Information Management: Tom O’Toole interview

Tom O’Toole,
Former CMO and CIO,
Global Hyatt Corporation

BearingPoint took some time to sit down with executives in a series of discussions to get their insights into information management. This conversation is with Tom O’Toole, Former Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Information Officer, Global Hyatt Corporation.

Global Hyatt Corporation is one of the world’s premier hotel companies. With more than 365 hotels and resorts in over 45 countries, Hyatt’s brands include Park Hyatt™, Andaz™, Grand Hyatt™, Hyatt Regency™, Hyatt Resorts™, Hyatt Place™ and Hyatt Summerfield Suites™.

Hyatt is engaged in a wide range of IT development initiatives for all its major enterprise systems, including electronic commerce, customer data systems and other applications. To ensure that Hyatt’s IT system investments best enable its business success, O’Toole and his team worked very closely with the company’s business unit heads, other C-level executives, senior operating executives, corporate function heads and hotel general managers.

In this Q and A, Tom talks about his leadership as both a CMO and CIO.

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Information Management: Mark Coughlan interview

Mark Coughlan
Director
ING Groep N.V.

BearingPoint took some time to sit down with executives in a series of discussions to get their insights into information management. This conversation is with Mark Coughlan, Director, ING Groep N.V. (Amsterdam).

ING Groep is a global financial institution of Dutch origin offering banking, investment, life insurance and retirement services to more than 85 million private, corporate and institutional clients in over 50 countries. Mark Coughlan, an ING director, is recognized as an energetic, passionate leader who believes success comes from building professional teams with high levels of motivation and empowerment. Mark Coughlan, has responsibilities for operations and information technology (IT) across ING functions—covering finance, risk, human resources and other corporate areas—and part of ING Wholesale Banking.

In this Q and A, Mark talks about topics including the increasing need for better IM strategy and how to build one to eliminate siloed information. He also discusses data governance and data replication and how they are effecting industries.

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Information Management: An interview with Tom Conophy

Tom Conophy
Chief Information Officer
InterContinental Hotels

BearingPoint took some time to sit down with executives in a series of discussions to get their insights into information management. This conversation is with Tom Conophy, Chief Information Officer, InterContinental Hotels.

For the past 25 years, Tom has tackled some of the most challenging issues in technology-supported business strategies across a variety of industries. So when he took over as chief information officer (CIO) of InterContinental Hotels Group PLC in 2006, his mandate was clear: explore and apply the technologies that are most likely to advance the mission of his organization and look for opportunities to innovate in ways that will set InterContinental Hotels apart in a highly competitive market.

With the active support of his company’s senior leadership, Tom has seen InterContinental Hotels leverage its Advantage Technology Platform to establish a competitive advantage in the hospitality sector. He points to the company’s advances in business intelligence and Web-based marketing as central to its recent growth. The company, which is now building the world’s largest hotel in China, is the third largest hotel chain, with brands such as InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Candlewood Suites.

Tom spoke with BearingPoint about his organization’s information management initiative, read the full conversation

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Information Management: An interview with Dr. Sai Lai Lo

Dr. Sai Lai Lo
CIO
Ping An Insurance

BearingPoint took some time to sit down with executives in a series of discussions to get their insights into information management. This conversation is with Dr. Sai Lai Lo, CIO of Ping An Insurance.

Over the last 18 years, Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China has become one of China’s best-known financial services brands both domestically and internationally. The group has an extensive domestic customer base and is one of the few Chinese financial institutions providing integrated insurance, banking, trust and brokerage services.

Ping An’s chief information officer, Dr. Sai Lai Lo, who joined the company in 2002, is spearheading the organization’s information management efforts during a period of rapid expansion—but without the need to tackle legacy systems or other problems commonly found in more established organizations.

Through his leadership, the company is fixing problems as they happen, taking into account how to implement information management properly one business unit at a time—without even calling it information management. While Lo envisions a more pragmatic approach in the future, today his focus is on data consistency. Lo offers insights into information management within the context of an emerging market.

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Information Management: An interview with Bob Haycock

Bob Haycock
former Chief Architect
at OMB

BearingPoint took some time to sit down with executives in a series of discussions to get their insights into information management. This conversation is with Bob Haycock, former Chief Architect at OMB.

Bob Haycock has seen several administrations come and go in his years as an information technology (IT) executive in the federal government. Among his many positions in public service, Haycock held the post of chief architect at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), an agency tasked with advising senior White House officials on a range of topics relating to federal policy, management, legislative, regulatory and budgetary issues.

