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The changing role of today’s CIO:
An interview with UPS’s CIO and Senior Vice
President Dave Barnes
Leading an agile, responsive and dynamic business Mr. David Barnes: We plan for next year’s peak starting right now. So, we just got through peak of ’06, we’re already planning for next year. So that continual planning cycle sets the framework. Being able to understand and have accurate forecast of demand ‘cause the bottom line you’re going to have to react to demand forecast. You can’t be disconnected from that process, you have to be intimately a part of it.
So, we have a well-honed process to define what our peak seasons demand are. What our Christmas season volume is going to be in all the different channels, international, overnight air express, ground, freight, rail.
Mr. Jordan Colletta: The way we prepare for the unexpected quite, frankly, is that we – we actually model out things up front. Like, for instance, if you go onto UPS. com right now, I mean, it’s always up and there’s a lot of applications on UPS.com. There’s a lot of information on UPS.com. On the IT side, it’s phenomenal, but it’s very much like the way we do planning for our operations.
I mean, our volume absolutely peaks, you know, in December right because of the holidays. But our ability to handle that volume happens because we have -- we start planning for Christmas or the holiday season. We start planning for the holiday season in January.
Mr. David Barnes: If something changes be it of something in the
market place, a competitor’s response, a regulatory change, a new
evolving technology, a new regulatory oversight issue, you have to have set up in your processes - the ability to quickly identify the change, react to it and implement it. That has to be part of the process. If it’s not part of the process, you’ll find your processes are inflexible, slow to change. We’re in a very volatile world that requires extreme flexibility.
Regulatory oversight, post 9/11, a tremendous change in terms of security for this country and the protection of its citizens and citizens in the world.
That required fleet to foot, rapid reaction, participation of UPS with the homeland security groups and others, the ability to manifest those solutions into our processes and our technology.
We have in place those mechanisms, which allow that fleet of foot. It’s something that has to be built in, designed in. It can’t be added on later.
“Being able to understand and have accurate forecast of demand ‘cause
the bottom line you’re going to have to react to demand forecast. You can’t be disconnected from that process, you have to be intimately a part of it.”
The changing role of today’s CIO:
An interview with UPS’s CIO and Senior Vice President Dave Barnes
Driving a flexible IT strategy
Mr. David Barnes: When we talk about a CIO helping to influence the setting of strategy: What new things can we do in the market place? How can we improve our profitability? That’s the CIO of today’s talk.
Back in 2000, Fortune had an interesting insight on us. They had seen the transformation of UPS as a trucking company without technology manifesting itself into a technology company with trucks
If something changes, you have to have set up in your processes - the ability to quickly identify the change, react to it, and implement it. So, our strategy is quite flexible, and the whole team viewing technology as theirs makes it easy for us to rapidly adjust.
We talk about a CIO being part of the strategy of a company. You can’t just focus on the numbers and what you do today. You have to anticipate that the demand model and build processes for the future. So you look at where the company has grown, these major changes just keep coming. We’re not one to stand still and do it the same way.
“…what new things can we do in the market place? How can we
improve our profitability? That’s the CIO of today’s talk.”