Thursday, November 18, 2010

Boston SIM November Monthly Meeting

The Real Business of IT: Taking Charge of the Value Conversation

IT leaders have long struggled to describe and justify IT’s value to skeptical business colleagues. This presentation, based on the bestselling book “The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value” (named the Best IT-Business Book of 2009 by CIO Insight magazine), shows how leading IT organizations make the case that IT matters—and that it is worth paying for. By taking charge of the value conversation, IT leaders transform their organizations from order takers to true strategic partners, with benefits for their enterprises and themselves.

Dr. George Westerman, Research Scientist, MIT Sloan School of Management

George’s research and teaching focus on how IT and non-IT leaders can gain new value from IT by bridging the gap between them. His major themes include innovation, risk management, and communicating about value. George is co-author of two award-winning books: The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value and IT Risk: Turning Business Threats into Competitive Advantage. His research has also appeared in top academic and management journals. He is faculty chair for the MIT Sloan executive course “Transforming Your Business through IT,” a program dedicated to helping senior executives get more value from working with IT. In addition to speaking and workshops, George works regularly with senior executives on topics related to innovation and IT management.

As a special gift, each attendee will receive a free copy of George’s book— The Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value.

Learning to Leverage Business Expertise to Stay Competitive – Part 1

Question: As businesses become increasingly sophisticated, how can IT knowledge workers gain the business knowledge to remain competitive?Companies are increasingly using information technology to sell more products, grow their business and improve their bottom line. For example, online banking gives customers more convenient access to their accounts while lowering costs for retail banks. Retail banking is now a 24x7x365 business. Retailers use technology to track store inventory, monitor daily sales and manage their workforce, all of which has increased sales per square foot. However, when retail store personnel are unable to access the systems, sales grind to a halt. This increased dependence on technology has upped the ante for the IT department.

In this new highly competitive business environment, IT must be both user centric and be able to keep systems running smoothly around the clock. In order to effectively support users and remain competitive, IT personnel need to increase their business knowledge for the following reasons:

-       Technology is fused with business processes – For example, a retail clerk uses a store inventory system to search for a customer requested item

-       The IT department must empower people so that they can be as productive as possible

-       IT workers must champion technologies that open new markets, increase “wallet share” with existing customers, and improve customer service

When these three points are applied, everyone wins – - customers, suppliers, shareholders, and employees. IT workers typically are the rare individuals in an organization that can really make technology “sing and dance.” Unfortunately, few IT workers have sufficient business knowledge to help users get the most out of the technology to achieve the outstanding business results they are looking for.

Perspective is the secret sauce that is missing from IT workers ability to boost their business knowledge. Traditionally, IT professionals have pursued and been rewarded for increasing technical their knowledge, not their business acumen. Moreover, many IT practitioners are technology elitists who do not appreciate why their business colleagues do not “understand IT”. While IT is the steward of technology, it is the responsibility of IT workers to convey to their companies how to best leverage that expensive IT systems investment. In today’s world, technology is fused with business so it is time for all IT professionals to step up to the plate and “understand business”. The next installment will discuss how IT leaders can drive that needed change in perspective within their organization.

About the Author

Robert Johnson, Director of Product Marketing at Atrion Networking Corporation where he’s responsible for market analysis, developing new products and co-leading the company’s managed services business line. Robert is a veteran of the IT industry having held executive strategy and marketing positions with CGI Inc., Deloitte Consulting and Digital Equipment Corp.

This story originates on the SIM Consultant Blog. Stay in touch! Watch and contribute to the Blog at http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/it-consulting/

The Two-way Benefits of Boston Sim’s Partnership with Common Impact

Did you know that 84 percent of companies think volunteerism is an important way to help nonprofits build stronger communities?  And that 91 percent of companies believe their employees’ skills would be helpful to nonprofits?

These numbers, the result of a 2010 survey on the state of volunteering conducted by Deloitte, reflect what we at Common Impact already know: connecting skilled professionals with nonprofits is the key to closing the nonprofit knowledge gaps in IT and other critical operational areas. And closing these gaps is the key to ensuring nonprofits can continue to deliver vital programs and services in their communities in the long run.

Common Impact is a national nonprofit organization that brings together global companies and local nonprofits to transform communities. Common Impact has paired IT, marketing, HR and other professionals from leading organizations such as State Street, Fidelity, Analog Devices, and CA local nonprofits.

Through these engagements, nonprofits benefit from unparalleled access to smart and creative people who help them better serve their constituents by building a stronger operational infrastructure.

