsibility

as an IT leader, where “simplicity is key”.

“I spend a lot of my time with the business”,

Foulsham told us. It certainly helps that in the

nine years he has been in the company, he

has been in direct touch with many parts of

the organization, from Sales and Operations,

Customer Service, Fraud and Cyber criminality

to Procurement, which he still heads today.

This also explains a lot about how he sees

the mission of IT at esure: Foulsham aspires

to have IT completely correlated with the

business strategy of esure. To realize this,

Mark and his team relentlessly look for lessons

from other companies and

industries both within and

outside its business sec-

tor. He tasks his team with

staying in touch with market

trends and opportunities,

but equally important is he

requires from his team to

physically set next to a busi-

ness function for at least one

day a year.

As an IT leader he also

deems it critical to think

ahead on which parts of the overall business

will be affected by the changes initiated by IT,

and he is constantly on the outlook for syner-

gies between all the requests he receives from

the business.

A selection of recent accomplishments - Created a new (mobile) quote and buy channel for esure in

just three months, a project that would have taken over a

year using a traditional project approach ;

- Adopted a unique ‘hackathon’ methodology which includes

employees from multiple disciplines in the organization

to design and deploy new technology projects in short,

intensely focused timescales;

- Alignment of IT with business strategy by requiring his team

to constantly look for best practices in other companies and

industries, and have them sit next to business functions at

least once a year.

esure In 2000, Peter Wood CBE, founded esure to offer competi-

tive insurance coverage using the Internet as its primary sales

channel. His aim was to harness internet efficiency to give a

better deal to responsible drivers and careful homeowners. From

the outset, esure’s goal was to offer superior service - on both

the internet and phone - while using technologically advanced

systems and underwriting to keep premiums low.

In just a few years, esure became one of the fastest growing in-

surers ever, with over 1 million customers joining them before its

5th birthday and less than 13 years after launching the company

floated on the London Stock Market with a market capitalisation

of over £1.3bn.

Be prepared to fail fast and

move on

12

Anita GjesbakkNational Collection Agency of Norway

Designing a self-service based government services

Governments all over the world are under tre-

mendous pressure to deliver more and better

services to their citizens, at an ever-decreasing

cost. To further complicate matters, citizens

are demanding to communicate with govern-

mental institutions through a variety of new

channels. Face-to-face and telephone are no

longer the most sufficient nor efficient ways

of communicating – for both citizens and

government institutions.

The National Collection Agency of Norway

forms a fine example of how a government

agency is effectively responding to this chal-

lenge. The web-based, self-service system it

has built enables debtors to the Norwegian

state to grant themselves installment plans and

arrange deferred payments, but also automises

to a great extend the complaints and claims

citizens have with the administration. Through

a transparent system, the debtors can now

see the status of their claims, the payment

rate and the salary deduction performed by

the state. This project has been rewarded with

the “Rosing Award”, the Norwegian Computer

Society’s award for the most user-friendly

webpage.

However, the aim of this transformation was

not only to smoothen the services brought to

the citizens, but to optimize the internal pro-

cesses as well. As part of the second endeavor,

Gjesbakk and her team initiated a project to

simplify the management and maintenance

of over 1000 letter templates the agency used

to generate. All of these are now managed on

a single module, and are optimized through

integration with email, text messages and

invoices.

The vision of Gjesbakk has no doubt been

instrumental to this success. The tools and

processes that were created were preceded by

extensive research about the exact wishes and

behavior of the end customer. While during

the design phase, the systems were regularly

tested by fictitious customers. The exact and

profound knowledge of the user was abso-

lutely key, according to Gjesbakk, but so were

other factors.

At least as important for this project just as for

other projects Gjesbakk is leading, is the very

strong collaboration between her IT division

and the business side of the agency. This is

key to success – from the start the mission of

the agency was to be technology-driven, as

well as to the IT mindedness of its CEO who,

without being a gadget freak, understands the

importance of IT in the digital transformation

of government services and provide strong

support to these transformations. But the

strong collaboration is also fostered by some

of the agility concepts Gjesbakk introduced.

Her emphasis is on continuous communica-

tion, evaluation and improvement. Equally

important is the business

acumen of the profes-

sionals working in IT. To

maximize this, Gjesbakk

often recruits people

from the ‘business side’

of her organization, and

demands from her staff

that they would sit next

to employees who deal

with customers, for them

to understand the real

challenges and problems they are facing, and

provide a technological answer to these.

Lots of things have improved thanks to the

work of Gjesbakk and her team. The self-

service tool for customer service has enabled a

better service with a reduced customer service

team, since this team now receives around 12%

less phone calls, letters and emails to handle.

The number of inquiries received through the

website has increased by 50%, at the cost of

inquiries through other channels.

The self-service system is likely the reason

why the voluntary phase of the debt collection

has increased, while the number of instances

where debt was collected by coercive meas-

ures has actually decreased. The system has

done a great deal in making the salary deduc-

tion from the state more transparent, allowing

the debtors to check the calculation basis

of that deduction and acting whenever the

information proves to be wrong – but these

cases have been reduced significantly since

the system was put in place. Overall, Gjesbakk

feels the eService reinforced the legal protec-

tion of the debtors. The decline in number of

complaints the agency receives is certainly a

solid indication of this feeling. Moreover, the

NCA has attained a reduction in collection cost

per money unit at 35 %

over the last five years. At

the same time the col-

lection per man year has

increased by 50 %.

Going forward Gjesbakk

and her team will continue

to be instrumental in the

overall strategy of NCA

– particularly its digital

strategy.

A selection of recent accomplishments - Implemented a self-service tool for debtors of the Norwegian state to

manage their claims, complaints and communication with the agency in an

automated way, resulting in less complaints and overall transparency to the

citizens;

- Simplified processes and documents for internal use through technology,

hereby increasing the level of service to the clients while reducing the num-

ber of customer service agents needed;

- Ensured a strong collaboration with the business part of the organization,

through constant evaluation and communication, by having the CIO as a

member of the top management group, by making sure to recruit people

from business to work in IT, and by asking IT people to physically sit next

to customer-facing employees in order to understand their challenges and

needs.

National Collection Agency The Norwegian NCA’s task is to collect debt for

35 agencies in the Norwegian government. In

addition they operate collection systems for the

bailiffs and manage accounting the Police. The

NCA is a subordinate agency organized under

the Ministry of Finance. The NCA’s task is to

collect on various state claims, such as police

fines, debt collection from defaulted govern-

ment taxes or other government debts. With

370 employees, the NCA collects about 480M€

per year from the management of more than

190 different types of claims from 35 clients.

The NCA has bailiff authority.

Continuous communication, evaluation and

improvement are essential to achieve and sustain string alignment between IT and the rest

of the organization.

13

Rui GomesHospital Fernando Fonseca E.P.E.

Using IT to significantly enhance patient care during tough economic timesIn 2009, when Gomes first joined Hospital

Fernando Fonseca, the institution had just

changed from a privately managed to a

completely public hospital. Under private

management, investments in IT were low

and uncoordinated and the IT landscape

had become “chaotic,” reflecting the inef-

ficient and unsustainable manner in which the

hospital was operating more broadly. When

the government took complete control of

the hospital, the hospital’s Board of Directors

saw it as an opportunity to use IT to transform

the hospital into a role model for the indus-

try. Unfortunately, at the same time, a global

financial crisis was affecting Portugal especially

negatively and in response, the government

slashed HFF’s budget for CAPEX and OPEX by

over 50%. Gomes and his colleagues at HFF

had to transform HFF with significantly fewer

resources than originally planned and IT was a

fundamental part of the solution.

Although HFF was working under significant

budget constraints, a clear indication of

the strategic importance of IT to the senior

management team of HFF is that the IT group

increased from 4 to 19 full-time equivalents.

To eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen IT’s

capacity to deliver, Gomes and his team set

out to rationalize the IT landscape. They cen-

tralized all databases and application servers by

adopting a private cloud within the organiza-

tion. They moved 80 percent of all the hospi-

tal’s 160 application servers onto the cloud and

replaced 500 desktops with cloud-enabled

ultra-thin clients, thereby allowing health pro-

fessionals to use their identify card to quickly

access, enter and share from and across hospi-

tal departments. These changes also helped

reduce the hospital’s carbon footprint.

In parallel, Gomes and his colleagues also suc-

ceeded in deploying a high quality Electronic

Clinical Process across all specialized clinical

services (about 30), accessible to over 500

health professionals and supporting staff work-

ing in Emergencies, Inpatient and Outpatient

Services. Traditionally, processes were too

bureaucratic and from the point of view of

patients, too uncoordinated. For example,

a simple request like purchasing inventory

needed around 3 weeks to be approved and

included a review by

the Board and multiple

approvals from several

departments. During the

process of receiving care

from HFF, patients inter-

act with several stake-

holders, from doctors,

to administrative staff,

to nurses and managers.

Unfortunately, there was

poor coordination across

the stakeholders.

To correct these problems, Gomes and his

colleagues at the hospital redesigned and

integrated key processes into a single portal.

The online portal allows for important sup-

plies to be approved within a day rather than

several weeks. For example, if the cardiology

department needs to buy equipment, such as

an imaging workstation for daily diagnosis, the

directors who need to approve the request will

get an e-mail and with a click of the button

the requisition will be granted. The Electronic

Clinical Process also enhanced the process of

tracking and managing complaints.

The results of the Electronic Clinical Process

were impressive. Overall, Gomes estimates

over 200K€ per year since 2010, were saved

due to operational efficiencies. In addition,

the collaboration and data sharing enabled by

the platform fostered synergies, such as the

monitoring of influenza epidemics. In 2013,

the Emergency Department was able to track

and predict flu peaks and allocate resources

accordingly needed in advance for treatment,

thereby improving the treatment of outbreaks.

