Lexington, KY - Technology changes at blazingly fast speed, but what's going to work best for your business and your customers? Chief information officers have to know how software and hardware fit into the big picture. They are stewards of their companies' information and data, and they are an integral component of customer service. In this column, five local CIOs talk about how they and their organizations are approaching the challenges and the opportunities of implementing today's ever-growing arsenal of increasingly sophisticated technological tools.
Tim Arthur, CIO and global director of MIS, Alltech:
We created a new product, alongside iHigh, called the Alltech Ag Network, which is basically television over the Internet. We broadcasted the FFA convention this year to three-quarters of a million people all over the world. We're a huge mobility organization, in 120 countries, with 80 percent of our workforce not sitting at a desk. We're taking a hard look at consumerization products - smartphones, iPads, tablets - to see how to integrate them. I'm looking at it as an opportunity: How we can we take advantage of it, instead of controlling it? Our initiative for 2012 is "anytime, anywhere, any device." Our department is not an IT department, because we don't manage technology. We manage information. Information is the core. We don't care about the devices or where they are located, just how we get the information to our end users and employees.
Kathy Frye, CIO/Deputy Executive Director, Cabinet for Health & Family Services:
With the influx of new programs in the health IT arena, there is more demand on IT services in CHFS than ever before. Many of our projects are mandated from our federal partners, but CHFS finds the most efficient and economical method to implement new products and services. We normally perform a feasibility study, which determines if there are similar applications from other states that we could do a "technology transfer" on - meaning we transfer source code from another state at no cost. CHFS implemented the Medicaid Incentive Payment State Level Registry application with in-house development staff in January 2011 and was the first state in the nation to issue an incentive payment to a hospital, UK HealthCare. We have projects underway to modernize our child-support systems and will be implementing a public-facing child-support portal. I see my role as a steward of our business unit's IT systems. My office is closely aligned with the business areas in the cabinet, and we must understand their needs to ensure that the systems we are implementing are benefiting our end users.
Hudson Tarianto, IT Guy, Big Ass Fans:
I try to embrace every technology, even if it is not necessarily the technology that I would prefer. I have to be unselfish and select the technology that best serves the interest of the company to support business growth. As any other investment, I have to explain to the president and executives of the company what a new technology will bring as far as costs and benefits. The idea is to be able to justify the projects by demonstrating the link between proposed projects and the overall company strategy. Depending on the scale of the project, some IT projects are not required to go through this process. As a technologist, I believe that people skills are as equally important as the technology skill: the skill to work with other members of the company, understand their daily activities and anticipate their needs. After all, they are your customers. Mobile technology (tablet and smartphone) and mobile business apps (for 2012) - we see this as a way to improve our business and shorten the sales process.
Brad Lovell, VP and CIO, Keeneland:
Our IT culture has to match the Keeneland culture: provide superior customer service and strive to be the best at everything we do. We try to help our business partners by presenting technology-based solutions to reduce cost, mitigate risk or increase revenue. We implemented several initiatives in 2011. For our sales customers, we launched a B2C portal we call Keeneland Portfolio. For our racing customers, we implemented a new ticketing and admissions system. Customers can purchase tickets online and print at home. Additionally, we launched FastBet Mobile wagering to enable customers to bet from virtually anywhere on the track using an iPhone or Android smartphone. All of these systems were successful, and we look forward to building on them in the future. We are in the early stages of redesigning Keeneland.com. I believe the new version will simplify how our customers interact with us.
Vince Kellen, CIO, University of Kentucky:
We unleashed mobile applications for our students in late 2010 and went full force in 2011. Soon they will be able to register for courses. In addition to our own testing team, we conduct soft launches to get real-world feedback. We are in the soft launch stage now of desktop virtualization, where students have access to lab software (spreadsheets and databases) from their PCs. These days, we look to see what we can buy first; that is the least expensive route. If it's not available for purchase, we look to open source software that may work and we also do a little bit of building. The mobile applications were partly a purchase product and part we programmed ourselves. We look for the lowest cost across the whole life cycle, a multi-year period. One can be cheap to purchase but expensive to maintain; another can be expensive to purchase but cheap to maintain. There's a lot of techno-centricity today. I look at it from a human standpoint: How will this benefit people?