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Technology's relevance to business goes beyond the next whiz-bang invention or dot-com success story—it permeates the world's largest, most traditional corporations. But how does it fit in a mainline company's strategy? What change is technology bringing to everyday practices? Is the path to CEO easier or more difficult for in-house techno-wizards?
Tom Davenport, director of the Accenture Institute for Strategic Change, posed these and other questions at the Harvard Business School Cyberposium 2002 panel discussion on February 9 featuring companies he called "American icons."
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| If you want to create change, you need the capability to see what technology can do for you. |
| — Shaygan Kheradpir, Verizon |
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Steven Elterich, president of Fidelity eBusiness, noted that the online financial services company is one of thirty organizations under the Fidelity Investments umbrella. "he objective of e-business is to tie all services together into one cohesive offering," he said. Voice Over IP—developing technology that combines voice and the Internet—plays a key role in his group's goal to leverage the skills of Fidelity Investment's 5,000 telephone representatives. "We want to make their expertise available in real time to our Internet customers," he said.
At Verizon, CIO Shaygan Kheradpir highlighted two technologies "ready for prime time" —software that automates complex transactions in the everyday workflow, and Web services that make it easier to buy and sell disparate products over the Internet. "Our phone reps have to sell a wider and wider variety of services—we want to get to the point where you can grab the products you want in real time and paste them into a browser."
"We're back to basics,' said Bruce Harreld (HBS MBA '75), senior vice president of strategy at IBM. "Our focus is on enterprise resource planning (ERP)—creating software that re-maps organizational processes so systems work together more efficiently." Doing this requires building a "middleware layer" that allows systems to talk to one another, he said. "We're taking advantage of what is already in place, not rebuilding from scratch," he added.
Technology and the customer
Using technology to create consumer-driven processes is the focus at UPS, said Duffy. "We want to push efficiency into the supply-and-demand chain by making the shipping process more transparent to customers," he said. In other words, those who want to track a package at every point in its journey will be able to do so, satisfying customer demand and lowering the company's costs at the same time.
How about technology and personal career strategies, Davenport wondered. Is entering IT a savvy move if your goal is the corner office?
At UPS, Duffy noted, four members of a fourteen-person IT strategy team formed in 1995 are currently in senior management roles. "It's extremely important to have a deep understanding of technology and be able to apply that knowledge in making decisions," he said.
"It's a real career path now," agreed Harreld. "I would even say it's one of the tickets you need to punch." That doesn't mean future executives need to know how to code, he added. "Having strong leadership skills and being able to act strategically are even more important."
"If you want to create change, you need the capability to see what technology can do for you," Kheradpir remarked.
"We look for entrepreneurism in our senior managers," said Elterich. "It's all about the ability to manage change, and technology quickly becomes a big part of that."