Gomes and his colleagues at HFF believe that

key to sustaining the transformation of HFF

and achieving even more with IT at the hospital

is to ensure HFF has digital leaders – people

who understand both

how hospitals oper-

ate and how develop

systems of IT. In 2010,

they established within

the hospital CI2 (http://

www.ci2.pt), an internal

competence unit where

hospital employees work

with software vendors

and universities to de-

velop healthcare applica-

tions. Teams representing

a variety of stakeholders

and occupations collaborate on achieving

target and measurable results. In the process,

CI2 aims stimulate the development of health

information systems market in Portugal. Since

2009 until 2014, about 24 graduate students

had completed internships at CI2, of which

20% were employed by the hospital and the

rest are working in the healthcare sector.

A selection of recent accomplishments - Developed a low-cost high-quality Electronic Clinical Process

that enhanced patient and professionals safety and enabled

analysis of data to improve healthcare.

- Rationalized and virtualized the IT landscape, and in the

process saved over 200K€ per year since 2010.

- Established CI2, an internal competence unit that incubates

technological projects, fosters partnerships with universi-

ties and the industry, and stimulates the health information

systems market in Portugal.

Hospital Fernando Fonseca E.P.E. Hospital Prof. Doutor Fernando Fonseca (HFF) was created as a

public institution in October 2008, after 13 years under private

management. Currently, it has 2900 employees and about

750 beds serving the areas of Amadora and Sintra, near Lisbon

(about 600,000 inhabitants). While under private manage-

ment, the hospital had accumulated a series of problems. Since

becoming completely public, the hospital has made a complete

turn-around. It is integrated with the country’s National Health

Services and has become a national role model to other hospi-

tals and to the industry.

The real value and the real challenge of virtualization is

changing, simplifying and integrating the business processes

that rely on IT.

14

Cécile GonfroidRadio Télévision Belge Francophone

Taking charge of IT to become that strategy engine of the business

Her passion for sports drove Gonfroid to

start her career at the French speaking public

broadcast company RTBF. There, she quickly

developed professionally, taking on a variety

of positions leading different aspects of man-

aging TV channels. As she took on increas-

ingly challenging positions at RTBF Gonfroid

developed another passion: technology. In

2009, her profound knowledge of manag-

ing TV broadcasting, in combination with her

drive for technological excellence, got her

to lead the freshly created ‘DGTE’ division,

a result of the integration of the technology

teams in IT and in Broadcasting.

From the start this was a highly strategic posi-

tion. The emergence of new competitors with

different business models, such as Netflix and

Google, was putting tremendous pressure on

traditional broadcasters to realize substantial

efficiency improvements and to use technol-

ogy in highly agile and innovative ways.

Gonfroid’s first priority was to get the basics

right. She was now heading a division that

consisted of two very distinct cultures and set

of processes, so she need to streamline both

in order to create a coherent, value added

service to the business.

At the core of this transformation Gonfroid

put forward the governance tool COBIT 4.1,

which she used for 15 internal processes. At

the start of her mission the division scored

a meager 1.2 on a scale of 5 on the maturity

index of COBIT. Within a year, with the new

processes Gonfroid put in place, the score

already increased by a full point. More impor-

tant, the changes have led to other substantial

improvements, such as

a 50% reduction of the

resolution time of the more

than 2000 incidents and

demands her team receives

each year.

With the basics improv-

ing, Gonfroid was ready

to tackle the strategic

challenge of digitalizing

the workflow of RTBF. This

was a highly critical project,

since the tape-based video production system

lead to excessive production time, and simply

didn’t match the requirements of the speed at

which news, sports, magazines and entertain-

ment needs to be delivered in the digital age.

Furthermore, with its 60 years of broadcasting

history, the RTBF owned a wealth of content

that needed to be leveraged efficiently in

order to keep its competitive position.

This digitization project, called ‘NumProd’,

lead to a productivity increase of 30%. RTBF is

now able to integrate heterogeneous media

sources in its workflow, and has now integrat-

ed all its content creation into one simplified

system that allow it to publish on multiple

channels, such as website, mobile, and

video-on-demand. Gonfroid and her team

have even been awarded by the International

Broadcasting Convention for this project.

One of the key elements of the success of

Gonfroid and her team was the clear set of

Key Performance Indicators she put forward

in her transformation mission. First and

foremost she ensured the buy-in of the high-

est levels of the hierarchy for her project, to

make sure everyone within the organization

realized the strategic relevance of her project.

This relevance needed to be communicated

extensively to all the stakeholders internally,

so Gonfroid made sure to

have an effective com-

munication plan in place

in order to realize this. Last

but not least, Gonfroid

installed a culture of (inter-

nal) customer centricity in

her teams by making sure

they listen carefully to busi-

ness needs in all the stages

of the project as well as

implementing a constant

feedback loop with the us-

ers throughout the rollout of the project.

Looking forward the short-term agenda

of Gonfroid and her team contains multi-

ple other strategic challenges, such as the

digitization of the archives of RTBF, as well

as the digitization of the workflow of other

divisions such as finance and HR. Her biggest

priority, however, if the enhancement of the

digital platform she put in place: improving its

user friendliness and implementing a pro-

active monitoring system to further improve

its impact on RTBF’s business. However, since

the media business is undergoing so much

transformation, it is virtually impossible to

anticipate what the business priorities of the

RTBF will be in the future. Hence, Gonfroid’s

major concern, and focus, lies in keeping a

maximum agility within the IT operations.

Thanks to Gonfroid’s efforts RTBF is now a

modern broadcaster where journalists have

access to a vast array of research information

anywhere, anytime, and where the workflow

is optimized in ways to ensure the smooth

and fluent production of news and entertain-

ment for its audience. As a result, RTBF is

ready to face its new breed of competitors. As

Gonfroid puts it: “IT is driving the business […]

There are no boundaries in an organization,

only competences.”

A selection of recent accomplishments - Completely digitalized the content platform and work-

flow of news, sports, magazines and entertainment

production at RTBF, a project that has been awarded by

the International Broadcasting Convention;

- Integrated the IT and the technology team in broad-

casting into one coherent, customer-centric service;

- Revamped the core mission of IT, which is now the

strategic engine of RTBF instead of its enabler.

Radio Télévision Belge Francophone (RTBF)

RTBF is the public broadcasting company of the French-speaking

community in Belgium. RTBF has the mission to provide its audience

with radio and television services that value news, cultural develop-

ment, continuous education as well as entertainment. The programs

of RTBF are primarily based on its own production as well as the

promotion of original productions that enhance the culture and herit-

age of the French community and its regional specificities. As a public

company, RTBF is funded for 75% by the French Community, which

is also its supervisory authority. The remaining 25% of its revenue

originates from advertisement income and distribution rights.

We have passed the state of alignment with the strategy

and have become the strategy engine

of our company.

15

Agustín GonzálezProsegur Compañía de Seguridad S.A.

Building and protecting the global competitiveness of the business

Six years ago, Augustin González joined

Prosegur as its CIO for Europe and within 3

years was promoted to Global CIO. González

is most proud of how he has transformed the

role of IT within Prosegur from 12 IT organiza-

tions functioning independently to a single

integrated Global IT department that serves as

more pro-active and flexible partner with the

rest of the business. The transformation was

ambitious yet necessary for Prosegur to en-

hance its global agility and defend its competi-

tiveness as it expanded internationally.

To accomplish the transformation, González

and his team launched several action lines in

parallel: information systems, infrastructure,

and organization. With regards to information

systems and infrastructure, they developed 19

corporate platforms for each line of busi-

ness, as well as for support areas (they plan

on developing 3 more). This enabled them

to optimize maintenance costs of applica-

tions; standardize core technologies (e.g.,

they deployed an Enterprise Data Warehouse,

eliminating 31 independent Data Marts, and

centralized 18 datacentres into 4 global data-

centres); and eliminate over 21 legacy systems

since 2011. The overall result has been a

considerable increase in systems flexibility and

cost efficiency. For example, shifting service

to 4 global datacenters has allowed them to

decommission many local facilities in each

country, delivering significant improvements in

reliability, flexibility and cost efficiency.

Creating a single truly global services organiza-

tion from 12 traditionally independent groups

proved especially challenging. There were sig-

nificant barriers to transform the department,

such as the existing inertial culture, insufficient

language skills and entrenched positions of

certain key stakeholders. In some cases the

existing teams didn’t know how to collaborate

effectively, and could not grasp the fundamen-

tal challenges at corporate level, much less

resolve them efficiently. They were accus-

tomed to work in constrained silos, defaulting

to traditional boundaries and frequently losing

valuable time and effort to turf battles.

To address these issues, González and his team

centralized the IT budget, taking full control

over all IT investment and running costs from

a central point. This provided senior manage-

ment with a holistic view of IT across the firm,

vastly improving corporate decision-making

and prioritization. They also created several

Shared Services Centres. González explained

that “pooling, industrialising and optimising the

localisation of commodity services provided us

higher flexibility and significant cost reduction.”

This change also involved moving a number of

people to different locations.

To address internal resistance to change,

González pursued a transparent and robust

communication strategy focusing on flexibility,

team-collaboration, crossing boundaries and

collective leadership. He also

developed a new organi-

sational structure based on

global and functional inter-

ests. This enabled them to

eliminate redundancy and/

or overlap between local,

regional and global roles,

present a more cohesive

customer-focused interface

(one IT Business Partners

per line of Business), and reduce geographic

dependency encouraging global services.

