Accomplishments

Follow the links below to review examples of some of my professional accomplishments. Most are written up in the form of case studies, presenting the situation, challenges, approach, results and my role.

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IT Value Realization Program for Northrop Grumman

I co-led this two-year program that improved IT's strategic level of engagement with the business sectors, while at the same time reducing overall IT costs by $100 million (nearly 10%).

Situation:	In 2005, the Management Board of Northrop Grumman Corporation sponsored a company-wide program, “Achieving Competitive Excellence (ACE)”, to maximize cross-sector strengths, create shareholder value and become “the world’s premier defense enterprise.” The Management Board asked the Internal Information Systems (IIS) organization to be a driving force because it was the one group with enterprise-wide visibility and enough critical mass to identify and capitalize on opportunities.
Challenges:	In tackling this situation, we identified four challenges critical to success: IT environment complex and costly – because the IT environment was still the product of numerous major acquisitions and not well-integrated IT portfolio not aligned with business drivers; investments often poorly optimized due to business silos Despite good reputations of many Internal IS (IIS) leaders, business units often expected IIS personnel to be “order takers”, rather than a strategic partners IIS tended to rely inordinately on its “A” players to get things done, often burning them out and failing to cultivate new leaders from its “B” and “C” strings
Approach:	As we engaged Northrop Grumman, we focused on a key question: “How does IIS raise its contribution to business value and create “game-changing” competitive advantages, thereby becoming a strategic partner to the business sectors?” We focused efforts on improving capabilities essential to being strategic and managing business demand, while consolidating and optimizing operational performance. My team: Identified the eight biggest IT value realization (ITVR) challenges Facilitated a strategic planning session where focus groups recommended actions to address each ITVR challenge Organized 40-50 recommendations into logical groupings which became projects in the ITVR Program depicted in the seminal graphic known as the “ITVR House” Created the ITVR Vision and Roadmap for how the ITVR Program would unfold, what success would look like and how to measure it Gained approval from the CIO Council and then Management Board to move forward Went into a 2-month transition phase to begin ramp-up Executed a two year journey to deliver results
Results:	Over the course of 2+ years, the ITVR Program dramatically raised the day-to-day role if IIS leaders in contributing to business strategic planning, business development and productivity improvements. IIS leadership set and achieved the goal of eliminating $100M (9%) from its annual budgets.
My Role:	I served as Interim Program Director, reporting to the Northrop Grumman IIS CTO. I was responsible for overall program business impact, communications to client executives and guiding project managers who managed the work streams. I also led account management and P&L from the consulting perspective.

PSE&G IT Strategy and Business-IT Governance

I led or co-led this series of initiatives, over a two-year period, which dramatically streamlined the IT organization (25% cost reduction) and also prepared it for considerable changes in business environment.

Situation:	PSE&G, which operates a number of businesses, is best known for being the largest electric and gas utility for the state of New Jersey. The CIO, responsible for a $150M IT budget , was under considerable pressure to (A) streamline operations and reduce costs, and (B) prepare for a number of major business scenarios which included merging with another utility, divesting certain lines of business or creating new lines of business.
Challenges:	The PSE&G lines of business were highly siloed, bureaucratic and protective of their business plans. This put the IT organization in a highly reactive, “Order Taker” position. Compounding this were two other factors: (1) the IT organization perceived that the CIO tended to change direction frequently and (2) the IT Strategic Leadership Team (SLT) exhibited poor team dynamics—mistrust, vying for the CIO's favor, protecting turf.
Approach:	Over the course of two years, I co-led a number of engagements with the CIO and his leadership team to transform the IT organization into a much leaner, more business-focused partner to the lines of business (LOBs). This started with a 3-month strategic planning engagement, where we used a series of workshops to: Assess business demand and develop business scenarios Assess IT supply capabilities and develop and evaluate different options for strategic direction Identify ways to accelerate transformation and determine IT implications Integrate the IT strategy, IT Outcomes Model and IT Strategic Plan, including a Strategic Roadmap As part of this new strategic roadmap, our next engagements focused on defining IT’s Capability Model, in terms of how it ran itself as a business and understanding it strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats. This led to a third engagement focused on streamlining and/or outsourcing non-strategic capabilities, such as telecom provisioning, IT help desk, application enhancements. The fourth engagement then designed two capabilities critical to establishing a strategic level of partnership between IT and lines of business (LOBs). One was Enterprise Architecture, which created integrated views of business processes, supported by underlying information, IT applications IT infrastructure. This created a context for the second critical capability, Business-IT Portfolio Governance, which created IT investment portfolios, tied to business objectives, with decision-making processes, tools, and decision rights assigned at Enterprise, LOB and IT levels.
Results:	As a result of this “journey”, the IT organization Reduced its overall budget by over 25% Streamlined and/or outsourced problematic capabilities (e.g., application development) Developed outcomes Business-IT outcomes models that it now uses jointly with the Lines of Business to guide the impact of IT initiatives Established a Business-IT Portfolio Governance capability which has resulted in greater understanding and accountability for IT spend
My Role:	Served as Program Manager and subject matter expert throughout the series of initiatives. Responsible for overall program business impact, communications to client executives and guiding project teams to accomplish the work streams. Also led account management and P&L from the consulting perspective.

