If you’re still struggling with the concept of IT becoming a service provider, you may be missing the point. At least that’s the view of Zuora CIO Alvina Antar, who says, “If IT runs primarily as a service provider, you are pretty much operating in reactive mode awaiting the next business directive.”
That may seem like a provocative statement, but it’s coming from someone who was hired to drive “IT's transformation from a service provider to a world-class business technology and solutions organization.”
When operating in a service provider mode, Antar says, “IT is only called upon when needed, when issues arise, or when solutions are already identified. This forces IT to take a back seat and wait for the business to come to you with their needs.”
Furthermore, she says, “This kills technical innovation, as the business is providing you an instruction manual to follow and is not looking for you to provide creative solutions, but rather only cares about how quickly you can deliver.”
If IT is focused on keeping the lights on and delivering on a three to five-year strategic roadmap, she adds, it’s “nearly impossible to pivot against ever-changing business needs.” In that situation, she asks, “What difference are you than any other consulting firm the business can hire to get the project delivered on time and on budget? You’re actually worse than the consulting firm given they have no competing demands and will pull all the stops to deliver, with a hefty price tag to match.”
Making no assumptions
In a 17-year career at Dell before joining Zuora, Antar had a bird's-eye view of changing business needs as Michael Dell’s company pivoted to online PC sales then morphed into a datacenter solutions provider with more than $60 billion in revenue and over 100,000 employees before being taken private by its founder and private equity investors in 2013.
“Dell gave me an incredible platform to discover, grow, and shape my career,” she says. “From being a developer to enterprise architect to dev management to leader of M&A IT, I was able to understand what it takes to build innovative solutions from the ground up and how to operate in a globally distributed organization. I learned that no matter how many projects I successfully delivered, that I should always go in with a fresh set of eyes and open mind and make no assumptions.”
Zuora, an eight-year-old subscription billing, commerce, and finance solutions company with more than 600 employees, is focused on a key element of digital transformation, providing an enterprise management platform to help companies manage all aspects of their subscription business, including signing up new subscribers, managing subscription changes, automating recurring billing and payments, and measuring recurring revenue and subscription metrics.
Test-bed for company’s SaaS solution
Given her prior experience in implementing Zuora for Dell’s Software Group, Antar set out to make her organization the firm’s best reference account as an advisor for client CIOs and a test-bed for alpha releases of its Software-as-a-Service offering. “This takes business enablement to an entirely new level as you are now seen as the product expert with influence on the product strategy given your real-world experience,” Antar says.
That relationship also forges a deeper alliance between IT and the business. “I have a deep and trusted relationship with business partners spanning the entire organization,” she explains. “I understand their business drivers and growth initiatives and build my roadmap and priorities to directly align with their needs. We challenge existing business processes and partner with the business to define the most optimal, scalable and operationally efficient solution.”
