Our Blogs – For CIOs by CIOs

From CEO VIews Magazine:  Entreprenuer Views

“To me, true thought leadership is seeing the practical ideas that others are not seeing.”

Jeff Richards, Managing Partner of CIO Professional Services, LLC

In today’s tech driven economy, building a close alignment between IT and business is a daunting task. That’s where CIO Professional Services, LLC steps in.

As a 15-year-old IT strategy consulting firm, CIO Professional Services helps mid-size organizations seamlessly integrate modern IT technology into business to address a wide range of IT alignment and strategy issues. As seasoned CIOs, they help you remove barriers and improve return on IT investment, while advancing your personal success.

At the helm is Jeff Richards, Managing Partner of CIO Professional Services, LLC. An inspirational leader with the ability to develop successful business strategies to cultivate tangible results, Jeff leads the Professional Services team.

In a recent interview with The CEO Views, Jeff Richards talked about his business story and how he is driving unparalleled success to business through effective thought leadership.

Kindly take us through your entrepreneurial journey! What inspired you to pursue a leadership role in this industry?

I actually started my career in manufacturing operations. Then I got more interested in putting in systems than running factories. I joined Ernst & Young, and worked my way up the ladder until I found myself managing 5,000 people across Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Soon I realized that although I was making lots of money, the job was eating my life, I wasn’t dealing with clients and learning new things, which is why I went into consulting, and I certainly wasn’t having fun. So, I moved back home from Europe, took off with a couple of other EY guys and opened up a little shop where I could start solving client’s problems and stay on the leading edge again.

You are widely regarded as an inspirational thought leader. Can you share any of your main intellectual breakthrough ideas or initiatives that you have pioneered?

Consulting is generally based on figuring out what’s wrong and then determining how to fix it. To address the first half of this – figuring out what is wrong – most consultants start their engagements by completing an assessment. One of our innovations was in creating a much faster and more efficient way to do this.

Back in the 1990s, most consultants completed their assessments by doing one-on-one interviews with a long list of people from the client’s team and then synthesizing the results of these serial interviews. It was a time-consuming and challenging process.

What we did was use some commercially available software that enabled us to pull everyone into a virtual room at the same time, where we led highly facilitated group sessions. All participants needed was a phone line and internet connection, which was very innovative at the time.

Not only was this a much more efficient process, we actually found that we got much more accurate assessments of the current situation. As we walked them through the questions, participants would often feed upon each other’s remarks when someone hit upon something.

These more accurate assessments, in turn, made it easier for us to ensure that our recommended solutions were all about the business. Because one of our guiding doctrines has always been that the business case must come first.

Read the Full Interview atThe CEO Views

By Bhavin Shah, Senior Consultant

Seven years ago, when I led artificial intelligence (AI) efforts at Oracle Cloud, I saw the power of AI and the impact that it can have. Once you put it in place, it does the work for you. It’s mind-boggling! It’s not surprising that for a number of years now, everything from chatbots to spam filters has been successfully powered by AI.  

In November 2022 ChatGPT was introduced, and suddenly generative AI became the big new technology. Today some of the most visionary CEOs in the country are investing billions of dollars in generative AI infrastructure, applications, security and more, all with the goal of using generative AI to drive business value with top- and bottom-line growth. You can bet these CEOs would not be spending such huge sums of money if they did not have a very high level of confidence that these investments will pay off. 

From CIO Bulletin: 30 Fastest Growing Companies to Watch 2024

“I insist on excellence every single time. We never compromise on quality by rushing through projects”

Jeff Richards, Managing Partner of CIO Professional Services, LLC

In the world of mid-sized enterprises, Senior Executives often face the challenge of aligning Business and IT seamlessly. That’s where CIO Professional Services, LLC steps in. With their seasoned expertise as former CIOs, they specialize in maximizing IT investment returns and propelling business success.

Imagine a scenario where business goals and IT strategies intertwine effortlessly, ensuring success without the usual hassle. Through their innovative “Business-Driven IT” approach, CIO Professional Services ensure that everything IT does makes sense from the business perspective. Amidst the vast sea of IT consultants, their team stands out as strategic partners, offering invaluable guidance for optimal business IT alignment and execution.

In an exclusive interview with CIO Bulletin, Jeff Richards, Managing Partner of CIO Professional Services, LLC, shared insights on how his company is helping clients maximize their ROI on IT.

Read the Full Interview at CIO Bulletin

By Bhavin Shah, Senior Consultant

“A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.”
~ Steve Blank, American entrepreneur, educator, author and speaker 

“Breaking an old business model is always going to require leaders to follow their instinct. There will always be persuasive reasons not to take a risk. But if you only do what worked in the past, you will wake up one day and find that you’ve been passed by.”
~Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business School Professor

“For CEOs today, it's all about achieving growth and efficiency through innovation. It's not about product innovation so much anymore as about innovating business models.”
~Ginni Rometty, Former CEO, IBM

 “Information Technology is at the core of how you do business and how your business model itself evolves.”
~Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft 

A platform business model brings people together and creates value by facilitating exchanges among them within a digital environment. As such, it is a business model – not just a technology infrastructure. Participants could be buyers and sellers or customers, suppliers, partners, developers, and other stakeholders, based on your company’s mission and objectives. The platform provides the governance structure and standards that facilitate interactions at scale. This ecosystem is a foundational part of the platform. 