Another area in which González and his team

are playing an increasingly strategic role is in

mergers and acquisitions. During the last 3

years, Prosegur acquired and integrated more

than 30 new companies, some of them in new

markets and countries. Several of the acquisi-

tions brought in a considerable volume of

employees, IT systems and platforms. When

González first started, the IT group had not

developed any best-practice capabilities to

address M&A operations. González and his

team developed a new framework to specifi-

cally deal with M&A projects, which consisted

of a specialised methodology; identifying

and addressing key business continuity issues

early on, and deploying appropriate actions to

support new scenarios; developing new roles

and skillsets within the IT organization; and

adapting the vendor / provider engagement

strategy and relationship model accordingly.

Today, González and his team play a key role

in ensuring the success of M&A transactions by

simultaneously providing quick, flexible and ef-

fective integration capabilities; exercising tight

control of the entire IT budget throughout the

M&A operation, especially regarding transition-

related investments; and optimising the inher-

ited organisations and technologies to lower

overall operating costs.

González is proud of the

fact that he and his team are

successfully providing global

services to 4 lines of busi-

ness in 17 countries across

4 continents while also

improving the way Prosegur

integrates acquisitions and

expands globally.

A selection of recent accomplishments - Transformed IT from 12 IT organizations functioning indepen-

dently to a single integrated Global IT department.

- Saved over 14M€ through a series of changes, centralizing,

simplifying and upgrading the global digital platform.

- Significantly enhanced several key business processes, such

as reducing the life cycle of managing new contracts from

3 days to less than 1 day; reducing the surveillance planning

scheduling process from 1 week to 2 days; automated the

reconciliation process of ATM electronic journals, thereby

reducing the process from 1 day to 2 hours; and by virtualiz-

ing the global infrastructure, improved provisioning time from

2 months to 15 minutes.

Prosegur Compañía de Seguridad S.A. Founded in 1976, Prosegur provides integrated security solu-

tions, which consist of Manned Guarding services, such as

airport security, security in large events, geotracking and GPS

monitoring; Cash Management, which includes Cash in Transit

and covers the entire value chain of cash management, such

as correctly supplying automated tellers; Technology, such as

integrated security and fire protection systems; and Residential,

where it offers a wide range of security products and services

for residential homes and businesses. In 2013, with a presence

in 17 countries across 4 continents and more than 150.000

employees, Prosegur’s sales amounted to 3,695M€.

As the entire company is learning new ways to collaborate with IT and develop solutions that

are simultaneously local and global, it continues

to grow and expand throughout the world.

16

Maarten HillenaarCentral Government of the Netherlands (CIO from 2009-2013)

Making IT matter for the better of citizens On January 1st, 2009, Maarten Hillenaar

was officially appointed as the first Chief

Information Officer for central government

of the Netherlands (CG-CIO). The creation

of a CG-CIO was part of a series of efforts

to significantly strengthen the role of IT,

after a series of IT project failures that were

widely covered in the press and addressed in

Parliament. The main immediate objective was

to have no more accidents with ICT-projects.

Fortunately, with a series of critical changes

and accomplishments, there was success.

During Hillenaar’s 5-year tenure, from 2009-

2013, there were no accidents with IT projects

started in this period and funded by the Central

Government.

One of the fundamental changes that Hillenaar

led was to develop a government-wide infor-

mation infrastructure (the ‘i-infrastructure’).

During the 1980s and 1990s, ministries were

not required to use centrally developed facili-

ties and instead were free to choose their own

service providers. As a result, each ministry de-

veloped and managed ICT in an independent

and uncoordinated manner, and a patchwork

of different ICT facilities and suppliers/provid-

ers gradually emerged. The “stovepiping” led to

growing costs, risks and failures.

To reduce the stovepiping, Hillenaar devel-

oped and relied on the CIO-Council. At the

same time Hillenaar’s position was created,

every Ministry had to appoint its own CIO.

Together the CIOs formed a CIO-Council

chaired by Hillenaar. Having all started at the

same time, Hillenaar developed the council in

several ways. They went to school together to

develop a common language and held regular

meetings, once a month for half a day and

every 6 months for a 2-day meeting for more

in-depth discussions. Every departmental CIO

(e.g., Defense) was made responsible for a

government-wide objective (e.g., Information

Security). As Hillenaar explained, “We became a

team that worked on a team-mission.”

The CIO-Council also developed the iStrategy

for the Dutch Government that eventually

became approved by Parliament. “We made

sure that we told the story over and over to

the IT-community and –more importantly – to

top management. Top management accepted

ICT as a ‘boardroom-matter’. It became clear

to them that they couldn’t stay away from

ICT-issues.” The CIOs aimed to help top man-

agement within their respective ministry take

control of ICT and count on IT to do better

and for less. They increased transparency by

publishing information about all large-scale

and high-risk ICT projects on a dedicated pub-

lic access website (‘The Central Government’s

ICT Dashboard’ available in

Dutch at www.rijksictdash-

board.nl). This helped cre-

ate attention with both the

press and the parliament. As

a result, each ministry now

discusses its ICT-portfolio

every three months during

the general board of direc-

tors meeting. After review-

ing the accomplishments

of the CIO-Council, the

Dutch national account-

ability office (Algemene

Rekenkamer) concluded “the CIO-system

works (yet it isn’t finished yet)”

As CIO-Council members were developing

stronger relations with each other, with their

respective ministries, and with the public, they

were also implementing the ‘i-infrastructure.’

They succeeded, for example, to consolidate

66 datacenters into 4, saving an approximate

100M€. The impact of consolidation went

beyond cost savings. Doors were opened to

many more consolidation opportunities, such

as applications, being each other’s backup,

creating a uniform set of rules on information

security, and pooling expertise, such as project

managers. It also is the basis for the Closed

Government Cloud.

Finally, when Hillenaar started as CG-CIO,

one of his objectives was that a public serv-

ant should be able to work anywhere, with

any device, at any time. Today, an important

aspect of the existing i-infrastructure, is the

shared National Government Digital Work

Environment that enables civil servants to have

access to the information and functionality

they need to do their work from any device,

any place, any time. All the ministries are able

to use the services, the ma-

jority finished the migration.

To accomplish this required

harmonizing the design

and use of software. One

intranet portal replaced

eleven separate intranets.

During the five years that

Hillenaar served as CG-CIO,

he and his colleagues suc-

ceeded in turning-around

how others in government

and the public viewed ICT,

from an expensive source of risk to a funda-

mental source of value. This is best exemplified

in an observation that Hillenaar made, “For top

management knowing the impact of ICT on

their job is now part of their profile.”

A selection of recent accomplishments - Orchestrated a government-wide strategy for the use of

ICT that was approved by Parliament and is used by all

ministries.

- Designed and implemented major parts of a government-

wide information infrastructure (the ‘i-infrastructure’) that

reduces costs and mitigates risks due to unnecessary

variation and improved the control and delivery of project

delivery and IT services.

- Created the ‘Central Government’s ICT Dashboard’ where

information about all large-scale and high-risk ICT projects

is published on a dedicated public access website.

The role of ICT in the Central Government of the Netherlands In November 2011, the Dutch Government released its

“iStrategy,” a key component of a broader programme to use

ICT to increase the effectiveness and efficiencies of services

provisioned by 11 ministries, while reducing the costs of provi-

sioning them. The iStrategy outlines the role to be played by ICT,

including unifying the current fragmented ICT infrastructure,

establishing a single Central Government ICT security authority,

and digitalising services provided by Central Government to the

public. The Dutch Government relies on ICT to respond flexibly

to new trends and developments; control costs; and enable

ministries to work more efficiently together.

Now that we have taken control of ICT, ICT is no longer a subject that is

avoided. There’s a lot of positive energy; meetings and conferences are more

fun; and participating is much more attractive.

17

Vincent LéauxCity of Vélizy-Villacoublay

Strengthening and expanding local government services

When Vincent Léaux started his function as

CIO of the French city Vélizy-Villacoublay

three years ago, he inherited a rather dramatic

situation. The IT team of 4 people had no

particular IT skills and the service it provided

to internal customers was so poor that clients

hesitated to call it when they experienced

trouble. There was no backup system at all

for the HR and financial data of the city, and

no particular security system for this data.

Furthermore, coming from the private sector,

Léaux had to adapt to the slow and cumber-

some processes of the public administration.

It was a discouraging situation. What was

needed was a complete rebuilding of the IT

organization, from scratch!

It took Léaux 3 years of hard labor to revamp

the IT organization into a high-performing

and accountable service to both internal

clients and citizens of the city.

His first priority was to build a coherent and

reliable infrastructure, connecting all the

systems and applications in a secure way.

Easier said than done, with a small team of

people that didn’t have the right skills and

were primarily firefighting issues rather than

working on long-term projects. Hence the

need for Léaux to rebuild and expand his IT

team. Since processes in public administra-

tion tend to be slow and cumbersome, Léaux

was looking for professionals who were

patient and perseverant, confident in work-

ing on operational issues as well as strategic

projects and who were both communicative

and customer-centric. With such a complex

profile, it took him 18 months to find the right

professionals and expand his team threefold.

In the meantime, Léaux needed to put new

processes and practices in place, to pro-

fessionalize the IT operations, but also to

communicate to the major stakeholders what

the IT department was doing at what it aimed

to achieve. As part of the IT

governance culture Léaux

put in place, he established

numerous performance

dashboard, project and ser-

vices catalogues and tasks

and responsibility matrices.

The town’s administration

was so impressed by all

that Léaux and his team

had accomplished that it

agreed to increase of the IT

budget by 300%. This paid

off in a number of ways. Customer satisfac-

tion reached at an all-time high of 94%, and

digitization projects led to substantial cost

reductions and efficiency increases.

