Should there be an app for that?

By Patrick Gray

Summary

According to Patrick Gray, there are several opportunities in the mobile space for a CIO to increase his or her visibility within the organization.

As the cheeky advertisements on television indicate, there seems to be a mobile application for just about everything. From calorie counters to witticisms from your favorite Jersey Shore characters, no stone appears to have been left unturned.

Despite this seeming glut, there are several opportunities in the mobile space, and mobile provides a great opportunity for a CIO to increase his or her visibility within the organization.

When most people in corporate IT start thinking about mobile applications, they tend to think about internal applications first. Perhaps there are CRM or order entry systems that would be great in the hands of field sales representatives, or internal collaboration sites that would be compelling on an iPad. These are all great ideas, and worthy of some experimentation with the caveat that building platform-specific mobile capabilities may not be the best investment as the mobile space is still very much in a state of flux. Rather than focusing primarily on internal mobile apps, the true "gold in the hills" for most B2C companies is the consumer space.

Mobile applications present a unique marketing opportunity that we haven't seen since the early days of the Web. Marketers still haven't quite figured out how to fully leverage the mobile format, and consumers are far more forgiving than the jaded bunch that seems immune to banner ads, and adept at ignoring anything that smacks of online advertising. Mobile is also one of the few areas where you can get intimate with your customer, traveling in his or her pocket and, if you can build enough trust, even knowing his or her location down to a few meters.

This relationship of trust requires applications that provide some form of value to the customer, through some combination of entertainment, information, or financial benefit; perhaps in the form of discounts or coupons. While this is usually the domain of marketing, the CIO who can provide expert guidance to their colleagues in marketing takes on the guise of trusted advisor and business leader, rather than tech gatekeeper to be avoided until absolutely necessary.

As CIO, you bring several critical experiences to the table that can help your company get the most of its mobile advertising dollar. While marketing tends to be quite capable of working with third parties, CIOs have often spent entire careers outsourcing technical development. You can provide valuable guidance on the application development process, suggest ways to use existing mobile technology that are quick and cheap, or even capabilities your colleagues in marketing never knew existed.

In addition, you bring knowledge of the company's existing systems and data. Getting a compelling mobile application in the hands of your target customer is great, but if you never garner and analyze any information about that customer, the effort does little other than build mercurial "goodwill". By bringing your expertise to bear early in the application design process, you can ensure marketing's creative brings hard, measurable data into the company. A cute game that excites your customers is nice, but a cute game that integrates that customer into your existing promotions builds a relationship and "converts" them to your brand is far more exciting regardless of which corporate function you hold.

If you find customer-facing mobile applications might be valuable to your organization, spend a few hours brushing up on some of the technologies, and get a couple people within your IT shop to do the same. In all probability, there are already developers moonlighting on their own mobile apps, who would be extremely excited to brief you on what is going on in the space. Reach out to your colleagues in marketing. If they're worth their paychecks they are probably already making a move in the mobile space, and your expertise will be welcomed early rather than grudgingly engaged at the last possible moment.

Patrick Gray is the founder and president of Prevoyance Group, and author of "Breakthrough IT: Supercharging Organizational Value through Technology". Prevoyance Group provides strategic IT consulting services to Fortune 500 and 1000 companies.

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Unraveling the CAB

By Patrick Gray
Summary
A Change Advisory Board tends to get overcomplicated when it's implemented at many organizations. Here's how to avoid that.
A Change Advisory Board (CAB) is another good idea that tends to get overcomplicated when it's implemented at many organizations.
At its core, the CAB exists to provide a balanced analysis of any changes to a company's systems and processes and to provide a final "ruling" on whether a proposed change moves forward or is shelved. The CAB concept is promoted by some of the popular IT management methodologies, which overlay the conceptually simple concept with layers of formalities and a veneer of unnecessary complexity.
Scope changes are generally the only way to control costs on an IT project, with seemingly minor changes made by junior analysts often carrying six-figure price tags. With this fact in mind, the CAB is your best defense against these changes dragging your projects deep into the red.
With this objective in mind, consider the following two keys to implementing an effective CAB.
Representation and transparency are key
If a CAB is seen as primarily an IT function, it will rapidly become a bureaucracy to be avoided, sabotaged and dodged.
In all but the most mundane infrastructure projects, most of your IT projects will be done to impact your company's business. As such, many of the change requests will be business-related and impact finance, marketing, sales and operations and often are fundamentally business decisions of how to allocate scarce resources rather than purely technical decisions. Therefore, your CAB must have representation from each business unit that is respected and empowered to make decisions.
IT gets the same vote as other business units and, save for articulating part of the costs of each change and guiding the process, does not gain any additional power to influence the CAB.
With the right people on the CAB, an arbitrator is required for any stalemates that arise. Depending on whether your company is more operationally or financially oriented, this might be the COO or CFO or in some cases even the CEO. In any case, each person on the CAB has voting power and is at a high-enough level that the buck stops with them rather than their decision being subject to reevaluation and overriding by a superior. It should be clear who makes the decisions, and each item that comes before the CAB should be allocated a rapid time frame in which it will be evaluated.
At the end of the day, when change requests come to the CAB you want them to be decided quickly and the people and process behind the decision to be respected by the company, even if it is disagreed with.
Time is money
A CAB's value comes from two areas: respected and fair people and process, and timelines. If you have painstakingly recruited the right people, but your CAB takes four months to reach a decision, it will rapidly lose its value.
While some recommend quarterly CAB meetings, this is generally too long, especially if you are implementing large-scale projects like ERP or CRM systems. Monthly meetings of the CAB should be the baseline objective, and with some forethought, each can be short and effective. Send a summary of each change request, the facts around the issue, and any background in advance of the meeting, and actually CAB meetings can be about final fact finding, analysis, and decision-making rather than endless debates.
A good decision is often better than a great decision two months from now, so in the case where information is missing or the environment is unclear, document the assumptions that went into a decision and document any triggers that might cause the board to reevaluate the decision and move on. Major organizational projects can burn significant amounts of cash just waiting for a critical decision, so be sure to convey the very real cost of inaction.
With the right people, a transparent decision-making process, and a focus on making good decisions as rapidly as possible, the CAB can be a very valuable tool. Rather than an administrative hurdle, it becomes a tool for ensuring money is spent effectively, changes are evaluated in light of the company's core business, and projects are able to move forward in the face of competing priorities rather than spinning their wheels (and burning cash) waiting for decisions.
For the CIO, an effective CAB shows his or her peers that the CIO understands that IT exists to facilitate the company's business and also demonstrates the value an effective IT organization provides to the larger company. Each member of the CAB will see IT efforts tied directly back to their business benefit and grow to understand that IT is about far more than servers and software.
Patrick Gray is the founder and president of Prevoyance Group, and author of "Breakthrough IT: Supercharging Organizational Value through Technology". Prevoyance Group provides strategic IT consulting services to Fortune 500 and 1000 companies.

