Get Connected!

Opportunities to catch up with Patrick Hiller (Co-Founder & CEO of Abacus Solutions) are always productive and informative. He spends a lot of his time interacting with his customers and that’s why I get the sense that he is always in touch with market trends.

 Before driving down to the Midmarket CIO Forum in Orlando, I talked with Hiller and his perceptions were fully aligned with the many CIO conversations I heard over the past few days. Many midsized companies are looking to refresh their storage strategies soon. Improvements in technology are causing a few new options to come within range. Data deduplication is red hot and space requirements are changing fast. The improved efficiencies will open the door to several other changes within the ecosystem of business intelligence.

 Abacus Solutions appears to have become the local knowledge leader in the trends being created by these innovations with data storage.

By Mike Adkinson

March 2010

Midmarket CIO Forum - I came away from this event with a better understanding of the needs of midmarket companies. Many of the major brands are redesigning products and services for this market segment, and the need to do so is very clear.

 The event was attended by eighty chief information officers from all around the US. Every vertical was represented and the attendees were more thoroughly screened than for any conference event I have ever attended. This was a very impressive collection of CIOs and they expressed high expectations when they arrived. Three days later they departed after giving high ratings to their experiences. They were most pleased with the overall quality of the event and the access they now have to each other.

 CIO of the Year® Awards – The nomination process is underway and participation by local leaders is appreciated. It really takes only a couple of minutes to nominate a deserving CIO so show your support for someone you know to be a good role model within the IT industry. Just click here and complete the brief form online.

 By Mike Adkinson

March 2010

Opportunities to catch up with Patrick Hiller (Co-Founder & CEO of Abacus Solutions) are always productive and informative. He spends a lot of his time interacting with his customers and that’s why I get the sense that he is always in touch with market trends.

 Before driving down to the Midmarket CIO Forum in Orlando, I talked with Hiller and his perceptions were fully aligned with the many CIO conversations I heard over the past few days. Many midsized companies are looking to refresh their storage strategies soon. Improvements in technology are causing a few new options to come within range. Data deduplication is red hot and space requirements are changing fast. The improved efficiencies will open the door to several other changes within the ecosystem of business intelligence.

 Abacus Solutions appears to have become the local knowledge leader in the trends being created by these innovations with data storage.

“We provide industrial services to the energy industry and that sector is going to grow, but today we are still waiting for all the pieces to come together. While full recovery is coming, we are not quite there yet today,” remarked John Dunbar at the very outset of our conversation.

The management team at Aquilex Corporation is focused on the base ingredient needed for effective management.  Dunbar explained, “We want systems which provide the data and information needed to analyze, compare and decide. We are using this slower business cycle to lay out our internal needs and to develop ways to distribute information to the people who most need it. We have expanded our CRM throughout the entire enterprise and we are looking at ways we can enable more real-time collaboration throughout our organization.”

Aquilex uses Salesforce.com and they are looking at the pre-release version of a product called Chatter. Chatter has been described as being somewhere between Facebook and Twitter.  A quick search on this product reveals a growing list of pros and cons. In any case, it is a good example of a trend that is becoming very real. Organizations are showing strong interest in real time business intelligence. Many want to collect, sort, analyze and illuminate market trends as they occur. Being on top of markets served is vital and old methods just don’t work anymore.

“We are distributing PC Tablets to the field and we are developing ways to make it real easy for people to help collect and distribute data back into one central place. We have to find ways to collect, analyze, and deliver useful information to managers in the most efficient ways possible. We do not call this social media; however the tools used to collect business intelligence data can sometimes look about the same. Maybe we should call it management media or management intelligence,” said Dunbar. 

“Within the company we talk about ‘branchising’.  This idea of standardizing the way we run our branches is becoming an important concept to us.” Our role in IT is to be an informed participant in all aspects of our business.  It is imperative that we offer ideas and solution suggestions that can make a difference within our company. We need to anticipate departmental requirements and be ready to make suggestions as change occurs. We need to stay up with changes in information technology, but we clearly have to stay in touch with the trends within our industry and our company,” he acknowledged. 

By Mike Adkinson

March 2010

“In some very real ways, we think of 2009 as the year of the front end and 2010 as the year of the back end,” explained Mike Child. “For the front end, we went with Ruby on Rails. As for how I might be a resource person for other CIOs and/or CTOs, I will say we are very committed to Agile development and to scrum. If any of my peers want to connect with me on that subject, then I’m happy to discuss it further. I am pretty deep in that development environment and I would be glad to share my experience.”

PRIMEDIA (Consumer Source) has long been a print publishing company with online sites, but they are moving fast to become more of an Internet company. They measure progress by the percentages that come from either the print products and/or the online and mobile products. In different metro areas they have different results but the same overall direction is clear in all of their markets. The movement is clearly towards the online environment. 