But the most striking results of Léaux and his

team’s work have been the services provided

to the citizens of Vélizy-Villacoublay. Before,

inquiries to the town’s administration could

easily take up to four weeks before they re-

ceived a response. Today, after Léaux and his

team streamlined and automated key back-

office functions, citizens receive responses in

less than a week. Léaux is keen to reduce the

response time even further.

Léaux also undertook to install digital white

boards in the schools of his city. At this day,

95% of the classes in primary schools are

equipped with digital white board, a number

that will increase to 100% by September 2015,

including maternity schools.

Léaux impacted the security of his town as

well, by installing a video surveillance system

in the major streets of Vélizy-Villacoublay. He

also equipped the police force with electronic

devises to manage fines more quickly and

reliably. “Something the

citizens are not necessar-

ily extremely happy about”,

jokes Léaux.

Looking at the future, Léaux

still has numerous plans

to increase the impact of

his IT organization on the

services the administra-

tion provides to its citizens.

Optic fiber that he deployed

throughout the city will

serve to connect all the

public institutions seamlessly and has already

resulted in saving of €180K per year. Léaux

also intends to deploy Wi-Fi throughout the

city as a service to the inhabitants. Finally, his

team will focus its efforts on getting as many

administrative processes online, to permit

citizens to manage their relationship with the

administration from home.

But Léaux is looking into more innovative ser-

vices to the citizens as well. One such thing

is a crowdsourced reporting system of minor

problems citizens are facing –such as holes

in the road or illegal dumping sites. The app

would permit citizens to report these issues,

whereby it would automatically be directed to

the right public service in order to fix the is-

sue, and once the issue is fixed the app would

automatically inform the citizens of the fact.

A selection of recent accomplishments - Revamped the complete IT organization from

scratch to enable a seamless, efficient adminis-

tration and back-office;

- Implemented a series of services for citizens,

such as electronic boards in classrooms, elec-

tronic fines and online administration services;

- Installed a culture and practice of IT govern-

ance that resulted in 94% of customers ex-

pressing satisfaction and an IT budget increase

of 300%.

Vélizy-Villacoublay Vélizy-Villacoublay is a French town in the South-Western suburbs of Paris,

3 km from the Versailles, and contains 22,000 inhabitants. The town consists

of six residential neighborhoods, all on edge of the Meudon national forest.

It is home to the renowned business park, INOVEL PARC. More than 43,000

employees work in INOVEL PARC, representing over a thousand companies,

including some of the biggest names in industry, such as EADS, Messier-

Bugatti, Alcatel-Lucent, Inéo, Thalès, Bouygues Telecom and PSA Peugeot

Citroën, and Dassault Systèmes. The budget of the administration of the city

is €76M. In 2010 the city went through a crowdsourcing project, asking its

citizens to submit ideas to make the city more ecological, promote solidar-

ity and combat pollution. This project resulted in the ‘Agenda21’, a concrete

roadmap for a sustainable future.

As a CIO you don’t realise anything without a close

partnership with all the stakeholders

18

Eric LippertLombard International Assurance S.A.

Orchestrating a sustained competitive advantage

In 2011, about a year after joining Lombard

International Assurance as CIO, Eric Lippert

was asked to be directly involved in designing

and implementing an ambitious transforma-

tion of the organisation. In May 2011, the sen-

ior management team had a “20/20 moment”,

with the company reaching its 20th anniver-

sary and holding over €20 billion of policy-

holder assets. The senior management team

decided it was the right moment to hold an

off-site retreat and take a critical look at the

company’s past and future, asking themselves

“if we were to start this all over, how would

we do it even better?” They realised that as

Lombard International Assurance had grown,

new demands had been addressed in ways

that made sense at that point in time but, in

the long-term, were insufficiently coordinated

to support future synergies. They were con-

cerned that operating costs would eventu-

ally overtake profits and that the quality and

relevance of their solutions to partners and

their clients could be put at risk. They agreed

to significantly and rapidly transform how

Lombard International Assurance operated.

During the first 5 months, Lippert worked

closely with other senior managers to define

the vision of the transformation. They then

spent about 8 months designing the realisa-

tion of the vision. According to Lippert, “a

critical success factor was that stakeholders

from all over the company spent time up

front to define the vision and design an agile

execution.”

A main pillar of the transformation effort was

a complete rethink of the IT platform and

core business activities. Lippert and others

redesigned and implemented a series of key

services and their corresponding IT platform.

They structured their efforts around guiding

principles such as Maximise Benefit to the

Enterprise; Reuse – Buy – Build; and Business

Process Simplification. For Client and Policy

Servicing, for example, they reduced hand-

offs, delegated data capture to partners and

reduced administrative paper management.

For Investment Administration, they simplified

the way they manage data and produce daily

valuation reports for the 17,000+ funds they

administer.

With very clear targets of what they wanted

to achieve, Lippert and others applied “the

best of SCRUM methodology” to realise their

targets. The process enabled multiple stake-

holders from different parts of the business

to collaborate closely

and communicate

regularly. Amongst the

many changes they ac-

complished, Lippert and

his team migrated the

company’s IT infrastruc-

ture (datacentres, hard-

ware, network, storage)

without any service

outage or negative

business impact; simpli-

fied the Investment

Administration platform;

and introduced an

end-to-end business

oriented monitoring/

repairing platform.

Within 18 months of intense collaboration

between IT and the rest of the business, the

massive transformation of IT was completed

successfully. Lippert explained, “the transfor-

mation of the IT landscape was the catalyst

for a complete business restructure and

change of operating model for our company.”

It resulted in enhanced efficiency and flex-

ibility for the company’s partners and their

clients, a significantly smaller carbon footprint

and significant financial savings. By simplifying

the Investment Administration platform from

15 software systems to 1, the company saved

€100,000 in licensing costs. Technical inter-

faces within the IT platform were reduced

from 279 to 94, significantly lowering op-

erational risks and costs. The new functional

monitoring platform allowed business users

to be independent and, thus, more efficient in

their daily activities. As a major consequence,

the company can detect and fix functional

issues earlier in the process (e.g. at capture

instead at reconciliation) which lowers the risk

and impact of issues.

Finally, to sustain

these changes, Lippert

introduced a vari-

ety of committees and

governance mecha-

nisms. For example, to

ensure both immedi-

ate and long-term

objectives are met

(and to manage any

trade-offs between

them), a Change Team

is in charge of both

managing the current

portfolio of projects

and maintaining the

long-term target operating model for the

company. Overall, costs dropped by 35 %

over 3 years and IT are now considered an

essential partner in developing competitive

advantages to the business.

A selection of recent accomplishments - Annual reduction of €8.4 million in operating costs;

- Increased automation and productivity of all processes linked to

Fund Administration. For example, a 72% decrease in the number

of manual transactions and a 20% increase in terms of number of

funds administrated per headcount.

- Increased efficiency and effectiveness of client-facing processes

linked to policy administration (from on-boarding new business

to lapses and surrender). For example, average time per transac-

tion was reduced by 50% and user experience rating doubled.

- IT infrastructure landscape was simplified and transformed in

close collaboration with the business without any service outage

or negative business impact.

Lombard International Assurance S.A.

Lombard International Assurance S.A. is Luxembourg’s lead-

ing pan-European, unit-linked life assurance company. The

company uses life assurance in combination with wealth

structuring to provide solutions to high and ultra-high net

worth individuals. In 2013, total assets under administration

reached a record high, in excess of €24 billion (a 4% increase)

and new business premium income reached €2.34 billion.

We do not market directly to end clients but collaborate with

a strong international distribution network of private banks,

wealth managers and independent financial advisers. Over

350 employees work in the Grand Duchy’s head office, with

teams of consultants spread across 14 markets.

The new role of the CIO is to raise awareness and listen

to the business (because very good ideas emanate from the business) and to

orchestrate their demands. If business owners pursued their

own technologies without someone to coordinate and

prioritise across their demands, there would be a much less

structured approach.

19

Fernando Lucero BatallaIBERDROLA S.A.

Energizing innovation with ICT In 2010, Fernando Lucero Batalla was asked

to join IBERDROLA as group CIO. IBERDROLA

had been expanding globally and consisted of

a matrix of over a dozen large business units

located across in 39 countries, mainly in Spain,

UK, Brazil, USA, and México. In such a complex

organization, it is especially challenging to

manage the tension between local and global

interests – i.e., between rapidly developing

solutions tailored to the specific needs of busi-

ness units and achieving synergies across busi-

ness units that take advantage of IBERDROLA’s

scale and scope. Lucero’s accomplishments

are proof that he and his colleagues are man-

aging that tension successfully.

At such a diverse energy company such as

IBERDROLA, IT is strategic for a variety of

reasons. IT continues to play a fundamental

role in helping the company achieve opera-

tional efficiencies and cost reductions. IT is

also essential for developing innovative ways

to streamline and automate a vast volume and

diversity of data into mandatory reports and in

the process, minimize the resources required

for achieving compliance. In addition, Lucero

explains, “We have different IT strategies,

depending on the business, because each has

a distinct strategic focus and operates along a

distinct set of business processes.”

Within Networks, for example, IT is focused

on increasing the quality of services that the

business provides to its customers by helping it

optimize its processes. For example, IT devel-

oped a geo-referenced information integration

system that enables Networks to mine the data

that exists in various systems supporting core

processes and integrate them with graphic

features and advanced operations.

Within Renewables, IT worked with the rest

of the business to develop a comprehensive

weather station management platform for on-

shore wind farms that enables immediate avail-

ability and reliable storage of

meteorological data, in addi-

tion to effective data process-

ing, rapid incidence detection

and the automated generation

of statistical analyses. They

also introduced drones to

capture meteorological data,

as well as information about

the wind generators. The data

is used it to calculate when it

makes most sense to accom-

plish a maintenance of the generator without

having to stop the generator (if a generator is

stopped during a specified period, the business

would incur a penalty from regulators).

