Interim CIO Drives Technology Transformation and Revamp of IT Organization

A multi-billion dollar consumer products company wanted to revamp the organization to stay competitive and relevant to customers around the globe. One area of focus was technology. IT had been outsourced, and as a result the company lost control of its ability to innovate. Acquisitions over the years compounded the problem, with divisions in silos operating with extreme variability in skills, behavior, interface and processes country to county.

From Europe to Asia to South America and North America, management came together with a vision to take a disjointed organization and transform it into one collaborative global IT structure. Under this model IT would take charge of application and infrastructure management, security, enterprise architecture, staffing, and performance management. 

The global CIO had his hands full, running several initiatives:

• Infrastructure outsourcing
• SAP implementation to drive backend functions (accounting, controlling, manufacturing, etc.)
• Build a digital sales channel framework
• Define IT roles across global, divisional and local levels
• Define and implement global IT processes
• Restructure the IT organization
•  Put governance structures in place

With so many moving parts, the CIO decided to bring in another C-level executive to help run several big projects. Rather than taking the route of a full-time executive right off the bat, the company chose to bring in an interim CIO who was skilled in taking companies through transformation.

Given the global nature of the company, we connected management with a multilingual, English and Spanish fluent CIO who was then tasked with tackling two big initiatives: outsourcing infrastructure to Cognizant, an offshore delivery center; and expanding the SAP implementation into the sales organization.

The Interim CIO dove in building out structure and process in an area of the organization where standards, skilled IT staff, accountability and project management skills had not been a focus.

Whether called interim, contract or project-based leadership, the goal is to empower the management team to accomplish more, especially in the midst of change and transformation.