Common Impact’s corporate partners benefit in two important ways:

* First, skills-based volunteering helps them deliver on the promise of social responsibility and community involvement.
* Second, corporate partners can achieve the career development benefits derived by their employee’s participation in external real-world projects.

For millennials, individuals that are new to the workforce and eager for challenges that showcase their abilities, Common Impact’s cross-hierarchy project teams help to sharpen functional & adaptive skills. For emerging talent, there are peer-based team projects designed for soft-skill development; and for senior talent, there are coaching opportunities with nonprofit leaders.

Since 2005, Common Impact has been a Boston SIM outreach partner. Through this relationship, Common Impact has been able to access SIM’s connections to hundreds of senior-level, talented IT professionals keen to lend their skills to the nonprofit sector.

Common Impact’s partnership with Boston SIM also has led to the creation of the IT Executive Mentoring volunteer program in which Common Impact matches senior executives from the private sector to nonprofit clients. These executives spend a few hours each month over the course of six months guiding a high-potential nonprofit through a strategic technology challenge, from selecting off-the-shelf software to developing an IT budget and staffing plan to implement technology initiatives. Close to a dozen SIM members have successfully participated in the program, and 30 percent of Common Impact mentors remain involved as a volunteer or supporter after the end of the project.

Boston SIM has provided Common Impact with a unique opportunity to tap into a deep and wide pool of expert resources who are eager to give back to their communities in a structured, productive and professionally satisfying way.

Why is SIM membership important to you and your organization?

We are charged with the requirement to maximize ROI each time a project or capital expenditure is approved by our companies. We all accept that maximizing ROI is our responsibility and I’m sure you all take that responsibility seriously and strive to achieve that end.

Your membership in SIM can help you achieve the objective of maximum ROI. How? Whether you are an individual member or your company is a Corporate Member, SIM provides the collaboration tools necessary to tap into the intellectual capital, advice, and lessons learned from a broad national and local network of senior IT executives. Our members freely share this valuable information – information that could mean the difference between success and failure of your project, implementation or capital expenditure.

You can maximize the return on your membership by tapping into the network and by helping us further expand the membership of the Boston SIM by nominating of one (or more) IT professionals for membership.

What we ask is for each of you to nominate just one senior IT Practitioner (more if you can) that you would like to see join SIM by sending them a short nominating email suggesting that they join. We have previously provided you with suggested text for that email, but feel free to compose your own note relating the value you get from your SIM membership. We do ask that you copy your Membership Chair, Michael Brooks, on the email (mbrooks3@kforce.com) so that we know whom you are nominating and can follow up with them to answer questions, give them the nickel tour and complete their membership application.

Only you can help us grow SIM Boston!

We appreciate your help, thank you!

Michael Brooks

Avectra NetForum Launched!

Boston SIM has launched a new membership and event management system. Avectra NetForum replaces Club Express as the tool you will use to register for events, renew your membership, and more.  As Boston SIM continues to grow and offer a wide range of programs for IT Executives, a more robust solution was required. Additionally, the new system includes social media capabilities (to be launched later as part of “phase 2″ of the rollout) that will enhance online networking and knowledge sharing – one of the main benefits of the Boston SIM experience.

Short Training Videos

To get started, please take a few minutes (less than 8 minutes!) reviewing the short training videos posted on the members area of our website at http://www.bostonsim.com/members-area/.

Bookmark This Link

Once you’ve watched the videos, you can access the system directly here: ../../eWeb/StartPage.aspx?Site=SIM2. Bookmark it for easy access in the future.

How To Get Help

We hope you find the system to be intuitive and easy to use, but there will surely be some questions and problems. When you encounter a problem or if you have a question, please email help@bostonsim.org and we’ll assist you as quickly as possible.

Thanks – Tom Catalini, Technology Chair, Boston SIM

Many thanks to the team who worked tirelessly to implement this new system: Kevin More, Dave Brown, Beth Cohen, Michael Brooks, Bob Koskovich, Kate Carroll and Todd Connor.

Boston SIM partners with Babson College for Year Up

On December 8, 2010, for the fifth year in a row, Babson College will be hosting a campus visit and workshop for the current class of Year Up students. The program is co-sponsored by Boston SIM and has been highly praised by the Year Up leadership team for providing their students with a “real campus” experience, encouragement to continue their college education, and practical job searching skills.

Year Up students spend a half day, including lunch with Babson students, on campus where they participate in an interactive program with the college’s dean of undergraduate admissions, the director of career services, and Babson’s chief diversity officer. Boston SIM representatives are also on board to interact with students during the program and through lunch discussion.