Soon after joining IBERDROLA, Lucero

realized that the IT Group was “simply tak-

ing orders.” To be more proactive and be in

a stronger position to both foster innovation

and orchestrate synergies across solutions and

across the enterprise, Lucero strengthened IT

governance. He introduced a series of com-

mittees to increase engagement between IT

and the rest of the business. To enhance digital

innovation, Lucero introduced an IT Innovation

Committee, which consists of people from

within the business (“Business Delegates”)

who champion new ways of innovating within

their respective business groups. In collabo-

ration with external technology suppliers,

they explore ways of applying promising new

technologies to enhance the business. In 2013,

almost 30 ideas were developed, of which

11 were eventually developed into proof of

concepts. In the end, 7 were selected to de-

velop further into projects. These all involved

representatives from IT, the business, and from

suppliers, collaborating iteratively, using agile

methods. Electric vehicle charging stations op-

eration, mobile app for retail

customer, information kiosk,

fraud detection systems,

smart meters customer load

curves are resulted from this

process.

In addition, the IT Group

is structured in a way that

enables both engagement at

the local level to understand

the business and subsequent

demand, and engagement at the global, cor-

porate level, to analyze demand globally and

identify enterprise-wide synergies. Business

Relations Directors (one dedicated to each of

major business units) serve as a critical linking

mechanism between the interests of local

and global stakeholders. During a monthly

meeting the Business Relations Directors share

and discuss their portfolio of projects in the

pipeline and explore synergies across exist-

ing and past projects, including ways to reuse

solutions. For example, for the Network group

in Spain, IT had developed a solution that ena-

bled them to collect data from smart meters

and the produce consumer load curves that

could be viewed by customers on the web.

A few months later, the IT team realized that

the technology used for that solution could

be applied to other, very different business

(e.g., within Renewables, use the solution to

collect, integrate, predict and display weather

information).

A selection of recent accomplishments - Over €12 million saved and €70 million in revenues generated as a

result of accomplishments involving the IT Group.

- Significantly enhanced the experience of customers of key busi-

ness groups: increase of end customer satisfaction; increase of

end customer web site visits; reduction of customer calls for

issues resolution; and increase of number of end customer offers

accepted.

- Put into practice a new process for innovating collaboratively with

multiple stakeholder groups, including external suppliers. Has led

to several significant innovations and prevented resources from

being wasted in promising yet ultimately not valuable innovations.

IBERDROLA S.A. Over 150 years old, IBERDROLA is the world leader in wind

power, one of the top electric utilities in the world, and

Spain’s number one energy group. Since 2007, its strat-

egy has been marked by strong international expansion,

with the integration of ScottishPower, Energy East (today

Iberdrola USA), and Brazil’s Elektro. By 2013, IBERDROLA

had achieved total installed capacity of 45,009 MW (61% of

which was CO2-free) and supplied 211,000 GWh a year to

around 100 million people globally. The Group’s net profits

reached €2.572 billion and the company employed 30,680

people in almost 40 countries.

IT has succeeded in becoming a key

driving force for rapid local innovation,

internationalization and Group-wide synergies.

20

Nuno MillerFarfetch Ltd. (CIO from 2011 until 2014)

Enhancing the competitiveness of an innovative business model during rapid growth

Farfetch is an e-commerce marketplace,

whose sales depend totally on its websites

uptime. If a website is down or faces a per-

formance issue for even a couple of minutes,

visitors won’t buy goods and Farfetch must

contend with a non-recoverable loss of sales

and decrease in customer satisfaction. IT is

fundamental to Farfetch’s operations and

growth. About a fifth of Farfetch’s 370 em-

ployees are in the IT group.

In 2011, when Nuno Miller became Chief

Information Officer of Farfetch, he discovered

that most of its servers were inadequately

serviced. Miller and his team reorganized and

transformed the company’s storage services

in two different datacenters. The most critical

services and tools, such as those supporting

Farfetch’s transactions and payments were

given to one of most robust and advanced

hosting companies based in London. All

other services and tools were hosted at a

different hosting company, in a private cloud

model, with lower yet sufficient service level.

The entire project – from creating a service

catalog, defining each service’s impact on the

business, defining the required architecture,

and implementing both types of solutions –

took just over a year.

During the process, Miller and his team also

transformed several processes that were

using internal tools into processes that could

be accomplished with cloud-based software

services. For example, they changed how

incidents, problems and change requests

were reported and tracked; how customer

service tickets were handled, as well as how

the Business Development team managed

potential business partners.

As a result of the changes, the new e-

commerce platform was able to support an

average increase of daily visits by 300%, with

peeks around 1000% and the availability of

key services increased from 99,5% to 99,95%.

The increase in availability and speed led

to an increase in productivity of the back

office teams (mostly production, operations

and boutique management), resulting in an

estimated savings of 200K€ per year. The

enhanced digital platform helped support a

significant increase in volume of sales, from

27,5M€ in 2011 to 75M€ in 2012 and 140M€

in 2013.

Miller and his team were

also instrumental in

streamlining Farfetch’s

product management

process. Product creation

process is done jointly by

Farfetch and the boutiques.

All of the products are

catalogued, categorized

and photographed by

Farfetch. Until a product

is photographed and its

attributes are catalogued it remains of-

fline. With each season, around 50 000

products were catalogued. However, due

to process inefficiencies, there are several

duplicates – products that have already been

photographed by one boutique and are re-

photographed by another. Farfetch wanted to

reduce the resources (including time) neces-

sary to get products online. Miller helped

develop a process to identify duplicates and

avoid reprocessing, by introducing a series

of checkpoints and features to the product

creation process. As a result, around 25% of

products are being identified as duplicated

in early stages, resulting in 20% productivity

increase in the production team.

While upgrading and improving the reliability

of Farfetch’s digital platform and steamlining

operational processes, Miller and his team

were also helping Farfetch manage its yearly

growth rate of over 100%. In a 3 year period,

the total number of employees at Farfetch

increased from 150 to 370, as the company

added new functions, teams and managers. To

address the corresponding growth of demands

on IT, the IT team increased its size from 13 to

75 people. This fast pace required a change on

the IT governance model

and on project manage-

ment methodologies. Miller

organized the IT group into

different teams and exper-

tizes and adopted SCRUM

as the main methodology.

In order to align priorities

with the company strategy

and operational needs,

Miller creates a yearly road-

map, with quarterly reviews,

for all strategic projects. All

projects have prioritization

meetings every 3 weeks, with main business

stakeholders, in order to define the cross-team

priorities. Each sprint lasts for 3 weeks, mean-

ing that every 3 weeks they deliver a set of

new features (designed, developed, tested and

approved). In this manner, Miller and his team

have ensured that Farfetch can continue grow

and respond rapidly to new opportunities while

improving the effectiveness and efficiency of

its core operations.

A selection of recent accomplishments - Strengthened e-commerce site availability from 99,5% to

99,95%

- Increased ability to support and increase of 300% in the

number of visitors, with peeks up to 1000% - essential capa-

bilities for an e-commerce marketplace.

- Enhanced the performance and availability of back-office

tools, thereby increasing team efficiency by 10%.

- Saved 200K€/year and generated more than 140M€ in 2

years.

Farfetch Farfetch is an innovative e-commerce company that brings to-

gether over 350 independent fashion boutiques from around the

world and provides their range of unique products, representing

over 1000 fashion labels, to fashion lovers globally. Customers

can shop from any boutique within Farfetch’s network and then

have their orders delivered directly to their door, wherever they

are in the world. Launched in 2008 by Jose Neves, Farfetch rap-

idly became a global company back by investors such as Advent

Venture Partners, Index Ventures, and Condé Nast International.

By October 2013, the site had 4.3 million visits a month and an

average order of around 500€.

Critical to sustaining growth of more than 100% a year has been balancing the need to respond rapidly to new opportunities with the

need to have an effective and efficient global

platform.

21

Alexandre RamosLusitania Companhia de Seguros and N Seguros

Focusing multiple stakeholders on the most valuable IT-enabled innovations

Since joining Lusitania in 2008, Ramos has

played a central role in synchronizing the

focus of key stakeholder groups on what mat-

ters most to the business. Through a series of

weekly and monthly engagements with Board

and first-line directors, Ramos translates

the strategic business objectives into action

plans, assigns key performance indicators

(KPIs) to each action plans, and translates

KPIs into projects (most involving IT, however

not necessarily). The process enables Ramos

and participants to identify and remove any

projects that do not support the strategic

business objectives. Ramos explains, “If a

project does not add value, then it needs to

be dropped out.” By linking IT so closely with

the rest of the business, prioritization is now

shared by all business leaders.

To effectively align IT with the rest of the

business, Ramos spent considerable effort

ensuring that his team of 35 was prepared to

deliver significantly higher levels of service.

“First we align IT; then we align with the busi-

ness,” is a motto that Ramos strongly believes

in. “If IT cannot deliver then alignment efforts

are useless.”

Once Ramos was sure that his team was

capable of practicing proper methodolo-

gies, controls, and project management, they

succeeded in developing in just 6 months e+

Plans, a system that changed how business

units throughout Lusitania operated.

The idea for e+ Plans was deceivingly simple.

On the one hand, the basic idea was, similar

to a monthly bank statement, to provide cus-

tomers with a single monthly statement of all

their activities within Lusitania. Each month,

each customer would receive a statement de-

scribing what insurance policies the customer

has with Lusitania, as well as how much the

customer needs to pay by the first day of the

next month.

