Get Ready For A New Role: Business Technology Provider

In the global, real-time economy, CIOs and IT solution providers that think only like technologists and fail to put themselves into the shoes of businesspeople will be left in the dust, according to the chief technology strategists for both General Motors, the world's largest automobile company, and Best Buy, the $36 billion retail powerhouse. At the same time, process experts can't execute nearly fast enough to survive without technology to help them get ever closer to the customer, they said. It's why businesses and their solution providers need to think about building BT (or Business Technology) rather than IT solutions.

"You're here to do business," said Ralph Szygenda, group vice president and CIO of GM, addressing fellow IT executives at IT Forum 2007, the annual conference held by Forrester Research. "No one cares less that you do it on time. There is no such thing as an IT project." That's just one reason why Szygenda hired upwards of 1,000 business strategists for his team after joining GM in 1996.

Likewise, since starting a major overhaul of Best Buy's systems and processes three years, Robert Willett, CEO and CIO of Best Buy International, has consciously renamed the role titles for his team to help engender the business technology mindset. The company's master plan for technology is part of what is known as the Business Operating Blueprint, while Willett's staff is comprised of Business Information Officers and Business Information Leaders.

And the entire company has been refocused to respond to customers' needs and incorporate feedback into new strategy more quickly, Willett said in a separate keynote here. "All of our paranoia is around the customer. And then we focus on the internal customers. If they are all thinking about what it takes, then we can rule the world."

For Best Buy, this has meant embracing everything from wiki collaboration tools, which it now relies on extensively to help with employee training and customer service, to RFID-enabled inventory solutions that can help transform supply chain responsiveness from a pull state, reliant on inaccurate forecasting methods of the past, to a push state that responds almost instantaneously to fluctuations in customer buying habits.

Willett personally considers 20 to 30 different ideas every two to three weeks that are bubbling up from the employee ranks and, by extension, from customers. For Willett, that means moving from an age of personalization in retailing to an era of co-creation, where customers "create" the products that it sells. And the company's profit and loss centers have been realigned with supporting this eventuality.

"We believe we are moving into co-creation," he said. "Consumers trust the brand. They will trust you to co-create the answer, but they will only do that unless they trust you."

Willett figures Best Buy's transformation will take 18 months to two years to complete.

But then again, "complete" is a relative term.

That's because the point of getting a better handle on your IT infrastructure is to encourage innovation that will keep it in a constant state of flux, according to George Colony, chairman and CEO of Forrester Research. "The CIO should not, indeed cannot, be the driving force behind process change and innovation," Colony said. "Process innovation is about the business, and this is run by other executives."

Here are the seven concepts Colony suggests that a CIO or IT solution provider share with the CEOs they are hoping to convert to the business technology mindset:

1. "It's not IT anymore, it's BT (or Business Technology)." In other words, technology is now your business and your business is now technology.

2. "When it comes to technology, stop being clueless." Just as a CEO needs to acquaint himself or herself with an understanding of the financial process, so should they get to understand technology and its role in day-to-day operations.

3. "It's not always the CIO's fault. (Or, BT is not about fault, it's about collaboration."

4. To get BT right, you need four players the help of these four constituents: The CEO, Technology Knowledgeable Business Executives who are responsible for specific businesses, the CIO and a techie who can translate emerging technologies into the language of business.

5. An understanding of where innovation happens: with the customer

6. Technology won't work with out the right Process and the right Organization

7. "When you're looking for your next CIO, look for a teacher."