This would not have happened without Boston SIM. So, how did this come about? A few years ago one of our Boston SIM Trustees, Kavin Moody, responded to a request for SIM members to do a “lunch time” discussion with Year Up students. Kavin, who is the Executive Director of the Babson Center for Information Management Studies, was struck by the number of questions that Year Up students asked about furthering their education and improving their job finding skills. From there, it wasn’t long after that the SIM/ Babson/Year Up alliance was formed.

Calling all CIO’s!

Be sure to join us at the next CIO roundtable which will be held on Wednesday, December 1st at Welch’s Corporate Offices in Concord, MA.

Sneak peek at December’s montly meeting

Enterprise 2.0:  The State of an Art

Andrew McAfee, author of Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges (Harvard Business Press, 2009) will discuss how Web 2.0 technologies and philosophies are making their way into organizations. He will describe how these tools have the potential to transform how companies collect and share knowledge and tap into their collective intelligence.  McAfee will use case studies to show how leading companies are using Enterprise 2.0 to improve their practices and results.

All attendees will receive a free copy of Andrew McAfee’s book: Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges

The December monthly meeting will be held on the 16th, location TBA.

Boston SIM October Monthly Meeting

Location: Waltham Westin

Topic: CIO Panel Discussion – Cloud Computing

Over the next ten years, cloud computing has the potential to change IT as much as the PC and Windows did in the 80s and 90s. For most organizations, cloud initiatives are in their infancy. Now is the time for senior IT managers to learn about the cloud and develop a cloud strategy for their organization. Join our panel of CIOs as they discuss how their organizations are implementing the cloud paradigm.
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Facilitator: Robert Klotz, VP of Technology, Akibia

Panelists:

George Brenckle, Senior VP & CIO, UMass Memorial Healthcare

Larry Bolick, CIO, Aquent

Mike Draper, Global Director PaaS Operations, Pegasystems

Rob Ramrath, CIO, Bose

Registration, Networking and Dinner – 5:30-6:30 PM

Welcome – 6:45-7:00 PM

Panel – 7:00-8:00 PM

To register for this meeting, visit www.bostonsim.org

Question: How will cloud computing architectures affect access and manipulation of my data? Willing being on the cloud carry more risk than I already have?

Recently I had an eye-opening experience.  I asked my sophomore business IT class how many of them owned various computing devices.  Unsurprisingly, 100% of them would not be caught dead without their Smartness.  The majority had either Droids or iPhones, with a few Blackberries in the mix — sorry HP, the Palm is dead unless you hustle to catch up soon.  About 40% of them had an iPad or other tablet device in addition to their laptops.  Interesting that they thought nothing of owning three, what is my mind are, devices with similar functions.

I then asked the students if they were concerned with syncing all their information between all the different devices.  They looked at me rather puzzled.  They were not concerned because to them, the Smart-phone, tablets and laptops were just methods to connect to their data.  As far as they were concerned the authoritative copy of the data was located safely in the cloud, as it should be.  The devices to them were merely dumb terminals – although I am quite sure they would not even understand just what that meant.  What is important for the enterprise IT organization is that these twenty year-olds have made an important shift in thinking about how and where data is stored; a paradigm that we all need to accept and embrace to realize the real power of the cloud for the enterprise.

For all those people who think their data is safely stored on servers that are buried deep inside their protected LAN, their heads buried in the sand.  If you have data and you work with suppliers, customers, or employees, your data is out there on the cloud whether you like it or not.  Yes, you should be concerned with protecting that data properly, but the answer is not to install yet more firewalls and layers of obscurity.  The answer is to design the right architectures and the correct security to assure that the data is always available to the right people at the right time and at the right location.  My students, all future business leaders, have gotten the message, why haven’t the rest of us?  Maybe it is because too many IT people realize the inevitability of change, and how moving to the cloud spells doom for the old monolithic IT shops.

Beth Cohen, Cloud Technology Partners, Inc.

Upcoming Events

Reinventing The Customer Edge: Social Media And Innovation In The Enterprise 9/16/10

Social media is all the buzz and it’s here to stay — with very good reason. The infrastructure of communication, sensing and connecting has been forever changed as organizations become more agile and “edge-based.” As former Harvard Business School professor and author John Sviokla explains, edge-based organizations are those most able to dynamically adjust to changing business situations. They share information broadly, train people to use data appropriately and with integrity, and empower them to take action. Social media today is driving more organizational power to the edge as organizations use this powerful new medium to generate demand and reinvent how they market and service their clients. Social media can also spur collective innovation and sharpen knowledge management and coordination inside your company. In this session, John will share his hands-on perspective about how some large organizations are using social media to empower and extend their most vital, profitable business activities.

