An interview with Bill Bradley, CIO of CenturyLink, the third largest telecom provider in the United States.
The Enterprisers Project (TEP): How has CenturyLink's growth affected your IT organization?
Bradley: Our company has gone through dramatic change in recent years, leading to many adjustments and opportunities within our IT organization. In 2008, CenturyTel generated annual revenue of $2.6 billion. Through our successful acquisitions of Embarq, Qwest, and Savvis, as of 2013, we now generate annual revenues of more than $18 billion. Our application portfolio grew by over 400 percent during this period.
Acquisitions are an opportunity to rethink the whole IT environment. We have made tremendous strides in reviewing and rationalizing our application portfolio to drive efficiency and maximize value for our customers. One area where we have seen great success is reducing the number of our internal data centers. Our efforts will continue as we adopt cloud technologies. Cloud technologies will help us be even better prepared for future growth.
TEP: What were the biggest challenges you faced?
Bradley: The biggest challenge is bringing together the cultures of the different companies. As the CIO, I focus on creating an environment and culture that isn't focused on the past. We learn from mistakes and quickly move on to the next effort. Our focus at every level of the organization should always be forward-looking. I've found that's the best way for people to move beyond their legacy and into the new culture.
TEP: Was there anything you did before this rapid growth occurred that helped you handle it when it happened?
Bradley: It's important to understand the way your organization expands and make an effort to learn from every project. CenturyLink is a company that has grown through acquisition. We have completed over 15 customer acquisitions in the last two decades. The success of those acquisitions is linked to our ability to integrate and support customers from legacy companies.
During each acquisition, we were very deliberate about our approach. We thought about reuse--creating and refining tools and processes based on our experience with the goal of being transparent to the customer. For example, we knew that any time we wanted to convert a company from one biller to another, whether it was through acquisition or evolution of billing, a more mature set of tools and processes would help us succeed. One of the processes created through this approach was the bill to bill compare (B2B), which compares a bill in the old system to a bill in the new system. This helped to ensure we had a high percentage of matching across both platforms. In the early days, it was a much more manual process, basically a stare and compare. We made a focused effort to move away from the manual process to an automated one.
TEP: How did the integrations roll out? Have you had to make adjustments on the fly?
Bradley: Regarding our recent acquisitions, we have already completed major integrations within our financial systems and some of our other platforms. We are currently working to drive continued operational efficiency among our network engineering and support organizations.
Any major integration or operational change comes with challenges. The key to success lies in your commitment to the end goal and ability to manage through and around technical and operational issues. These types of programs are quite challenging both from a technical and operational standpoint. A†strong partnership between your integration and operations teams is a must for success.
TEP: Any advice you'd pass along to other CIOs faced with rapid expansion?
Bradley: I like to remind people who work in IT--not just CIOs--that they need to react to change positively. IT has consistently changed for decades, and that will continue in the future. We all got into IT because we understand technology and want to provide solutions. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that the solutions we provide change frequently, and we should embrace the challenges rather than turn reactionary or defensive.
Minda Zetlin is a business technology writer and columnist for Inc.com. She is co-author of "The Geek Gap: Why Business and Technology Professionals Don't Understand Each Other and Why They Need Each Other to Survive," as well as several other books. She lives in Snohomish, Washington.