Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of Q&As covering the winners of the Georgia CIO Leadership Association CIO of the Year Awards.
Coming from the consulting world, Anil Cheriyan looked for a peer group to join when he took the role of CIO with SunTrust Bank as a way to quickly come up to speed on the ins and outs of being a chief information officer. He joined the Georgia CIO Leadership Association (GeorgiaCIO) and found it to be a low-key, yet highly collaborative environment.
“We talk fairly openly about things. We share ideas, and I know that I can call a lot of the other CIOs for their thoughts,” Cheriyan said. “It's a friendly and really valuable network.”
In late fall 2015, three years after he took the CIO helm at SunTrust, Cheriyan took home the award for CIO of the Year in the Enterprise category of the annual GeorgiaCIO award program. The Enterprisers Project caught up with Cheriyan to discuss some of the qualities that make him an award-winning CIO.
The Enterprisers Project (TEP): We know that digital is a key strategic objective for you in your role with SunTrust. Can you talk about some of your other priorities as CIO?
Cheriyan: The area of data and analytics is a priority, and one that we've worked heavily in over the last few years. The domain where it has been the most mature is in the area of risk and finance. As we started becoming more confident in that area, we made a shift toward driving analytics to be more market-focused and client-focused in order to obtain a deeper understanding of our client base.
Because we made this a priority in IT, we began finding data in multiple places, variations on data quality, fragmented reporting and analytics, etc. We were not as effective as we wanted to be, and hence, we created the concept of a Chief Data Officer. The CDO works with all the business leaders and drives all the pieces that you need to make that engine work well: data governance, data quality, data sourcing, and so on and so forth. It’s truly a business enablement role, not a technology plumbing role.
Another priority has been encouraging innovation throughout the business and improving the pace at which technology supports the overall business strategy and partners with the business to drive product and business model innovation. Innovation doesn't come from me alone – it comes from the teams and people who are closest to the business. Breaking down the barriers between people is how real problems are solved.
TEP: What are some of the ways you drive innovation from IT throughout the rest of the business?
Cheriyan: Back in 2012, the various parts of the technology organization were operating in their own silos, with little collaboration in between. So we started this program called the Innovation Hub, which is an online chat room where people can share ideas and have conversations. I ran the first one, and a good 400 or 500 people joined. I didn’t restrict it to any specific topic. I just said, “I’m around, let’s talk.”
Immediately, the conversation took off. People were asking all kinds of questions, and I was answering them as fast as I could online. At one point, there were 36 different threads going on, and I felt like I was playing multiple chess games.
What struck me were the simple questions, such as, “Why is it that another group addresses the same problem or project in a different way than we do?” My answer to them would be, “Have you tried walking across the hallway and asking these individuals?” As it turned out, they hadn’t thought about it because they were thinking very hierarchically in terms of how people have conversations. From a cultural standpoint, these questions and conversations got people to start thinking more broadly.
Eventually, we started recognizing topics or questions that came up frequently, and that led to the concept of Innovation Fridays. A problem was identified, teams were formed, and before long we had several innovative ideas to solve the problem. It became a groundswell, and it grew quickly. Another evolution of this is our RISE Hackathon, in which teams from across SunTrust go from idea to prototype in six weeks with no investment. Winning teams are provided investment dollars to implement. All of this grew from that first real-time discussion group that I started about three months after joining.
TEP: What was your thinking behind initiating that very first conversation?
Cheriyan: A little background – I was at IBM for 10 years, and there we had something called the Value Jam. The CEO at the time ran an enterprise-wide online event for an entire day, during which all of IBM could participate, share ideas, and talk about our values. It was impressive. The leaders all were online and joined discussion groups and threads to answer people's questions.
When I joined SunTrust and started talking to people, I quickly realized that everyone was hungry for driving innovation, given the world around us. I could see that they felt hampered by the organizational structure. And so, we had to give them the ability to break through the structure. I felt the mechanism that we used at IBM could help get us started down the path to innovation.
TEP: Can you share an example of something innovative that came out of these programs?
Cheriyan: Yes, there are many examples, but a great one that comes to mind is related to our online platform. Over the weekends, we would have periods of time in which we'd run batch programs to update our files. During those windows, our customers would see a little sign saying something to the effect of “online is unavailable due to maintenance,” and they wouldn't be able to easily access their balance or any of our other online features. Everyone recognized the need for a solution to this problem, but many thought that it was impossible. After all, you have a batch window, and you’ve got to wait for the data.
One innovative employee had the idea to give people their information as of before the batch window rather than showing them a maintenance message. That way, clients could still see what they had, and although there might be a slight delay on the real-time transaction data, it’d be better than seeing a screen that says “Sorry, unavailable.” People really rallied behind the idea and made it happen quickly. A team formed to build it within three weeks, and it was implemented within three months.