Examples of the platform business model are marketplaces (Amazon, Ebay), social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), payment networks (PayPal, MasterCard), communication platforms (WhatsApp, Snapchat), etc.

How can a platform business model drive top-line and bottom-line growth?

Because it does not have an ecosystem, a traditional, non-platform business creates a linear-value chain. The platform model offers a greater value proposition, with multi-dimensional value networks and ecosystems. 

Once in place, your platform-based ecosystem offers numerous business and financial benefits. These include:

• Extreme scalability – Digital platforms are inherently scalable. If you want to expand, scale, go after other industries and markets, etc., a platform business model is ideal. Once your ecosystem is in place, you’ll be able to expand your user base and services without proportional increases in costs. As your platform grows, you’ll enjoy better cost efficiency and profit margins.
  
  
• Built-in agility – A platform-based ecosystem model makes it easy to quickly make changes. This includes adapting to changing market conditions, introducing new features and/or experimenting with different services to meet evolving customer needs.
  
  
• Valuable network effects – As more participants join your ecosystem, your platform’s value increases for all users. This, in turn, can lead to rapid and exponential growth.
  
  
• Diversified revenue streams – Because it can be used in a variety of ways by a variety of participants, a platform-based ecosystem can often support multiple revenue streams. For example, transaction fees, subscription models, advertising fees, data monetization, partnerships and more. 
  
  
• Lower market entry barriers – Traditional business models often require significant Capex/Opex investment in physical infrastructure. The platform provides a ready-made infrastructure, reducing the costs and challenges associated with building and maintaining a traditional business. 
  
  
• Data monetization – Your platform will generate a wealth of data about user behavior, preferences and transactions. You can leverage this data for insights to tailor your offerings and strategies. You can also monetize it, such as through targeted advertising or personalized services.
  
  
• Enhanced customer engagement and loyalty – Platforms often offer features that enhance customer engagement, such as user reviews, social interactions and personalized recommendations. This fosters loyalty among users, encouraging them to stay within the ecosystem and conduct repeat transactions.
  
  
• Partnerships and ecosystem synergies – Cross-promotions, joint ventures, shared resources and other collaborations and partnerships within the ecosystem can benefit all participants.  
  
  
• Global reach – Digital platforms can transcend geographical boundaries, providing you with a global reach. Tap into diverse markets without the need for a physical presence in every location.
  
  
• Investor confidence – Successful digital platforms with a strong user base and revenue streams can create investor confidence. This can increase your funding opportunities and valuations, and have a positive impact on your company’s overall financial health. 

Technology is the heart of the platform business model

A platform-based ecosystem business model can create a competitive advantage that drives top- and bottom-line growth for your business. However, to sustain these advantages over the long term it is important that you carefully manage and nurture your ecosystems.  

Technology, of course, is in the center of the platform business model and plays a critical role enabling platform ecosystems to create value for the business. 

If you need help developing a technology strategy for creating or maintaining a platform business model, give us a call. This is another area of our expertise!

About Bhavin Shah

Bhavin Shah is a big-picture thinker and visionary global technology executive whose expertise in driving technology innovation, digital business model transformation and enablement of revenue and business capabilities creates value for customers, opportunities for employees and growth for shareholders.

About CIO Professional Services 

Based in the San Francisco Bay area, CIO Professional Services LLC is a top-rated Information Technology (IT) consulting firm focused on integrating Business and Information Technology. Our consultants are all hands-on executives who are veteran CIOs and Partners of Big 4 consulting firms. Companies come to us seeking assistance with their information technology strategy as well as for interim or fractional CIO / CTOs, and negotiation and program management/project rescue assistance.

This is the first of a series of articles we will be writing on making sense of the excitement surrounding AI.

By Jeff Richards, Managing Partner

We are all familiar with the Gartner hype cycle that was introduced in 2004. Last summer Gartner released the hype cycle curve for artificial intelligence. In our experience, the industry seems to be tracking to it. So far we’ve seen many a proof of concept and small pilots, but have not seen much in the way of real results across industries.

This fast moving technology cycle has no doubt created anxiety for many execs who fear that their companies will be “left behind” if they don’t move quickly. Others have Boards and Leadership teams pressing for answers for what AI means for their companies. Some CIOs think they should know the answer but don’t. 

As the CIO, how do you deal with all of the buzz that has been created around AI?

How do you avoid falling from the peak of inflated expectations into the trough of disillusionment? 

You start by managing those expectations like you always have as a CIO. We hear senior IT executives getting pulled into the frenzied discussion of leading technologies and what works best. It is easy as technologists to engage in the details of a new technology. 