Siemens Shared e-Business Environment

I led the client relationship and series of initiatives, over a two-year period, which established the global e-business sales strategy and architecture and launched a range of e-commerce sites, customer portals and one industry marketplace. Siemens' first global initiative to be run in North America.

Situation:	In 1999, I co-led discussions between my firm, ZEFER, and the new CIO of Siemens Corporation, Dana Deasy, who was responsible for Siemens internal IT in North American. Siemens had just finished implementing SAP over 350 times – for nearly every business unit in every country. He observed how suboptimal this was and, as they were now facing the Internet boom, wanted to take a more strategic and cost effective approach with e-business. We agreed this would one of his major thrusts in his first 100 days in office.
Challenges:	Siemens Operating Companies (SOCs) were highly decentralized and bureaucratic. To the extent that SOC CIOs took orders from anyone besides their immediate CIOs, their allegiances tended to lie with their global parent CIOs in Germany and not with the brand new CIO of the North American holding company. Getting them to work together on any common or shared infrastructure for e-Business would be very challenging, especially given their recent precedent with SAP.
Approach:	We started with a 12-week strategy engagement, a 20-person team representing more than half the North American SOCs and a key question that we aimed to answer: Can decentralized Siemens Operating Companies (SOCs) share a common e-business platform, agree on standards and collaborate on projects? The strategy engagement led the team through three workshops: (1) Principles – established current inventory of assets and established guiding principles for working together; (2) Opportunities – developed a qualified list of opportunities and selected 3-6 with the highest potential business impact; (3) Actions – Refined business case and action plan for going forward with this integrated set of opportunities. Presented our final recommendations first to the Siemens North American Presidents Council and then to the global Management Board. They approved the vision and a multi-phase program to establish the *Shared e-Business Environment (SeE)*. Through trips to Germany, socialized and refined the “global pilot” with the global CIOs, the first to be driven from North America. Over the next 18 months, led the Siemens SeE Program that: Architected, prototyped and integrated e-business platform Developed and executed methodology for working with multiple SOCs to envision, define & prioritize integrated e-business elements Designed, built & launched four e-business solutions using e-Commerce, Personalization, Content Management, Single Sign-on, XML, EAI & e-Billing Developed/launched first Customer Marketplace, e-Utilities, providing a single face across all of Siemens Operating Companies to their utility customers in Austria and surrounding countries Project universally recognized as most successful e-business effort in Siemens history. Dramatically accelerated time to (Internet) market for several SOCs. Reduced and avoided significant costs through shared infrastructure. Captured business opportunities across SOCs and countries that were otherwise impossible (e-Utilities).
Results:	Project recognized as most successful e-business effort in Siemens history. Dramatically accelerated time to (Internet) market for several SOCs. Reduced and avoided significant costs through shared infrastructure. Captured business opportunities across SOCs and countries that were otherwise impossible (e-Utilities).
My Role:	Program Manager for the initial strategy engagement. Responsible client executive relationships after that (e.g., Dana Deasy and global CIO in Germany). Led the Account Management team (in consulting firm) and responsible for client P&L, which accounted for 24% of ZEFER's revenues.