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Mapping IT - Seven Initiatives for Success
Fred Mapp, former AMD CIO
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The Future of IT
When I speak at CIO conferences, I sometimes begin with a question: "What
is the true business value of IT?" In the pause that follows, you can almost
hear the wheels turning.
The truth is, the true business value of IT is hard to gauge. We've all
seen spectacular examples of IT in action, but much more
can be done. We haven't reached our full potential and effectively demonstrated
it to our end users.
The challenge, in my opinion, is in the approach. Too often in IT, technology
is the beginning and the end, the be-all and end-all. The quest for technology
overwhelms other processes. And if this approach falls short, IT looks ahead
to the next release to lead it into the promised land.
The truth is this: In IT you must create your own promised land. Technology
is only a tool - a walking stick, if you will - to help you get to your
destination. Yet the best walking stick ever crafted won't find the way
for you.
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"We've all seen
spectacular examples of IT in action, but much more
can be done."
- Fred Mapp, former AMD CIO
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Over the years, I've seen a lot of IT challenges,
and I've responded by going back to fundamental business practices
to govern the use of technology. I've refined these practices and
developed a seven-initiative strategy to help steer away from the
siren song of technology for technology's sake.
The results have been dramatic. With these initiatives AMD has blazed
trails in harnessing IT to achieve specific enterprise-wide business
goals. In the next installments of this column I'll describe these
initiatives - and our success - in detail. To give you a brief overview,
we'll be discussing the business value of IT broken out into the following
topics:
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For the first initiative, "Aligning IT strategy with enterprise-wide business
needs," I'd like you to consider a question I often ask when speaking before
groups of CIO's:
"How many people in your organization really understand
your enterprise-wide IT strategy?"
In the next column, I'll tell you all about the responses
I get and how addressing them is the first step in realizing IT's potential.
Fred brings over 30 years of experience in the area of information technology having held key executive IT positions at AMD, IBM, InfoSpan Corporation, American Express, Honeywell and his own company, Quality Service Solutions.
Immediately prior to joining AMD, Fred served as Vice President and CIO of Information Technology at Honeywell Corporation for its Industrial Automation Controls Division. Before Honeywell, Fred's IT leadership at American Express was instrumental in the development and implementation of new applications and services and in the re-engineering of the information technology organization.
FredIt's perspectives have been published in Optimize, Fortune, InformationWeek, and CIO Magazine. |
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