On the other hand, to

provide such a service

required a completely

new and fundamentally

different relationship

with customers. A key

feature of the e+ Plan

was that a customer

that signed-up for

insurance during the

start of a month would

not need to start paying

for it until receiving the

monthly statement.

In addition, for each policy that a customer

signed up for with Lusitania, the customer

could decide when and how they wanted to

pay for the policy (e.g., monthly, yearly, credit,

debit, etc.). In other words, this new service

required that Lusitania provide customers

insurance services before they had paid for

them – i.e., essentially, it required Lusitania

provide insurance credit. While banks provide

credit to their customers, insurance compa-

nies traditionally do not.

Although the e+ plans project was led by

marketing, Ramos and his team were fun-

damental to both redesigning how Lusitania

operated and developing the systems that

could support these new services in such a

manner that from the point of view of cus-

tomers, the services were simple and reliable.

Operational efficiency and effectiveness was

essential to manage credits, mitigate opera-

tional risks, and provide competitive pricing to

customers. Coordination of policy data and

payments across traditionally independent

business units was key to provide customers

with a single and integrated view of all their

policies. To accomplish

all this, marketing and

IT collaborated closely

with each other and with

the other business units,

negotiating changes every

day – from transform-

ing and integrating the

collection process to the

redesigning the layout of

the monthly statement.

Before, only banks pro-

vided customers with a

consolidated view of their

accounts. Now, Lusitania customers can see

clearly what premium, what discount, what

taxes are in any policy. In addition, all policies

have the same renewal day (1st of the month).

Overall greater transparency enabled Lusitania

to claim their policies had “no fine print” – i.e.,

that there were no hidden caveats. The results

to the business were significant. The number

of policies per customer increased from 1,33

to 2,0 and the number of cancelations de-

creased by 40%.The success of e+ Plans also

set the foundation for new ways of engaging

with customers. It has enabled a more effi-

cient treatment of collecting and it will be the

vehicle for total “paper free” communication.

A selection of recent accomplishments - More than 1M€ in savings

- An increase in revenue of 2.7%

- The number of policies per customer increased

from 1,33 to 2,0

- The number of cancelations decreased by 40%

Lusitania Companhia de Seguros, SA and N Seguros Based in Lisbon, Lusitania was founded in 1986 and by 2014, was one of the

largest insurers operating in Portugal. It is part of the Montepio Group, the

largest mutual association in Portugal and one of the largest mutual associa-

tions in Europe. Lusitania provides insurance in five key areas: Accident and

Health; Aviation; Automobile; Maritime Transportation; and Fire and Other

Damages. In early 2008, N Seguros was established as a separate company

within the Montepio Group, focused solely on the direct insurance market in

Portugal, in the areas of Automobile, Motorcycle, Personal and Health.

First we align IT; then we align with the

business. If IT cannot deliver then alignment

efforts are useless.

22

Daniele RizzoAutogrill S.p.A

Helping the company become even more customer centric

By 2014, Daniele Rizzo had already worked

14 years at Autogrill, 12 of them as Chief

Information Officer for Europe. In a company

such as Autogrill, where stores are open 24

hours and business is highest when travel

is highest, IT is a fundamental backbone for

operational continuity. Many of these services

can be done cheaper and more reliably by ex-

ternal service providers. As a result, about 75%

of the IT budget is spent on external services

providers. This enables Rizzo and his team of

about 70 people to focus on strategic uses

of ICT, such as improving business process

efficiencies, enhancing the customer-focus of

the firm, and enabling greater globalization of

Autogrill.

With regards to business process efficiencies,

in 2013, Rizzo was put in charge of a newly

created shared services unit. Consisting of

33 employees, the unit was responsible for

providing finance transactional services, such

as accounts payable, accounts receivable and

general ledger, to 14 business units operating

in Italy, France and Spain. To accomplish the

efficiencies expected from the unit, Rizzo led

a team that transformed what were previously

paper-based processes into mostly digital and

automated processes. For example, more than

70% of the documents that are involved in

accounts payable processes were switched to

electronic data exchange (EDI), when before

none had been. In addition, the entire ac-

counts payable cycle was switched to a digital

and integrated document management plat-

form. Within account receivable, 25% of docu-

ments were moved to digital. In addition to

achieving greater efficiencies, they were able

to reduce by half business process outsourcing

(BPO) costs, which accounted for more than a

third of overall processing costs, and improve

internal productivity accordingly. An estimated

700K€ has already been saved. In 2014, they

expect to eliminate BPO costs completely.

Productivity also increased because digitiza-

tion enabled personnel to spend less time

auditing processes and more time on controls,

reconciliations, and quality checks. As a result,

the employee engagement index also rose

from 23% (2012) to +90% (2014). Finally, by

improving services such as accounts payable

and account receivable, they also improved

relations with suppliers by tracking and reduc-

ing processing backlogs by 60% and reducing

supplier’s invoice process-

ing pass-through time from

39 to 22 days and to just

2 when they could be ac-

complished using EDI.

While the recent and still

ongoing economic down-

turn has affected the flow

of travelers in Europe, and

consequently consumers

demand and revenues in

Europe, Rizzo’s IT organisa-

tion has helped implement Autogrill’s ongoing

strategic transformation from a traditional high

volume, efficiency oriented food service pro-

vider to a more customer centric organisation.

Since 2012, Rizzo and his team have worked

on creating wider digital awareness within the

business management community and con-

necting IT market opportunities with business

growth objectives through tailored innovation

workshops. At the beginning of 2013 a more

focused, customer centric strategic planning

process was set up through the partnership

of a primary global system integrator, which

implied closer interaction with relevant busi-

ness leaders (CEO, BU leaders, Marketing,

Operations, etc.) in brainstorming sessions, etc.

As a result, customer centricity roadmaps were

developed and put in place.

Today, for example, together with other de-

partments, the IT group is collaborating closely

with the Marketing department to develop and

implement a new marketing plan that, accord-

ing to the Chief Marketing Officer, Ezio Balarini,

“fundamentally changed our attitude of how to

do business … today, IT is the glue of all of our

activities.” In January 2014, they embarked on

a program to develop wider analytical knowl-

edge about our customers’ purchasing habits,

by leveraging new statistical,

marketing and IT capabilities;

develop new capabilities and

resources in order to man-

age customer information

and interaction (e.g. mobile

touchpoints); and develop and

learn from tailored customer

campaigns. As part of the

collaboration, the Marketing

department has agreed to take

responsibility for prioritizing

while it expects IT to challenge

them, based on their understanding of what

customers want from Autogrill and how they

experience digital technologies, be account-

able, to support integration. As the Chief

Marketing Officer explained to the IT Group,

“This is not about one-way communication.

This is about two-way communication.”

The combination of business process efficien-

cies and strong alignment between IT and

other departments places Autogrill in an even

stronger position to expand internationally.

A selection of recent accomplishments - Introduced an enterprise-wide shared services unit to pro-

vide administrative services such as accounts payable and

accounts receivable. As a result, most of those processes

are digitized and automated and internal productivity has

more than doubled.

- Significantly reduced processing time of invoices and

consequently, improved customer satisfaction and relations

with suppliers.

- Developed significant trust with other departments such

that the IT group is now an integral collaborator as depart-

ments, such as Marketing, become more customer-centric.

Autogrill S.p.A Autogrill is the world’s leading provider of food and beverage

services for travelers. Active in 30 countries with some 55,000

employees, it has over 4,500 points of sale in more than 1,000

locations and operates prevalently under concession agree-

ments in airports, on motorways and in railway stations, as well

as in select shopping centres, trade fairs and museums. The

Company has a portfolio of over 250 international and local

brands, managed directly or under license. Listed on the Milan

stock exchange, Autogrill is indirectly controlled by Edizione

S.r.l., the financial arm of the Benetton family, with 50.1% of the

share capital.

I now expect two things from IT: to

challenge us and to support us.

(Ezio Balarini, Chief Marketing Officer of

Autogrill)

23

Putting ICT on the agenda of the whole organisation

When Stockx was appointed as CIO of ING

Belgium in 2011, the bank was in the midst of

a major shift in strategic focus. Its ambition

was to become the first universal direct bank in

Belgium, and technology needed to play a key

role in fulfilling that ambition.

Stockx and his team have been instrumental in

the fundamental transformation of how ING

Belgium interacts with its customers, undertak-

ing a vast array of projects along the way. The

sales force of ING are being equipped with

mobile technology that grants them access to

state-of-the-art customer intelligence data, in

order to close deals at the preferred location

of the clients and answer requests while facing

the clients. Customers can make appoint-

ments with an advisor online, indicating the

topics they needed advise on, which enables

the advisor to be fully prepared when he meets

the clients. Business clients are allowed to sign

lending agreements online, and can do their

mandate management through a self-service

tool. Furthermore, Stockx rolled our Wi-Fi to

all ING’s branches and, driven by technology,

revamped each one of them into a full service

branch.

Under his leadership the bank was the first

Belgian bank to offer a mobile app with in-

novative features like budget insights, which

has been downloaded almost 450,000 times

since its launch. The smartphone and tablet

applications are becoming an increasingly vital

new channel for ING Belgium.

Through the offshoring of its legacy system

and commodity IT tasks, Stockx was able to

free the time of his team and make them work

on strategic projects that impact the business.

This has helped tremendously in turning IT into

an integral part of the business.

The results of all these projects have been

impressive. The bank has the highest Net

Promoter Score amongst the top four Belgian

banks. About 43% of ING’s basic products are

now being sold online, and the homepage of

ING receives 3,5 million visitors per month. The

technology now enables ING’s sales people

to meet their clients wherever they want,

instead of having to meet in the branches.

This resulted in tremendous efficiency gains.

Branches are now places to provide advise

instead of places where transactions are made.

