Over the years, IT has been perceived as a supporting organization in most companies. However, the same companies today realize that the IT department today has to be involved in making key business decisions.
And one such company is Johnson & Johnson (Philippines) Inc. where the IT department has taken on a new role. It has become a strategic partner to the business -- far beyond being just a back-office entity with purely operational support functions.
"While I cannot speak from a Johnson & Johnson historical perspective, I can see that our IT department has transformed from being purely a back-room operations support to being in the front-end," says Sadiq Rowther, regional IT director for ASEAN markets at Johnson & Johnson.
According to Rowther, people have traditionally perceived IT to have a mainly support function and he acknowledges that it does take a while for the business to understand that IT can take more than just a support function.
"That's a typical challenge that we face because we need to spend time to build (IT's) credibility to the business. It's very important that IT establishes itself, that we are not doing technology for technology's sake but really -- how do we move the business forward?" he elaborates.
The IT director believes, however, that IT has already gradually been transforming over the years not only in J&J but across many companies and industries as well, but he adds that this transformation can be more pronounced among large corporations where IT managers participate in customer interfaces, understand the trade and marketplace better and, therefore, are able to adapt to the changes in a smarter way.
This transformation of IT from having a supporting role to becoming an enabler and a partner to the business is largely dependent on the IT head or the CIO. According to Rowther, while thinking like a business owner and understanding the business is an absolute essential, he could not pretend to be the best sales or Finance guy on the team.
"The value I bring to the leadership team is really how IT can seize a business opportunity and bring abou a solution that uses a combination of both business and IT skills," he explains.
He adds that the CIO has to be part of the growth strategy and agenda as IT plays a key role in delivering both the top and bottom line growth of the company. What has helped Rowther gain better understanding of the business and the importance of aligning IT's goals with that of the business is management's support and acknowledgement of the need for IT and business to work together.
"I sit in the ASEAN Leadership Team headed by our ASEAN President Grace Castaño and (am) also part of the J&J Philippines Management board under the leadership of Zinnia Rivera. All my senior managers in the various ASEAN countries sit in their respective country management boards. This clearly signals the need for IT to be part of the business and in the decision making process. I see ourselves as strategic partners to the business (with) the role of constantly identifying business opportunities where we can make information and technology relevant to moving the business forward," he elaborates.
Beyond support, towards innovation
Over the last few years, Johnson & Johnson has moved toward automating all its core functions like supply chain, order processing, and finance, among others, with SAP as the main enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. All these are the basic projects that the company had to implement to make business processes more efficient.
Acknowledging that maintenance still takes a big chunk of J&J's IT budget, Rowther says he would like to see this change and see more of the money flow towards innovations instead. To address this, J&J has undertaken two major steps -- one is to move all the technology and infrastructure support within the company to an internal organization and, second, over the last few years, the company began outsourcing some of its applications support and business processes to third-party providers.
Traditionally, a large chunk of IT work at J&J consisted of application and infrastructure support. Outsourcing has then freed up the company's critical and small pool of resources and moved them up the value chain, i.e., working on more important and high-leverage areas, says Rowther.
"Earlier, if I had 5 resources in a market, every one had a percentage of his or her time allocated to support. Today this is surely not the case; so, from a hierarchy of needs perspective (the value traingle), IT resources across ASEAN work on more strategic needs vs. just operational support," elaborates the IT director.
In terms of management support and approval for projects, it has become easier to gain approval over the years as the role of IT has become more pronounced and accepted as a real partner to the business. "While the spending on IT by companies has gone up in proportion with overall growth and so on, most of J&J's funding for IT projects comes from the business because at the end of the day, whatever we are doing from IT has to help grow the business," Rowther says.
No IT projects
At J&J, IT projects are seen as IT-enabled business projects. "We really like to call them as IT-enabled business projects which means that we are using IT, business information, new technology or software to really drive business projects," notes Rowther.
Sharing an example, Rowther cites the recent launch of the Neutrogena Philippines Web site, which he describes as a direct-to-consumer approach for targeted marketing.
"A need was waiting to be tapped and our recent launch is an example of how IT can collaborate closely with the brand team to understand the needs of our consumers better. We had regional know-how, templates, infrastructure, etc., ready and it was a question of matching these with the right marketing strategies," shares Rowther, adding that this project will be replicated across other ASEAN markets soon.
Another opportunity for IT to collaborate with business is the distributor pool, since the company works a lot with distributors across its ASEAN markets.
"The biggest challenge is how you make sure you get the information from the distributor -- and there could be hundreds of them; how do you get the information fast and quick on a timely basis so that you could make your decisions; so again this is where we collaborate with the sales and marketing functions," says Rowther.
Another area Rowther is looking at is sales force automation in the ASEAN markets. According to him, unlike most of the developed countries, like North America and Europe, where customer interaction is typically done electronically, most of the ASEAN markets use physical order-taking.
"We want to make the lives of our sales people as efficient as possible. We're currently doing a lot of work in the sales force automation area with the Palm Pilots and so on, and I think that's going to be a big area for us to be working on in the future," he says.
Johnson & Johnson has already started pilot-testing this project in the Philippines with some of the local sales teams. Rowther reveals they are looking at implementing the project in other countries as well.
Aligning IT-business goals
Rowther acknowledges that, within ASEAN, they need to learn to work with very thin set of resources-both people and money." Hence the challenge is managing our already stretched resources and to prioritize the high-leverage projects, one that will give you the best return," says Rowther.
This is why it is important that there be a continuous dialogue with the internal business partners on setting priorities and collaborating on key projects. To make sure that IT goals are aligned with that of the business, Rowther derives his objectives and goals from two sources: business strategis-what the company wants to achiebe from the business standpoint; and regional IT strategies and goals-technologies they want to move towards.
"At the end of the day, it's all about aligning with the priorities of the business and ensuring that it is not your choice of projects to keep or throw but a decision jointly made with the rest of the business," he shares.
Rowther says a key question he asks of all ASEAN IT heads is the value-add to the business that is to be derived from the implementation of a technology solution -- did it save money, help grow the top line, help people get more productive, or did it help in your speed-to-market? "You have to hit at least one of these, else we are missing the picture. If we can ask ourselves these questions in everything we do, I believe we will continue to remain a strategic partner, long-term," says Rowther.
Vital to ensuring that IT remains aligned with the goals of the business is making sure that the IT staff truly understands their role as not just part of the IT team but part of the whole company, and being able to contribute to the growth of the business.
Rowther has about 13 people reporting to him from across the region. He stresses that, when he hires, he not only looks for the technical skills but also business know-how.
"You need to have the technical skills but always remember that technology today can become obsolete tomorrow; what you'd take forward with you is really how you can use that technology to support business," Rowther shares, adding that when he hires people, his typical questions would focus on projects involved in, role played, and the biggest business benefit they derived from using any technology.
IT for business growth
According to Rowther, in the ASEAN market, growth is very high on the agenda because these are the markets where a lot of growth is happening and, managing ASEAN, he sees a lot of opportunities to bring in best-of-breed products and really grow the business exponentially.
Citing J&J's recent global acquisition of the Pfizer Consumer Healthcare division, Rowther believes this is a huge growth agenda which, at the same time, provides IT an enormous opportunity to "seamlessly help integrate the information of these two companies into one with zero or minimal distraction to the business."
"I believe these kinds of growth -- both organic growth and growth through acquisitions -- are being made possible because IT is really enabling that kind of quick turn-around, helping make informed decisions much better. IT is very much part of the growth agenda; I don't think companies can grow as fast as they are doing so these days without the help of IT really enabling this and removing all the barriers," Rowther notes.