By Minda Zetlin
IT Departments can become profit centers by helping customers with their technology, says kbs+ CIO Matt Powell
Your title is CIO yet your primary function is customer-facing?
There was a CTO who was here before I got here and he did help desk, infrastructure, network—all that internal stuff. I sit on the executive management team responsible for client technology and with the CFO to help steer the internal decision-making side of it. In my experience, most frequently IT’s role focus is infrastructure and risk management—a cost center. I’m responsible for a profit center, I’m helping generate value through technology.
Give me an example of how that works.
For example, Nike made a huge business out of NIKEiD and sneaker customization. Puma wanted to get into that. It’s part marketing and part operations. So we worked with them starting with their factory in China all the way up to the website that a customer would use to interact with them.
Your main point of contact is your clients’ marketing departments. Do you ever run into conflicts with IT?
Just this week, we were building a crowdfunding platform for a client. There was more than enough budget allotted for a documentary, funding and marketing. However, they had budgeted a much smaller amount for the platform itself. We found an off-the-shelf solution and just barely came within budget. At the last hour it was blocked by IT because they wanted a level of encryption for all personally identifiable information that was totally doable but would have tripled the length and hugely increased the cost of the project.
Are there effective ways to work through conflicts like this one?
Part of it, as in any negotiation, is getting the right people together to speak a common language and look at the problem. For one thing, we focus on not being dogmatic and staying away from dogmatic positions, such as open source vs. closed source. That kind of conversation will degrade very quickly.
We try to have a low-hyperbole discussion. IT will use very sever terms when talking about risk, and business people can use equally severe language about revenues. When that happens, no one is finding middle ground.
It’s become ingrained in some technologists to say something severe about risk to make you go away. Most people don’t have the technology knowledge to respond to that. We answer by talking about relative risk. The NSA’s standing posture is that all systems have been compromised 100 percent of the time. When you consider that, I think we can agree that it’s not possible to create a no-risk system. Once we all agree to that, we can start talking about how much risk might be acceptable and for how long.
Are conflicts a function of marketing and IT’s changing relationship?
They certainly are changing. The crowdfunding site was a good example. Even five years ago, you wouldn’t have had marketing essentially launching an operational business just for the purpose of a program. I’ve got to have a bank involved and be able to take credit cards.
You wouldn't have had even five years ago you wouldn't have had marketing essentially launching what is an operational business just for the purpose of a program. I've got to have funding, I've got to have a bank and the responsibility for credit cards.
There are so many new things we can do to engage the power of a brand. Let’s not just say something—let’s do something! As an agency, that’s fun for us. But it will create new issues for the business.
Matt Powell is CIO of the advertising agency Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners (kbs+) Disclosure: Minda Zetlin has done work for kbs+.
Minda Zetlin is co-author with Bill Pfleging of The Geek Gap: Why Business and Technology Professionals Don't Understand Each Other and Why They Need Each Other to Survive. She is a regular contributor to Computerworld and CIO, and a columnist at Inc.com.