Our speaker:

John Sviokla
Vice Chairman
Diamond Management and Technology Consultants

John Sviokla is vice chairman of Diamond Management & Technology Consultants, Inc. (NASDAQ: DTPI) and serves a wide range of clients focusing on how technology changes competition, organizations and marketing. Prior to joining Diamond, John researched and taught at the Harvard Business School for twelve years in Marketing, MIS, and Decision Sciences. His extensive writings have appeared in books and journals including the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Fast Company, CIO magazine and the Wall Street Journal. He is a frequent speaker at executive forums worldwide and earned his BA from Harvard College, and his MBA and DBA with a major in management information systems from Harvard University. He can be found at www.sviokla.com.

Boston SIM Monthly Meeting – September 16, 2010

Location: Burlington Marriott

Registration, Networking and Dinner – 5:30-6:30 PM, Welcome – 6:45-7:00 PM, Program – 7:00-8:00 PM

Click here to register online.

SIM Silver

SIM Silver – afternoon/evening of 9/21 at Babson College followed by dinner at Papa Razzi

Marlowe Farrar has put together a great meeting for SIM Silver on Tuesday, September 21st. He has created a panel discussion entitled Retirement Planning and Transition – Experience and Advice of Recent SIM Retirees. The panelists are Dave Briggs, Larry Mohr, and Brad Sweet.

Click here to register online

Or contact lesballscituate@gmail.com

Common Impact Update

Doing Good Work: Boston SIM and Common Impact

Boston SIM sponsored the placement of two member IT executives for skills-based volunteer assignments at local nonprofit organizations through outreach partner Common Impact. These executives will lend their talent, expertise, and experience to some worthy causes. The contributions are sure to have a significant and lasting impact for the nonprofits, and the experience is likely to be rewarding for our volunteers. Best of luck to you both and thanks for helping. We look forward to hearing about these projects as they move forward.

Alex Beletsky of Sentri & Good Sports

Alex Beletsky, CEO of Sentri will be working closely with Good Sports (http://www.goodsports.org) Executive Director, Melissa Harper over the next six months. Good Sports mission is to increase youth participation in sports, fitness, and recreational programs by targeting one of the major obstacles limiting participation—access to sports equipment. In an effort to more efficiently and effectively make donations from its sporting goods inventory, Good Sports plans to set up a marketplace for the community organizations they work with. Since Good Sports often gets large quantities of inventory on short notice, they would like to be able to share that list with the community organizations they have pre-approved so that sporting equipment can be distributed to benefit disadvantaged youth more quickly.
Mr. Beletsky will be collaborating with Ms. Harper to identify a strategy to further this plan from a technology perspective and identify potential solutions including vendor selection.

Joan Lawson of BJs & MBAE

Joan Lawson, Manager of Enterprise Architecture, BJs Wholesale Club will be working with Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education (MBAE – http://www.mbae.org/), Executive Director, Linda Noonan. MBAE is committed to a high quality public education system that will prepare all students to engage successfully in a global economy and society. They bring together business and education leaders to promote education policies and practices based on measurable standards of achievement, accountability for performance, and equitable educational opportunities for all students. MBAE requires assistance in reviewing their current IT systems and vendors and identifying technology solutions to support the work they do. Over the next six months, Ms. Lawson will be working closely with Ms. Noonan, lending her IT expertise to address a variety of MBAE’s IT needs including data storage and volunteer database creation.
Thanks to all who volunteered for this program – we hope to make more matches in the future!

Membership Update

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Nominations For Membership Sought – Practitioners Only

The members of Boston SIM are the lifeblood of our association and the continual infusion of intellectual capital represented by new members adds to the already rich value proposition and expands the quality of the network you can turn to for advice, answers and guidance. As a senior IT executive, Boston SIM is where you turn for that peer-to-peer
interaction, knowledge exchange and sharing of best practices that stimulate your mind.

Just like any first place sports team, who are being chased by other teams such as the dreaded Yankees, your Boston Chapter is still in first place as the largest of the thirty-two SIM chapters and is being pursued by New York, as well as Chicago, New Jersey and Dallas for that honor and leadership position. We need your help; not just to keep us in first place, but to help us continue to attract the very finest of our areas CIO’s, VP’s, Directors of IT and other senior IT Practitioners.

Membership Drive

Already this year more than eighty new members have joined Boston SIM. We are very pleased with the high quality of those joining us. While this may seem like a high number, their addition to our ranks just covers the losses inflicted on us in the tough economy of the last 12 plus months.

Continuing our mission to be recognized as the community that is most preferred by IT leaders for delivering vital knowledge that creates business value and enables personal development, we are conducting a Special Membership Drive and we need the help of every member to make this a success.

