The Hindu Business Line : The art of being a CTO

What qualities create the most interesting leaders as chief technology officers? Here's an insightful read. There's also gyan on how to do different things everywhere when it comes to marketing.

WHAT are the three key functions of IT consulting firms? Empowering businesses to be more effective at doing what they do best; making access to information immediately available; and extending the reach of business solutions by providing access to business systems from a multiplicity of locations and devices.

Thus writes Arun Gollapudi, CEO of Systech Solutions, in one of the chapters included by Mark D. Minevich in The CTO Best Practices Handbook, from Vision Books (www.visionbooksindia.com) .

"Companies began adding Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) to the executive ranks in the 1980s because technology was becoming an integral and influential part of many strategic decisions and future planning cycles," writes Minevich.

Is the CTO a senior technologist? No, says Minevich. Because, "In the CTO position, senior management is not looking for enthusiastic advice from a research scientist, but sound and proven advice on business decisions involving technology." The CTO can inform the media about the company's products, services and future plans, and highlight how the decisions will add value to the shareholders.

The great value of the book lies in the compilation of `best practices' as culled from the key players in the industry, such as Gollapudi, who foresees applications to gain in functionality, and new paradigms to enter computing. An example that he cites is of genetic programming used for predicting stock prices!

Michael George, CEO of Bowstreet, writes that the demand for developers skilled in proprietary application frameworks is over, because of industry consolidation and open standards. "Young software companies starting out today have some tremendous opportunities. Without the burden of needing to satisfy existing customers, young vendors are free to architect innovative, flexible solutions and technologies."

To John Chen, president of Sybase, there is no comfort zone. "You have to be in constant paranoia... You have to keep moving," he advises. "There is no perfect way of doing things. The industry moves too fast for perfection to develop. You have to challenge the status quo. That is how the margin of business is built." Software business eventually builds up a substantial maintenance base, but the profit is really in selling new products, states Gerald D. Cohen, CEO of Information Builders. "This isn't a fashion business, but it has a certain element of that. Everyone wants a hot product that lots of other people want."

Close the gap between what technology can do and what people want it to do, says Carl S. Ledbetter, CTO of Novell. "The most important skill a CTO can have is to be able to understand technology well enough that you can explain it to people without having to go into acronyms and mumbo-jumbo," he notes. "You should be able to do it with metaphors and analogies."

In an essay titled `creating and enriching business value,' Richard Schroth, CTO of Perot Systems writes, "Personal integrity and a strong ethical attitude, combined with boundless enthusiasm, great business savvy, a strong understanding of finance, an unyielding respect for people, a love of technology, and a passion for free markets, create the most interesting leaders as CTOs." He foresees that our level of tolerance for things that aren't fast, accurate, and integrated is going to quickly diminish.

Mike Ragunas of Staples.com insists that CTOs must keep things simple. "Every technology you add to your environment will add complexity and support costs; make sure it's worth it."

Explaining `the art of being a CTO,' Rick Bergquist of PeopleSoft says that the biggest challenge is "getting people to think about what could be, as opposed to what is." Enacting change is one of the hardest things to do, he adds. `Pick your battles' using three criteria says Bergquist, giving credit for the same to John Grillos: "They have to be important. They have to be winnable. They have to be few."

Must add for the CTOs' shelf!

Do different things everywhere

WHY do so many of even the best companies underperform in international markets? David Arnold answers this question in The Mirage of Global Markets, from Pearson Education (www.pearsoned.co.in) .

The most striking development in most markets is that, far from consolidating, they are fragmenting, writes Arnold. Reason? "Information technology allows companies to move ever closer towards `segment of one', addressing customers individually rather than in aggregate segments or markets."

The era of mass marketing has passed its peak in developed economies, he opines. The challenge of international marketing, according to Arnold, is to capture the benefits of globalisation without sacrificing the local market responsiveness. What is required is `global marketing management,' not global marketing! "Deliver marketing solutions that lack nothing in terms of local relevance and immediacy," he exhorts.

In a discussion of first mover versus fast follower, catch up with the story about Sony's car navigations systems. In the early 1990s Sony was the market leader and 80 per cent of worldwide unit sales were in Japan. "However, the drivers of demand in Japan (a widespread love of technology, a complex and relatively poorly signposted road system, and extensive use of cars for leisure driving well away from home) were not present to the same extent in North America and Western Europe."

As a result, Sony had to spend heavily on marketing "to persuade customers that they needed an expensive technological addition to their car to replace a cheap paper roadmap." While Europeans wanted multi-language capabilities, users in the US, "more concerned with traffic congestion than with directions, required links to live traffic information services." Later entrants could outflank Sony, free-riding on the market development investment; they took the OEM channel instead of addressing consumers directly as Sony did.

A chapter on `international customer management' states that the strength of the internal support system is "the single best predictor of a successful global account." Arnold cites, as example, Ericsson, whose global account managers are based in the home countries of their customers, but at the headquarters in Stockholm, "there is an extensive set of support activities - an order desk, marketing and customer relations, corporate network management, special project support, and internal network building." For one, these are too expensive to spread all over the world; and "more importantly, they provide the visibility and political legitimacy that the global account managers need to get their work done."

There are clear advantages of global presence. Also, "it is impossible to imagine a reversal in the trend of corporate globalisation." But the key message of the book is this: "The marketing advantage that accrues from being global is the power to do different things everywhere rather than the power to do the same thing everywhere." Replication strategies achieve scale, which is "a questionable achievement in the eyes of many consumers, who are reasonably focussed only on their own local needs and wants."

Helps shake off the `global' illusion!

Tailpiece

"If `yes, no, cancel' stares at me... "

"Yes... ?"

"How do I get out?"

"Escape!"

Books2Byte@TheHindu.co.in

D. Murali