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Profile of Fiona Capstick, IBM, for CIO Connect magazine, Summer
2008 issue. By Sue Tabbitt
* ALL FEATURES ARE COPYRIGHT PROTECTED AND BELONG TO THE MAGAZINE
THAT COMMISSIONED THE WORK. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES MUST THIS CONTENT
BE USED ELSEWHERE BY ANY OTHER PARTY.
While no one apparently ever got fired for buying IBM, Fiona Capstick,
a key IT mover and shaker at IBM, is equally confident she wouldn't
be hauled over the coals for buying non-IBM products. The fact that
IBM is the company's default technology is down to preference, she
says. And of course it helps to standardise, especially when a key
part of corporate strategy is tighter integration.
Capstick's official title is VP for business process integration.
"We only have one CIO at IBM and that's a corporate role,"
she clarifies. She represents the CIO for North East Europe and
is part of a leadership team that sets strategy and makes decisions
affecting this region, which employs 65,000 people.
Top of her agenda currently is integrating business processes across
IBM's various brands. "Historically, the systems to support
these were fairly discrete but, as a globally integrated enterprise,
we want to ensure we work in the same way with customers regardless
of the country or the brand," Capstick explains.
When it comes to integrating processes more tightly, bringing the
business on board is vital to success, Capstick adds, pointing to
a recent programme to consolidate account planning using the Siebel
CRM system. "If we don't work with the business, we won't make
the transformational steps we need, so here it was very much a case
of working with the leader of the key sales team, to ensure the
proposed system offered real value to him. It's such a simple thing
to ensure but if the new system hadn't been seen as important to
his success, the project would have failed. If you only do all this
from a technology perspective, you don't get the buy-in, so it's
imperative we make the business part of the decision-making process
and the transition."
Naturally, involving more cooks can delay things and Capstick has
learnt to accept and plan around the fact that everything inevitably
takes much longer 'than could ever be anticipated'. "If you
think something will take 1-2 weeks, it will probably take the whole
cycle of delivery before you see business benefits," she says.
"The other thing I've really taken on board is that you always
need a lot more communication than you could ever anticipate."
Deployment is rarely just a case of establishing needs, implementation
and job done, she notes. "It's a moveable feast; changes will
be made throughout the process. You can't just do something once
and assume that's it."
The Siebel project reared its head 3-4 years ago, but began in
earnest in mid December last year. It was deemed (by the users concerned)
to have delivered good value by the end of March, once the account
plans had been loaded and tangible benefits could be experienced.
"More of the real transformation happens in the detail than
might be expected," Capstick notes.
With this in mind, she is fully prepared for the broader business
integration at IBM to take months, possibly years. "Communication
and tenacity is key," she says. "It's not about patience;
you can't sit still and wait - you have to proactively work with
the teams to drive the long-term agenda for transformation. That
means focusing on what's really important to the users, and being
flexible enough to be able to change direction as needed."
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