What We Need You to Do

Just like the very successful drive we conducted last year we are asking you to identify those people you know that would both benefit by involvement with and contribute to our network, programs and activities. Many of you have already helped in this regard this year and we want to thank you for your continued support.

What we ask is for each of you to nominate just one senior IT Practitioner that you would like to see join SIM and send them a short email suggesting that they join. Please watch your email In Box for a note from Michael Brooks, our Membership Chair, who will send you suggested text for that email to your nominee, but feel free to compose your own note relating the value you get from your SIM membership.

We do ask that you copy Michael on the email (mbrooks3@kforce.com) so that we know whom you are nominating and can follow up with them to answer their questions and help them to complete their membership application. Just as in the past, we will keep you in to loop and will let you know when your nominee has joined the Chapter.

Please make special note that the Chapter is not accepting memberships from Consultants or from vendors so only nominate Senior IT Practitioners.

This will be a professionally conducted membership campaign so rest assured that your nominees will be treated with the utmost discretion and courtesy. Thank you, in advance, for your support.

Michael P. Brooks

SIM Notables

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SIM Year Up Leadership Award

Michael Brooks, Chapter Membership Chair, presented the SIM Leadership Award to Dianna Castro, at the recent graduation ceremony for Year Up.  The award includes a new laptop loaded with software.

Year Up is a one-year, intensive training program that provides urban young adults 18-24, with a unique combination of technical and professional skills, college credits, an educational stipend and corporate internship.  Year Up, which was founded in Boston 10 years ago and has been our Outreach Partner since its founding, just graduated their 1000^th student in Boston.

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Outreach Partner Spotlight: TechBoston Successes this Summer

Cyber Mentors with Boston Public School’s CIO Kim Rice

SIM Boston continued its successful partnership with TechBoston (http://www.techboston.org/).  Ninety-eight high school students worked as Tech Apprentices in technology related positions at 28 companies. A number of SIM Boston members participated as host employers and provided opportunities that will help shape the educational and career decisions of their apprentices.

Tom Barry, Service Desk Manager at Welch’s said he was impressed with the IT talent of their Tech Apprentice, Torjan Pope.  “Torian’s timely engagement at Welch’s provided the help needed to prepare, image, and initiate deployments of approximately 80 notebook PC’s to our Local and Remote Field Sales Force and internal customers.  We were able to start this project early with the additional resource. ”  Torjan is a 2010 graduate from Madison Park High School who will be studying Computer Engineering at Hamilton College in the fall as Posse Scholar

SIM Boston also financially supported the Cyber Safety Program (http://www.techboston.org/csc.html) where fourteen high school students conducted Internet safety presentations throughout the City. This motivated group of students instructed over 4,000 children ranging from elementary to high school age in the benefits of safe computing practices as well as the negative impact of cyber bullying.

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Academics

The week of August 30th Richard M. Kesner, the SIM Boston Board Member responsible for academic liaison will issue a survey to some 500 Boston-area MIS academics (from the fields of Information Systems, Computer Science and Engineering, and Medical Informatics).

The survey will query this audience’s knowledge of and interest in SIM -Boston and will also explore how SIM can work with institutions of higher education to promote student interest in a MIS career. Survey findings will be reported to the Board by October 1st and a White Paper based on survey findings should be available shortly thereafter. For more information, please contact Richard Kesner.

Richard M. Kesner, SIM Boston Board Member in the role of academic liaison for SIM

email: r.kesner@neu.edu

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LinkedIn

As nearly 300 of our Boston SIM members are aware, our Chapter has a LinkedIn Group appropriately called “Boston SIM”.  As with so many other initiatives Boston SIM is leading the exploration and use of various social media to connect the network of SIM members and promote the SIM brand.  We would like to encourage those of you who have yet to join the Boston SIM LinkedIn group to consider doing so today.

This is the link to the Boston SIM site: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=108922
There is also a relatively new LinkedIn group, again initiated by the Boston Chapter, which is open to membership from SIM Chapters and RLF graduates across the country.  This group is rapidly drawing new members nationwide and offers you the opportunity to network beyond New England.  This group is known as “Society for Information Management – Connect”; check it out and join.

This is the link to the SIM Connect site: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=1812580.

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Website and Registration Changes Coming

The Boston SIM IT Committee has been working diligently to improve the systems used for our website, membership and event management. The new system will be in place for registration to October and future events. You will be provided with a link and a new user ID and password, which will be sent to you in the coming weeks.

The new system will allow members to more easily access and share information as well as to streamline various processes. Stay tuned for more details at our September meeting and via email.