This type of change can be dramatic and it creates the need to make changes throughout the organization. This year they are rolling out a complete new CRM application along with the integration needed for planning, management, and operations. They will launch a new billing system along with that CRM.

“Moving everything to one central data source is a big deal and positively impacts our business on a lot of levels. We will have everything that relates to publishing online and print - all in one place. Plus, all of our mobile services will be fully integrated with the other systems. By the way, we were the first in the apartment industry through Apartment Guide to develop and launch services for the iPhone and mobile devices running on Android. We recently launched a cross-channel mobile strategy for Rentals.com based on those best practices. The demographics of our target market fit really well with those devices, so it was a natural fit for us to make that move. And it has paid off,” confided Mike Child.

PRIMEDIA describes their mission by saying “We help people find a place to live.” And that pretty much describes their business. They have a variety of apartment, property rental and real estate publications and services that are very useful to those involved with multi-family and real estate rentals and sales. The transition they are making indicates a close alignment with their target market, and it sure sounds like they have a clear plan for how to make that move work for them.  

By Mike Adkinson

March 2010

Few local corporations have experienced growth over the past couple of years, and the absence of growth tends to bring attention back to the basics of information technology. “Increase operating efficiencies and introduce ways to help create new revenue” seems to be the mantra of most IT departments of late. Well, that’s exactly how Kathy Lamb and her IT team have focused their efforts in recent months.

 All of those outside the cave understand the severe economic slump experienced by the construction industry during the past couple of years. Companies that support the construction industry have been right there in that ditch with them, and times have been difficult. Ames Tools has experienced rough times, but a few signals of optimism and recovery are beginning to surface for them. They are starting to plan beyond survival and are developing ideas to support their expected growth.

 Kathy Lamb is well known locally for her cheerful personality, positive energy, and her willingness to get involved with the community. She actively seeks to leverage the experiences of others and she has always participated in programs and projects which create win-win outcomes. As the construction industry and her company begin to show indicators of emergence, she continues to exhibit those same attributes inside her organization.

 “We are working with all groups within our business structure to identify ways we can help deliver needed services and drive profitability. Helping the sales professionals to increase their customer base adds revenue, and finding ways to increase efficiencies helps to reduce operating expenses. We see both of these roles as being profoundly important to our IT team and our company,” remarked Lamb.

 Ames has expanded Salesforce.com throughout the corporation and they are looking at ideas for how to expand some portions of it further. “There are a lot of ways we can deliver a service that will help add real value to our company, and each step of recovery will open the door for us to do more and more,” she shared. 

By Mike Adkinson

March 2010

Simplified Technology Solutions, Inc (STS) is an IBM Business Partner specializing in Intel servers and Lotus collaboration products.  In addition to our technical skills, we also provide consulting on leveraging cloud solutions and social networking concepts in businesses.  Contact us at 678 638 6688 or http://www.simplified-tech.com

The Georgia CIO Leadership Association welcomes your participation in the 12^th annual CIO of the Year Awards. You may nominate any deserving CIO for consideration. Click here to nominate

It would not come as a surprise to you to hear me say that in recent conversations with CIOs and senior staff members, the most popular topics have been clouds, business intelligence and collaboration. Sliding more of the fundamental pieces out to be managed by others has become more common. This then allows IT staff members to be embedded within the functional business departments.  IT professionals are becoming more involved with the operational aspects of the business and reputedly that is working out well. It’s a practice that has long been discussed, but today there seems to be a commitment and more resulting value – by all parties.

 CIO of the Year Awards – don’t forget the nomination process is in full swing now and it only takes a couple of minutes to make a nomination. So come on and do the right thing. Go here to complete and submit the brief form.

 Have a good one.

 Mike Adkinson

Pointman

www.techlinks.net

Simplified Technology Solutions, Inc (STS) is an IBM Business Partner specializing in Intel servers and Lotus collaboration products.  In addition to our technical skills, we also provide consulting on leveraging cloud solutions and social networking concepts in businesses.  Contact us at 678 638 6688 or http://www.simplified-tech.com

Bill Wilkins is a busy fellow these days and when he pauses for a discussion about IT shop projects coming up in his future, his response is clear. “Unified communications is big with us right now. We are walking out near the edge with some of this, and it is going to turn out real good,” he said with a smile in his voice.

Metalforming is a local company that manufactures for the construction industry. As the name implies, they form metal. A big product is their metal roofing system equipment, and while on the surface one might assume that IT would not be highly critical to their business, that is not so at all.

They are located in Switzerland, Germany, Australia and Taiwan. They have a worldwide network which requires an environment that can support multiple languages. That is a basic and fundamental requirement, so everything they do has to fit the world of Microsoft. They are into a Microsoft CRM 4.0 project and are optimistic about the increased capabilities it will deliver.

When Bill Wilkins starts rolling on about the many partners and exciting developments which are soon going to launch, he talks about Level 3, Onlink, and Georgia Tech. “We have really good partners and they are accomplishing some feats which are really interesting. Even the folks at Microsoft are proud of some the things they know will come from this project,” said Wilkins.

