“Recognizing leaders who have transformed IT from a technology focused organization into a strategic business partner.”
Transitioning from a cost center to a services-based organization is a journey. It requires relationship building skills that facilitate a cultural shift throughout an organization and, at the same time, uses TBM as a common language that allows IT, finance and business leaders to understand technology investments, usage and outcomes. This award recognizes CIOs, Business Relationship Management, Governance, Service and/or Account Management leaders who have implemented effective business relationship methodologies, and a TBM-based language that communicates the value and metrics of TBM, and improves the capabilities, productivity and credibility of the IT organization. These leaders have transformed IT from a technology focused, order taking organization with little credibility with the business, into a highly regarded and strategic business partner that consistently brings the value of IT to the business as a whole.
Successful IT Transformers focus on:
- TBM informs key decisions within IT and in business, including sourcing, investment levels in services and portfolios, and IT funding, M&A and partnering.
- IT services portfolio is aligned with the needs of the business.
- A consultative, client centered approach.
- Communications excellence and change management excellence.
- Effective governance structures.
It is clear that nominees for the IT Services Transformation Award are up against a big challenge, and have proven themselves in a significant way. We believe the following three finalists are well deserving of recognition and we are excited to acknowledge each of their contributions to advancing the TBM practice.
The Award Finalists
AXA Investment Managers: The AXA Group, a top ten global asset manager, is a conglomerate of independently run businesses, operated according to the laws and regulations of many different countries. Within AXA Investment Managers, the Technology department is the largest from a total cost perspective. Prior to 2013, technology was viewed as an expensive overheard due to intangible expenses. With a change of CIO last year, the technology group started down the TBM road, and in the process implemented a governance structure that changed the culture of the IT organization, all cemented in TBM methodology. To do this, AXA built a Service Catalogue clients were already familiar with– the first step in transforming to TBM for the group—and implemented a TBM governance model that rooted TBM throughout the organization. This initiated a cultural shift within the organization’s Technology group. After educating the staff, AXA was able to focus on the transformation of its cost base into services. Today, the technology department is being transformed, all with the helping hand of a modern CIO and TBM implementation.
Fannie Mae: After The Federal National Mortgage Association, better known as Fannie Mae, was rocked by the 2008 financial crisis, it was clear a change needed to be made. In the quest to respond to the transformation underway in its market, Fannie Mae IT began taking measures to be more efficient and responsive, and ultimately manage IT like a business. However, in attempting to respond to the business’ request for more efficiency, Fannie’s IT organization realized it had no real insights into its technology portfolio, IT costs or performance and thus could not make the strategic decisions. A transformation was in order and the process of understanding costs – the “why” of IT – through a transformation to a services based organization, facilitated by the implementation of TBM began. Today, IT acts as the TBM Center of Excellence. Fannie Mae implemented a business show back report to enable businesses to gain transparency into IT costs, created clear show back messaging that IT provides transparency to enable collaborative decision-making, utilized complexity measures to drive dollars— all driving towards better decision making and a transformational IT service structure.
Nationwide Building Society: Nationwide Building Society is a British mutual financial institution and the largest building society, or retail bank, in the world. Nationwide is a complicated organization with a complex set of applications, systems, and IT— which makes sense their biggest issue was a lack of transparency: of the cost of IT; of the unit cost of delivery of IT; and the actual run cost of IT. In short, the TBM methodology helped transform the way Nationwide communicates. Once they addresses the problem, actions were put in place to work towards a solution. The approach: implement strategic cost management, financial controls and demand management. These changes created a cultural change in the Services Group, where “there is a different way of doing things” is embraced. A TBM governance group was born to provide an approval and escalation path for cost allocation decisions, priority and forward planning of development of the solution and other areas with traditionally contending views. Today, TBM helps determine how to deliver the right capacity to the business at the right time and was a key player in Nationwide’s successful IT transformation.
As it is likely evident from the above look into these three finalists, the Technology Business Management Awards are honoring IT and finance leaders for their ingenuity, creativity and contribution to advancing the practice of TBM.
These IT leaders are having a significant impact on their companies due to their keen focus on empowering operational excellence, business innovation, and business transformation.
Interested in more? Find out more on the TBM Award page here. Don’t forget to follow @TBMCouncil on Twitter and use the #TBMC14 for all conference updates!
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