At OMB, he spearheaded a strategic initiative revolving around enterprise architecture. As Haycock explains, the effort was a vital move to help agencies better manage their information and ease cross-agency collaboration. BearingPoint spoke with Haycock about his perspectives on information management and leadership in the federal government.

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Enterprise 2.0: Engaging Your People

There is a growing importance to use Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 concepts in human resources. Last week, I attended and presented at the Inspecht HR Futures Conference in Melbourne. The Inspecht HR Futures Conference brought together speakers covering all areas of HR, Recruiting and Technology to discuss how social media, innovation, culture and technology empower, attract, engage and evolve employees.

I presented how BearingPoint leverage Web 2.0 technologies to assist us in engaging our internal team members through the BearingPoint Wiki and shared some of my experiences and benefits using the tool in my day to day work. Following on, I explained how BearingPoint is reaching out to external information management experts through Mike2.0 where it provided us with an excellent platform to interact and discuss information management.

My presentation is below:

Author: Sean Lew

View more presentations from Sean Lew. (tags: 2.0 collaboration)

Information Management: An Interview with Jeff Edwards

An interview with Jeff Edwards, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Wyndham Hotel Group

Jeff Edwards
Executive Vice President
and Chief Information Officer
Wyndham Hotel group

BearingPoint took some time to sit down with executives in a series of discussion to get their insights into information management. This conversation is with Jeff Edwards, CIO of Wyndham Hotel group, whcih includes Wyndham®, Ramada®, Days Inn®, Super 8®, Wingate® by Wyndham, Baymont Inn®, Howard Johnson®, Travelodge®, Knights Inn® and AmeriHost® brands.

When Jeff assumed the role of CIO at the Wyndham Hotel Group in 2005, he immediately set out to transform its information technology (IT) organization from a cost center into a business. He focused on what would be necessary to deliver measurable value to clients—both within the company and in franchise hotel businesses. Wyndham encompasses nearly 6,500 hotels and 551,000 rooms in 59 countries.

In the conversation he discusses his unique responsibilities and why information management is a critical issue and how they are using it to deliver more meaningful information to their users. He also explores how information management helps his customers including the challenges faced and the lessons learned.

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Information management

Eric Elliott
Director of Information
Technology,
OPTI Canada

An interview with Eric Elliott, Director of Information Technology, OPTI Canada

BearingPoint took sometime to sit down with executives in a series of discussion to get their insights into information management. This conversation is with Eric Elliott, director of information technology for OPTI, a Canadian energy company. The company, with its partner Nexen Inc., has formed a joint venture to develop oil sands projects in the Athabasca region.

He joined the company in early 2007 to help strengthen IT governance and operational processes. Given the highly regulated nature of the oil and gas industry in Canada, Eric is particularly focused on the content and document management challenges the company must address to operate successfully in the country.

In the conversation he discusses the importance of implementing an effective information management strategy at a start-up organization operating in the highly regulated fossil fuels industry. Including specifics on a current information management project they are undertaking and leading practices in dealing with your partners on information management and what lies ahead.

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A New Perspective on C-Level Cooperation

Chief Financial Officers and Chief Marketing Officers are not traditionally thought of as best friends. It might have something to do with the juxtaposition of left and right brain thinking, or differing views on how to measure the performance of marketing programs and their impact on the bottom line that keeps these two executives from sitting next to each other at the lunch table.

Yet this relationship is becoming more important as both executives realize the value of more specific marketing and customer information to help drive strategic decisions; a merger of the creative and analytical minds can clearly help improve performance and fuel growth.

Many clients of BearingPoint’s World-Class Finance practice were asking about this, so we decided to partner with APQC, conduct a survey, and report our findings on the topic. You’re invited to read the resulting report: “CFOs and CMOs: partners in information management”.

One of the disconnects highlighted in the report is around the availability of data for customer segmentation and profitability analysis: while 80% of CFOs said they are providing sufficient data, less than 40% of CMOs said they are getting the data they need to make good decisions.

We hope these findings are helpful. Please feel free to share your comments and ideas here once you’ve read the research.

Author: Monica Huber

Information management: why it’s essential for life sciences companies

Information is the backbone of life sciences organizations. When used
effectively and formally woven into the culture of an organization,
information can streamline processes and help an organization gain
competitive advantage.

But exponential growth in data volumes and complexity is posing a serious and daunting challenge across the industry. Simply managing information better in a technological sense is not enough. Life sciences organizations gain better control of enterprise information by understanding the scope and complexity of the data management problem and by defining the strategic business objectives of effective information management.

Read more about how life sciences companies can address these information management challenges.