READ MORE - Unraveling the CAB

Salary, not 'fun perks', attract IT talent

By Jamie Yap

Summary

A good pay package is still the best draw to attract and keep employees, note recruiters. However, tech firms say offering "fun perks" at work provides similar appeal.
Axer Goh, manager of contracting division at Robert Walters, highlighted to ZDNet Asia that the "ultimate factor" that motivates many job candidates is the money on offer. This is the first thing most potential employees would think of upon taking up a new role, she noted.
"I have yet to come across a candidate who is more interested to find out about non-monetary job perks than the pay package provided by a new employer," she said in her e-mail.
Annie Lim, manager of IT commerce at Robert Walters, added to Goh's observations, saying that as the job market in the technology sector continues to pick up, job seekers and employees are factoring higher salary increments in their decision-making.
Gavin Henshaw, head of Kelly IT Resources, a specialist division within recruitment firm Kelly Services, concurred that a competitive salary will always play an important part in an applicant's decision-making process.
He noted in his e-mail that non-monetary perks are usually considered by people as "luxuries and non-essential" and will not be able to help retain staff.
Goh, however, said additional perks do "help retain talent to a certain extent" as employees are less likely to be actively exploring external work opportunities if they are happy in their current workplace.
Companies dangle perks
Despite the recruiters' assertions that salary remains the top draw for most potential and existing employees, IT companies ZDNet Asia spoke to said that "fun perks" play an equally important role in attracting top talent.
Myriam Boublil, head of communications and public affairs at Google Southeast Asia, for one, said "people don't join or stay with a company for money only". It is with this in mind that Google is "committed to providing its employees with benefits that encourage work-life balance and make employees' time at work as enjoyable and productive as possible", she added.
Elaborating on the company's work philosophy, she noted that besides a "competitive compensation package, which comprises of salary, yearly bonuses, and equity grants", all Google offices, including Singapore, have game rooms with Nintendo Wii consoles and pool tables, massage chairs, and cafes offering free meals all day. All these features are included to ensure that "work is challenging yet fun", she said.
"Our people are our greatest assets and we will always look after them so they are able to keep creating, inventing, finding solutions and breaking boundaries," Boublil noted in an e-mail.
Google's employee-centric approach appears to have paid off. The search giant was ranked fourth in Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" this year.
Scott Morris, managing director at NetApp Asean, also emphasized that today's employees have "different priorities and an increasingly bigger pay packet can no longer ensure employee loyalty". Studies have shown that employees who are happy and have job satisfaction are productive, he added in his e-mail.
"Happy employees are more willing to ride through the tough times with the employer and have a greater sense of ownership. This, in turn, manifests itself in happy customers and partners, thus favorably contributing to our bottom line," Morris elaborated.
Ranked fifth in Fortune's list of top places to work for, data storage firm NetApp also has "simple practices [in its Singapore office] to make coming to work more fun" such as breakfast gatherings on Fridays, free espressos daily and fruits weekly, the executive noted.
Social gaming company Zynga also believes in providing incentives to employees to reward them for their work. Colleen McCreary, the firm's chief people officer, said Zynga is "proud to offers its employees [in San Francisco] great perks such as free weekday meals, haircuts, massages, and bringing their dogs to work."
"Offering fun perks is a way for Zynga to give back to our staff in special ways," she explained in an e-mail. "They work hard and we want to make sure they feel appreciated, rewarded and cared for."
Career progression also important
Beyond these fun perks though, Kelly IT Resources' Henshaw pointed out that other offerings such as training and career progression may be more beneficial to employees in the long run.
"A great working environment is a bonus, [but] it is of less importance if it is not matched with personal reward and benefit," he stated.
Morris concurred. He said that NetApp nurtures its people and provides opportunities for career progression and expansion within the company, which is why preference is given to internal candidates for new job offerings.
Boublil, too, stressed that "Google is all about learning and offers many training and career development programs and initiatives". For instance, its engineers are placed under a "20 percent time" program that allows them to work on independent projects which interests them yet does not fall under their usual job scope, she explained.

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How to engage employees in the workplace

What does it take for a company to become successful at engaging its employees?  Socialcast created this infographic to explore this very question.
In the formula that makes up an organization’s success, a key factor is employee engagement. Top-performing companies know this. Human Resources departments know this. However, studies show that there is still an overwhelming number of employees who are disengaged in the workplace. What are the factors contributing to this issue, and how can companies address this challenge to improve engagement and ultimately the bottom line?
(Click on the infographic below to learn more.)

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