However, as executives that’s not really our job. We need to understand it well enough to ask insightful questions and understand how to use it to the company’s advantage. We need to focus on the bigger picture of governance and risk. This is what will allow our team to do what we hired them to. 

Our friends at Lumeos presented a Security Maturity Model for GenAI to a discussion amongst two dozen senior IT executives. They had been engaged in the pros and cons of different large language models and other technologies. This slide allowed me to lessen the anxiety and uplevel the conversation to say that AI is no different than introducing any new technology.  

1. Foundational –- You need to set the foundation by stating usage policy, training people and being vigilant for “shadow” initiatives.
    
2. Basic – This is followed by ensuring that data protections are in place for intellectual property, personally identifiable information and other sensitive data.
   
   
3. Advanced – Lastly, you need to secure your “software supply chain,” guard against bad actors sending things like prompt injections and model denial of service attacks. 

In the big picture these steps are the ones we have always followed. The technology in question requires adaptation to the tools, but the approach is not new. 

The conversation should be the same one we have always had as CIOs. What is the use case that the business would like us to explore?   The AI adoption curve is no different from any other new technology we have introduced in our careers – it is just moving a little faster. It is nothing you can’t handle. As the British say, “Keep calm and carry on.”

About Jeff Richards

Jeff leads our Professional Services team of CIOs, CTOs, CSOs and Big 4 consulting partners to deliver to “big picture” strategy and then drive it down to executable tactics for implementation for our clients. Clients benefit from Jeff’s 25+ years of experience developing and implementing transformative business strategies. 

Jeff’s experience spans both industry (including Materials, Operations and IT Management) and consulting. He developed a unique global perspective during his tenure in significant P&L management-level positions in both Asia and Europe. He has held the CIO title twice, once in the semiconductor industry and once in a large regional nonprofit.

About CIO Professional Services

Based in the San Francisco Bay area, CIO Professional Services LLC is a top-rated Information Technology (IT) consulting firm focused on integrating Business and Information Technology.  Our consultants are all hands-on executives who are veteran CIOs and Partners of Big 4 consulting firms. Companies come to us seeking assistance with their information technology strategy as well as for interim or fractional CIO / CTOs, and negotiation and program management/project rescue assistance.

By Colin Carmichael, Senior Consultant

There’s a cybersecurity problem brewing that many organizations are ignoring at their peril. Throughout the history of information technology, cybersecurity has always been thought of as a “security team problem.” “Let the CISO’s [Chief Information Security Officer’s] group and the network organization folks worry about cybersecurity,” the thinking goes. “This way the enterprise application owners can focus on their own core competencies.”

By Bhavin Shah, Senior Consultant

The cyber threat landscape

Cybersecurity incidents have rapidly increased in the last few years. In response, organizations have spent billions handling data breaches, ransomware and other cyberattacks in reactive mode. This trend will continue as the competitive business landscape, digital business strategy and technological advancements continuously change organizations’ attack surfaces. Tactics used by cybersecurity criminals – and, therefore, the threat vectors – will continue to evolve.

To address this ever-changing cyber threat landscape you must think out of the box and proactively develop the next generation of cybersecurity strategy. Just as importantly, to get buy-in for your cybersecurity and data security efforts, you must clearly articulate the measurable business outcomes associated with these efforts to your board of directors… and then back this up with data.

By Sean Hickey, Senior Consultant

Every company where I have done SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) compliance testing has the same problem: Their over 90 days past due accounts receivable stunk. In fact, they all seemed to think that having 5% over 90 (and sometimes even close to 10%!) is normal. 

These same companies also had a sea of revenue recognition journal entries on the backend of their order-to-cash process, and saw this as a normal and acceptable practice as well. 

Most importantly, they failed to see the connection between these two things.

I’m here to tell you that all of those revenue recognition journal entries are neither normal nor acceptable … and if you change your order-to-cash business processes in a way that eliminates them, the percentage of your A/R that’s over 90 days will plummet. 

By Sean Hickey, Senior Consultant

A few weeks ago I was at a local business event, having a discussion with a couple of CFOs on ways to improve their company’s results. After discussing a variety of transformative business strategies that all relate to other functions within the business, they were surprised when I said, “What about your finance operations?” They had been so focused on ways to improve other company-wide horizontal processes – order to cash, procure to pay, etc., – that finance had taken a lower priority as a downstream process vs. being a horizontal process for the company as well. 

By Ken Norland, Associate and Lonnie Sanders III, Associate

Are you eager to sabotage your organization's Master Data Management (MDM) initiative, drive inefficiency and compromise data quality? While we hope this isn't your intention, there are certainly pitfalls that can lead to MDM failure, derailing the success of an otherwise well-conceived project. In this discussion, we'll explore five proven ways to ensure your MDM endeavor falls flat, providing valuable lessons on what not to do. Instead, you can avoid these common traps and chart a course to MDM success.