Hence, there is no need for branch directors

anymore. In general, Stockx’s projects have

enabled ING Belgium to reduce its workforce

by 350 employees.

The key to the success of these projects is

a unique approach to how IT projects are

chosen and implemented.

The sponsors of these

projects are not IT people,

but leaders in other Business

Units. This ensures that the

IT projects respond to clearly

defined business objectives,

but it also ensures that busi-

ness leaders understand the

subtleties of the IT projects.

As Stockx put it, “All busi-

ness units need to have an

IT agenda”. As a result, the IT

practices are closely aligned

with the business priorities and strategy of ING

Belgium. After all, as Stockx makes clear, “IT

needs to support the future, not the past.”

This required a tremendous shift in culture at

ING Belgium. Resources were dedicated to

training and educating the business leaders on

IT. Stockx wanted to ensure business leaders

felt committed to and accountable for their

additional responsibilities. Though this new

approach does not work all of the times, it

did help ING Belgium in staying ahead of the

competition with the successful implementa-

tion of new technology, which now resides at

the core of ING’s strategy.

From Stockx, implementing this new cul-

ture required a lot of diplomacy and drive.

Unsurprisingly, he frequently mentions soft

skills as being key in his success, although it

probably helps that he spent 20 years at ING in

a multitude of functions and divisions before

he became CIO. His three years as CIO of ING

Belgium will no doubt help him in his future

challenges, as he was recently promoted to

head the product management and operations

division of the bank. But before moving on, he

had one vital task to accomplish: ensure his

succession. As a true vision-

ary, he knew he needed

to find someone with very

strong consultancy skills as

much as experience with the

banking sector. Fortunately

Stockx found the right per-

son for the job.

Frank StockxING Belgium (CIO from 2011-2014)

A selection of recent accomplishments - Initiated a multitude of projects to make clients do transactions

online, resulting in huge productivity improvements. Today, 43%

of basic transactions are performed online by its clients, and the

bank has now the highest Net Promoter Score of the 4 largest

Belgian banks;

- Launched new services to support sales-force mobility with

remote access to customer intelligence system. The sales people

can now meet their clients wherever the clients wants, not where

the bank wants;

- Installed a culture where IT projects are sponsored by non-IT

business leaders, hence ensuring a better comprehension by both,

as well as a coherent integration of IT in all business functions.

ING Belgium ING Belgium is the Belgian subsidiary of the Dutch

financial institution ING Group. The Belgian organization

employs over 9000 persons, serving more than 500,000

clients in 749 branches. ING Belgium realized a turnover of

over €3B last year.

ING Belgium is investing heavily in online banking. In 2011

ING was the first Belgian bank to launch a mobile app. Its

‘smart banking’ mobile app for smartphone and tablet has

been downloaded over 448,000 times since its launch. In

combination with PC banking ING is handing over 30 mil-

lion online sessions per quarter.

There are no boundaries in an

organization, only competences.

24

Jeroen TasPhilips Healthcare

Achieving local relevance through global scale In 2011, two weeks after becoming CEO,

Frans van Houten hired Jeroen Tas as Philips’

CIO. Although IT was integral to innova-

tion throughout the diversified-technology

company, Philips had been operating for

too long as a disparate set of business units

working somewhat independently. As Tas

explained, “We had to fundamentally change

our approach to products and processes,

how people work together, as well as the

overall IT landscape.” To accomplish such

extensive transformation, Philips launched the

Accelerate! transformation program and Tas

and his team were integral to all aspects of

the program.

One of the most important aspects of the

transformation was the cultural change:

new mindsets and behaviors. Philips had to

become an organization where collabora-

tion in multi-functional teams was the norm.

The IT organization introduced news ways

of collaborating closely with the business to

develop solutions both rapidly and iteratively.

They built strong governance around business

processes and related IT investments. The

leadership style also changed from command

and control to guide and coach.

Today, all of Philips’ development projects

and problem-resolution projects apply Agile

Scrum. To achieve this, over 1,000 employees

followed a 3-day training to learn to work in

self-directed, multi-disciplinary teams. Boston

Consultancy Group has classified the Philips

Agile Output-Based model as ‘Advanced’ and

the speed and rigor in executing the transfor-

mation as ‘Best in class.’

Tas and his team, in close collaboration with

business colleagues, co-created an archi-

tectural blueprint for business processes and

corresponding IT systems and designed and

delivered platforms that support the core pro-

cesses, rather than point solutions for busi-

ness units. As a result, IT costs were reduced.

With the transformation of Philips – includ-

ing its digitized platform – well underway,

Tas focused next on strengthening the data

dimension of “Philips’ real-time enterprise”

ambition. Before, customer information was

scattered and consumer feedback months out

of date by the time it reached decision mak-

ers. Tas and his team established an Enterprise

Information Management group to man-

age data models and take responsibility for

data operations, performance measurement

and advanced analytics. “We are control-

ling data (like data on customers, products,

employees, suppliers,

financials) separate from

our systems and we are

rolling out “Information

Factories” that manage

master data and allow

real-time monitoring and

analysis of the business.

This gives the business

the tools to perfor-

mance manage, but also

get forecasts and new

insights.”

They also rolled out

a standard Sales and

Service cloud solution, giving visibility into

customer information, sales, and other key

metrics. It helps customers track their orders

and manage service requests, and it provides

enhanced communication and coordination

with channel partners. They started imple-

mentation in Healthcare and by May 2014

had completed deployment in more than 100

countries across all sectors.

While transforming Philips, Tas and his team

also helped Philips respond innovatively to

increasingly rapid changes in the market.

To speed up Philips’ digital innovation, Tas set

up the Digital Accelerator Lab where special-

ists from Design, R&D, Marketing, Sales and

IT co-produce innovation in self-managed

teams. Teams in the lab are now able to go

from consumer insight to prototype much

faster than in the past.

In January 2014, Philips announced the

formation of Healthcare Informatics Solutions

and Services, a new business group within

Philips’ Healthcare sector that offers hospi-

tals and health systems

the customized clinical

programs and advanced

data analytics to imple-

ment new models of

care. Reflecting the

value of the accomplish-

ments he led as CIO, as

well as the importance

of accomplished digital

leaders to new areas of

growth, Tas was selected

to lead the new business

group as its CEO. A few

months later, in a case

study they developed

on Tas’ accomplishments, Forrester research

recognized Tas as “one of the most renowned

technology visionaries in Europe.”

A selection of recent accomplishments - All of Philip’s development projects in Delivery and problem-

resolution in Operations are applying Agile Scrum. Boston

Consultancy Group has classified the Philips Agile Output-

Based model as ‘Advanced’ and the speed and rigor in

executing the transformation as ‘Best in Class.’

- Set up the Digital Accelerator Lab where cross-functional

teams are able to go from consumer insight to prototype in a

shorter time.

- Implemented an award-winning Enterprise Architecture

Repository that documents Philips Business Models, Winning

Value Chains, Processes, IT Architecture and Data Models.

Royal Philips Royal Philips is a diversified technology company, focused

on improving people’s lives through meaningful innovation

in the areas of Healthcare, Consumer Lifestyle and Lighting.

Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips posted 2013 sales of

EUR 23.3 billion and employs approximately 112,000 employ-

ees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. The

company is a leader in cardiac care, acute care and home

healthcare, energy efficient lighting solutions and new lighting

applications, as well as male shaving and grooming and oral

healthcare. In 2013, Philips rose to 40th on Interbrand’s annual

ranking of global brands, with its brand value increasing by 8%

to close to USD 10 billion.

We are reshaping the company to create solutions

that are relevant to local markets, while leveraging our global scale. We are standardizing our value chains, while enabling

customer centricity and rapid innovation. We enabled this

through IT.

25

Günter WeinrauchADAC e.V.

Business and IT jointly driving the organization in new directions

When Günter Weinrauch was appointed CIO

of ADAC in 2011, ADAC’s IT organization had

some fundamentals well in place. IT systems

were stable and cost-effective and the IT

group provided functional enhancements to

the IT systems only upon request from the

user departments. This foundation enabled

Weinrauch and his team of approximately 400

internal and external staff members to play a

more strategic and proactive role in realizing

ADAC’s new strategy.

In response to new challenges in the market,

ADAC introduced a new corporate strategy

focused on becoming more agile by com-

bining cross-functional fields of action. The

refinement and execution of the new strategy

involved all departments within ADAC con-

tinuously collaborating and iterating between

four key elements: observation, orientation,

decision, and action. It also involved bal-

ancing two groups of interests: improving

responses to new opportunities (“adequate

response to new situations”) and improving

internal operations (“keeping the house in

order”).

Weinrauch has linked IT’s strategy closely

with ADAC’s digital strategy to ensure that

the target IT architecture was synchronized

with technological developments such as the

Internet of Things, connected vehicles, wear-

able technology and location-based services.

In addition, he insisted that IT and the rest of

the business share responsibilities for keep-

ing IT tightly aligned with ADAC’s strategy.

Today, according to Weinrauch, IT works so

closely with project teams that “it is difficult

to tell who is from IT and who is not.” When

IT identifies a promising new technology, they

explore its potential business relevance jointly

with the relevant business department. “In this

respect,” explained Weinrauch, “the ADAC IT

department now considers itself to be a “driv-

er” of new topics, and no longer a “processor”

of orders from other departments.”

Key to Weinrauch’s effectiveness is his ap-

proach to leadership. “If I tell my people what

to do, I essentially tell them to shut off their

brain and heart and just use both hands to

fulfill my orders. Instead, I try to inspire people

to use their skills and to perform beyond their

abilities – to employ their

hands, their brain and

their heart at the same

time. If I accomplish that,

my role is to provide

direction and guidelines,

stand out of their way and

clear any roadblocks.”