“Our team is proud of what we are doing and it is starting to worry our competitors. At the recent International Roofing Expo, the largest concentration of our competitors to be found on the floor was around our booth. They can see we are moving ahead with several innovations which are going to deliver good advantages to our partners. We are doing a web portal integration project which will bring all related data together in one place. Moving a lot of services into an online environment within the roofing industry is huge. No one else is even close to some of the things we are soon going to deliver. And yes, that is fun.” The words from Wilkins now seemed to sound more like an oral grin.

By Mike Adkinson

March 2010

“My number one priority this year will be to manage my responsibilities to a very tight EBITDA budget. We will do this with a lot of continued emphasis on process improvements and efficiencies that make sense,” remarked Rob Ewing during the first minutes of our conversation.

 He went on to explain they are developing real tight business analysis procedures and good use cases. “Rather than the business units coming to IT for support, the IT department is going to the business units with recommendations and suggestions for how we can help. We have delivered several new applications over the past couple of years and each one has been fully integrated,” said Ewing.

 InterCall has announced a number of acquisitions over the past couple of years and given their penchant for growth, it seems logical they would be spending a lot of time planning and preparing for other potential acquisitions in the future. When Ewing talks about the role of IT when acquisitions are made, he sounds like a true engineer. “The role of IT is to work out the delta between the gaps in the business processes and then bring them all together as one.”

 This economy provides good opportunities for planning and assessing alternatives. That’s what Rob Ewing and his IT team at InterCall seem to be real good at doing, and no doubt, that is one of their core strengths.

 By Mike Adkinson

March 2010

When asked about the upcoming priorities this year at the Georgia Aquarium, Beach Clark was quick on the draw. “The Dolphin exhibit expansion is going to be big for us. It will be the biggest project for our facility this year and it will drive a lot of opportunities for us. This project will increase our IT network by 30-50 people and it will be the object of new online social media marketing campaigns.”

 Georgia Aquarium has been an excellent role model for those who have interest in how to employ social media marketing to add value to their businesses. Their active use of Facebook and Twitter have drawn a lot of attention from their target audiences, and they have reported having over 30,000 followers online. Now that’s a feat that many organizations would love to accomplish.

 “Coming up for us this year will be a new Human Resource system. We have begun the shopping process and we are looking at several SaaS options. We are going to do a significant expansion with Sales force and we are also going to implement a virtualization project. We are working with Intel for participation with the servers.  And if all that was not enough to keep us busy, we are going to ride herd on the many changes coming up in the online payment card industry (PCI). There are lots of new requirements in that space. It is important that we support and stay tuned up with all of them,” observed Clark.

We wrapped up the discussion with views about the implications of the large scale movement towards SaaS, virtualization, Cloud computing and other trendy labels of today. While many of these concepts are cycling back around from similar models in the past, the reality of significant change is most obvious.

 We discussed how these trends will impact the CIO role and what these new environments will mean for the next generation of IT professionals who might be entering the work force now. How will the role of CIO be different when they move up to the hot seats of management?

By Mike Adkinson

March 2010

Our first couple of minutes of conversation were devoted to the sincere emphasis that Bradley Dick gives to obtaining referrals and recommendations for other CIOs and IT department executives. “Of all the various sources for product or service validation and comparison ratings, nothing is valued more than the word of a trusted friend. I place far more value on the word of peers than on graphs, charts, and quadrants developed by research and consulting groups. So you bet I understand why TechLINKS is providing this service, and I truly do think it delivers value.”

“Like most other healthcare organizations, our priorities are being heavily influenced by the compliance and regulatory requirements of today. We learned a lot at the HiMSS conference last week and it was great to have direct access to so many suppliers and vendors within our industry. Having this huge conference come to Georgia was great, and I do hope that can continue to happen in future years,” said Dick.

 “We are moving ahead with Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and some of the advanced features are going to impact quality, costs, and patient satisfaction. Doctors and staff will be able to walk up to any shared computer and with the tap of a card and pin have secure access to the information they need. We are bringing more data into the room with the patients, and that delivers very positive results. Empowering patients with knowledge often gives them added explanation and understanding of the importance of their treatment,” he explained.

  One of the examples provided was that people who understand the need for therapy are the ones who are most helped by that therapy. Patients who are most informed are also the ones who feel they are receiving the best care. Because of services like WebMD and others, people (patients and their families) are going to obtain the information they want, one way or another. It is to the advantage of the healthcare facility to provide the needed information because feeling informed is an expected part of the service.

“The healthcare industry has been behind the curve in the past, but today this industry is really starting to get with the program. We are using information systems to better inform the patients, and that results in higher levels of patient satisfaction. How all this is getting done will vary according to the specialties of each facility, but it is good for all of us to have ways to share ideas,” commented Dick.

By Mike Adkinson

March 2010