One area where the

ADAC IT team has made a

notable difference is with

the ADAC assistance busi-

ness (roadside assistance

and medical assistance).

Over the years, the IT-landscape for the

ADAC assistance business had developed into

several legacy systems that were increas-

ingly inadequate for supporting current and

future planned business activities. Instead of

prolonging the lifespan of the existing legacy

systems or planning a new custom develop-

ment, Weinrauch introduced a completely

new approach. They purchased and im-

plemented a highly configurable systems

platform where – apart from the integration

with legacy applications – almost all busi-

ness requirements can be configured from

existing components rather than be custom-

developed. They used SCRUM agile devel-

opment methods to enhance and integrate

the new IT systems stack with mixed teams,

consisting of business and IT staff members,

as well as external experts. And they adapted

business processes to fit the design principles

of the new systems infrastructure instead of

building constant customizations (“balconies”)

that would limit the future flexibility of the

systems. As a result, they significantly reduced

complexity and business limitations due to an

outdated systems infrastructure.

Weinrauch and the ADAC IT team have also

been essential to support

the company’s “Future

Workplace,” consist-

ing of flex offices and a

clean desk policy for all

workers, up to the top

management levels, bring

your own device (BYOD)

policy for Smart Phones

and Tablets, and a Mobile

Working regime allowing

employees (including call

centre staff) to work any-

where inside and outside

of the ADAC-premises

according to personal and company needs

without technical limitations while maintain-

ing a high level of IT-security. ADAC became

the largest non-consulting organization in

Germany to implement such a comprehen-

sive set of changes to its workplace.

In 2014, after enhancing the proactive

capabilities of IT, Weinrauch and the ADAC

IT-organization received the Handelsblatt IT-

Strategy Award for their accomplishments.

A selection of recent accomplishments - Saved approximately 7M€ over a timeframe of 3 years

through IT-strategy initiatives.

- Enhanced the overall speed and effectiveness of the IT-

organization, such as shortening time-to-market, improving

business cases of new initiatives and reducing overhead.

- ADAC became the largest non-consulting organization

in Germany to implement such a comprehensive set of

changes to its workplace, including flexible desks, BYOD,

and work anyplace anywhere policies.

ADAC e.V. Headquartered in Munich, Germany, the Allgemeiner Deutscher

Automobil-Club (ADAC) e. V. is Europe’s largest automobile club

with almost 19 million members. Its key service offerings include

roadside assistance and towing services provided by the ADAC

Road Patrol and its road service partners and ambulance service.

Most Germans know the expression “Gelbe Engel” (“yellow an-

gels”) in reference to the organization’s road assistance service.

Since 2013, ADAC employees from all branches of the company

work in a new and energy-efficient building marked by architec-

tural openness.

IT is working hand-in-hand with the

rest of the business, identifying new possibilities and bringing them to

fruition.

26

Next Steps:

Building a results-driven CIO community

As we see the strategic role of CIO’s

increasing, we also observe that this

role is perceived very differently from

company to company, from industry

to industry. There is still confusion on

the exact nature of the role of a CIO.

The question arises whether he or she

should be driving the shift towards

digitalization, or whether other divisions

within the company should drive this.

There is even debate about who exactly

a CIO should report into.

Amidst these discussion, it becomes

clear that there is a strong need for

CIO’s to benchmark their activities and

performance with their peers, across

industries and across countries. Sharing

ideas, best practices and visions about

the future becomes an imperative for

every digital leader who wants to drive

his organization to the next level.

The ‘European CIO of the year’ contest,

as well as the publication of this report

at the occasion of the contest, is a solid

step in this direction. The examples of

digital leaders included in this report

might inspire others to become as suc-

cessful in driving the growth of their

businesses, and increase the business

relevance of the CIO role.

But it does not stop here. What is need-

ed is a platform for constant discussion

and exchanges of ideas, the establish-

ment of a community where CIO’s can

share best practices among their peers

in other industries and countries.

This is the core of CIONET’s mission.

For the last eight years we have been

building on such a community, which

now exceeds 4000 members across

Europe and expanding to new regions

beyond Europe.

Building on the future

Looking at the future we plan to further

enhance the international character of

this community, and enable our mem-

bers to leverage the knowledge and

experience of their international peers

through our platform. We plan to bring

new services to our members, get them

together around hot issues and offering

them new ways to find solutions to their

specific challenges.

This way CIONET will become a key

instrument for CIO’s to lead their

organization towards a successful and

impactful future.

27

Leading by example: Fostering more role models for succeeding in a digital global economy

This year’s report findings reinforce both

our findings from previous years and

what many organizations are learning

the hard way: any organization that

does not strive to have at least one of

the three types of digital leaders fea-

tured in this report is failing to pursue

important opportunities to create value

and be competitive in today’s digital

global economy.

The good news is that within CIONET’s

community, there are many digital

leaders as accomplished as the 18

profiled in the report. The bad news

is that, according to research that we

have collaborated on with the European

Commission, demand for digital leaders

already exceeds supply and that the gap

between demand and supply will only

increase, as more organizations real-

ize they need digital leaders.1 While this

gap could evolve into a crisis, it is also a

significant opportunity for employment.

Raising awareness of what digital lead-

ers and their teams are doing to cre-

ate myriad value for different types of

organizations is core to increasing the

supply, reducing the gap, and ensur-

ing organizations have the leadership

necessary to compete.

In several of the profiles featured in

this report, a critical success factor to

enhancing the strategic value and role

of IT from a reactive order taker to a

proactive orchestrator is raising aware-

ness of how different aspects of IT from

across the organization relate to the

business interests of a local unit within

the organization. An initial and funda-

mental task that many of the featured

CIOs had to accomplish was to ensure

the rest of the business was aware of

what their organization’s digitized plat-

form consisted of, including redundant

and insufficiently compatible islands of

technology, business processes, and

data, so that the business (rather than

simply IT) could decide whether to

continue operating in that manner or

change.

With regards to raising awareness out-

side of the organization, the European

Commission is funding a variety of

projects and events to raise awareness

of e-skills and digital leadership, such

as e-skills week (http://eskills-week.

ec.europa.eu/) a project to help educa-

tional institutes develop graduates who

are better prepared and enthusiastic to

become digital leaders (http://eskills-

guide.eu/home/), and a project to better

understand and foster e-leadership for

small and medium sized enterprises

(http://eskills-lead.eu/home/). Students

need more role models such as those

featured in this report to inspire them

to develop the skills to lead exciting en-

deavors. Finalists and winners from past

European CIO of the Year events have

already participated in several of these

events and projects. Please contact us

if you and your organization are inter-

ested in participating.

If you are interested in participating or

learning more about what CIONET is

doing to help CIOs raise awareness both

within and outside of their organiza-

tions, please contact us.

1 INSEAD, empirica and IDC. (2013). “e-Leadership:

Skills for competitiveness and innovation.” available at

About CIONET

CIONET is the biggest community of IT

executives in Europe. Bringing together

over 4000 CIOs, CTO’s and IT directors

from wide ranging sectors, cultures, aca-

demic backgrounds and generations, CIONET’s membership

represents an impressive body of expertise in IT manage-

ment. CIONET’s mission is to feed and develop that expertise

by providing top-level IT executives with the resources they

need to realize their full potential.

CIONET develops, manages and moderates an integrated

array of tools and services from the online CIONET plat-

form – the world’s first social network for CIOs – to a range

of offline networking events, conferences, workshops and

executive education programmes all tailored to top-level

management. CIONET also provides exclusive access to the

latest research through regular online and offline publica-

tions and a number of value adding partnerships with key

players from the academic and corporate worlds.

Faced with the rapidly changing role of today’s IT execu-

tive, CIONET not only helps its members keep up with the

pace of change but empowers them to take an active role

in shaping the future of their field, always challenging them

with “What’s next.”

Keep in touch: follow us on Twitter @cionet or through our LinkedIn page.

If you are a CIO and wish to become a member please

contact mieke@cionet.com

If you have relevant content for our CIO members please

contact frederic@cionet.com

If you are an IT vendor and wish to establish a close relation-

ship with our CIO members please contact ilja@cionet.com

About INSEAD

As one of the world’s leading and largest

graduate business schools, INSEAD brings

together people, cultures and ideas to

change lives and to transform organisations. With campuses

in Europe (France), Asia (Singapore) and Abu Dhabi, INSEAD’s

business education and research spans three continents. Its

146 renowned Faculty members from 34 countries inspire

more than 1,300 degree participants annually in our MBA,

Executive MBA, Specialised Master’s degrees (Master in

Finance, Executive Master in Consulting and Coaching for

Change) and PhD programmes.

What’s next.

The 2014 Digital Leadership Report

Accelerating local innovations while boosting global synergies

The report represents results from in-

depth research which surveyed Chief

Information Officers from 10 European

countries and interviews with 18 of

Europe’s most distinguished CIOs, as

judged by their peers. Together, these

findings help us better understand

how organizations are taking control

of information and communication

technologies to create significant

business value in myriad ways, such as

operating globally, better and cheaper;

collaborating more effectively; enhanc-

ing customer experiences; innovating

services and products; and increasing

the efficiency and success of mergers

and acquisitions.

The report identifies three types of

IT-enabled leaders who are helping a

wide variety of organizations be more

competitive and create more value:

Technology-driven CIOs; Business

process-driven CIOs, and Client-driven

CIOs. As a whole, the report’s findings

highlight the importance of fostering

digital leaders. They suggest that any

organization that does not strive to have

at least one of the three types of digital

leaders is failing to pursue important

opportunities to create value and be

competitive in today’s increasingly

interdependent and dynamic global

economy.

Design: echtgoed.be