IMAT5206: CIO Strategy Analysis - Management of Information Systems

This essay provides a critical analysis of Chief Information Officer (CIO) strategies based on interviews conducted in 2017. Five key themes are identified and discussed, including the importance of a "business-intimate" IT department, the use of quantum computing, migration to in-house core banking platforms, legacy network digitization, and the implementation of mobile self-service applications. The analysis covers insights from CIOs at UPS, Volkswagen Group, TSB, Vodafone, and Avis Budget. The essay concludes with future recommendations for technology teams, emphasizing the need for effective leadership, exploration of quantum computing potentials, and continuous improvement through experimentation and customer inclusion. It also addresses the challenges of prioritization and supplier management in delivering system objectives.

Running head: MANAGEMENT OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Management of Information Systems
[Name of the Student]
[Name of the University]
[Author note]

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Table of Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................2
Identification of the Themes and missing issues:......................................................................2
Theme 1: Importance of the “business-intimate” IT department along with the usage of
technology so as to develop a “personal touch”.....................................................................2
Theme 2: Working with D-Wave to research uses for quantum computing and what are the
hope that the carmakers want to achieve................................................................................3
Theme 3: Migration of the systems which are hosted by a competitor into a in-house core
banking platform which is digitally focused..........................................................................4
Theme 4: Legacy networks, digitization and how the positioning of the operator would
lead to a mobile-enabled future..............................................................................................5
Theme 5: Removal of customer stress by driving mobile self-service applications..............5
Future recommendation:............................................................................................................6
References:.................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction:
Each and every view of the top IT and the digital chiefs are very much valuable not
only for the fellow IT leaders but is also considered to be an aspiring technology professional
who are responsible for looking into the development of their career opportunities. Below are
the top to interviews of the CIO in the year of 2017. All these interviews have been analyzed
in a careful way so as to identify and reflect the themes and view that has been provided in
the interviews. In the report five major themes have been identified and discussed.
Identification of the Themes and missing issues:
Theme 1: Importance of the “business-intimate” IT department along with the
usage of technology so as to develop a “personal touch”.
According to Juan Perez the CIO of UPS, despite of working as a specialist for
logistics the stint has been associated with demonstrating a remarkable level of service but
still it is far away from being unique. The organization has been associated with gaining a lot
of opportunities for moving around the business and to conduct numerous jobs across
different kind of fields in different geographical locations (ComputerWeekly.com, 2019). By
this way people would become capable of gaining a lot of experience along with eventually
receiving a chance of becoming effective managers and this is a type of tradition that the
company is having. Besides this the organization also thinks that providing people with an
opportunity of rotating their positions would be responsible for creating more rounded
employees.
The leaders must be capable of understanding the ways in which the IT can help and
they must also be capable of pushing forward the message to the rest of the departments of

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the organization as well which might take time and it is possible to decrease the time by
regular communication. This is the type of engagement that would be capable of helping out
the business in growing by effective use of the IT (ComputerWeekly.com, 2019). Besides this
the engagement of the leaders with the new interns would be helping a lot in drawing a pool
of talents so as to fill up the gaps at the level of entry.
Some of the most interesting and logistic issues are also faced by the organization
along with the opportunities. One such example includes the demand of the customers for
receiving the merchandise much quicker. Besides this there is also a requirement of getting
more visibility along with flexibility so as to change the deliverables that they are having.
Solving this type of challenges generally require a lot of advanced technologies which would
be acting as great proposition for putting to the potential candidates (ComputerWeekly.com,
2019). Development of skills is generally considered to be a work under progress in the age
of digitalization. Continuous learning along with development would be helping the
employees in understanding their roles and responsibilities.
Theme 2: Working with D-Wave to research uses for quantum computing and
what are the hope that the carmakers want to achieve
According to Volkswagen Group they are planning for the adaptation of the quantum
computers for the purposed of bossing up its competency program, for the bid of creating an
innovating application which cannot be programmed by means of the traditional methods.
They made an initiative of collaborating the quantum specialist D-wave with the Volkswagen
Labs which was aimed at building the specialist expertise at Volkswagen and for the
identification of the ways of using the quantum computing in the company. Quantum
computing technology is having the capability of bringing a tremendous progress in
Volkswagen related to the key IT and the digitization topics that re to be adopted in the

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future, this technology is expected to bring a wide range of possibilities for the application
especially in areas related to autonomous driving or process control supported by the artificial
intelligence, mobility in an intelligent way along with machine learning and many more
(ComputerWeekly.com, 2019). Besides this the high-performance computing or the HPC
which are generally offered by the supercomputers would be facing a lot of challenges due to
the existence of few highly complex computational problems.
The traffic flow would also be solved and the major reason behind this is that the
computing principle of a quantum computer is mainly suited as this is responsible for solving
the optimization problems like the flow of traffic.
Theme 3: Migration of the systems which are hosted by a competitor into a in-
house core banking platform which is digitally focused
After the acquisition of the TSB by the Spanish Bank Sabadell, it outlined the plans of
moving the entire TSB IT system and this is known as Proteo. One of the major challenges in
doing this is having a core platform up and running. For this reason, new technology platform
for the TSM has been built. According to Abarca there would exist only one legacy system
which would be responsible for taking over by the TSB with the customer accounts. So, they
have been associated with deciding the fact that they would be keeping the mortgages back-
end system as this is not associated with making any kind of difference to the customers and
how they are associated with settling the mortgages. The key objective of this customer-
centric system includes the controlling the data (ComputerWeekly.com, 2019). The major
reason behind this is that the customer data sits in a single repository and this means there
exists only few systems and this in turn is associated with making the processes much simpler
and this means a better customer experience can be delivered.

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Theme 4: Legacy networks, digitization and how the positioning of the operator
would lead to a mobile-enabled future.
Jorge Fernandes has steeped in the computing as well as in the network. the advent of
the TCP/IP is considered to be a big deal and the rate of transformation at the heart of the
network has been associated with accelerating the breakneck speed along with helping in the
management of the twin demands related to the running of the internal IT and the customer-
facing networks. The domestic mobile users along with the broadband services is to be
provided by the organization Vodafone in order to build, manage and deploy the large-scale
infrastructure projects that is to be used by the biggest UK enterprises that is from the public
sector to energy to financial services and amongst many others.
Along with the network performances another major issue that is faced by the
organization is the pressure upon the teams for opening up the provision of stable along with
a predictable system so as to manage the mission-critical billings along with the CRM
systems for the users.
Theme 5: Removal of customer stress by driving mobile self-service applications.
Avis Budget is one of the car rental giants which has been associated with driving the
digital transformation strategy by considering the mobility at the heart of its operations and
are mainly designed for the purpose of delivering an improved customer engagement and
automation so as to increase the efficiency of the staffs. The mobile-centric application that
the organization is having is mainly designed in order to reduce the stress of the customers by
providing them with self-service (ComputerWeekly.com, 2019). Along with the enhanced
operational performances the digitalization of the workforce is also seen to be having a direct
correlation with the customer satisfaction.

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The application would be including certain functionalities like the selection of the
consumers, upgrading of the exchanging of the cars in advance of their arrival at locations
where the rental services are available, and picking up and returning of the cars without any
involvement of human interaction. For the development of the mobile portfolio further a new
application programming interface or the API platform needs to be worked with for the
groups existing all across the different locations (ComputerWeekly.com, 2019). This would
be helping the firm in enabling the new forms of partnership along with providing support to
the existing partnerships.
Future recommendation:
In the future the technology team must be associated with understanding the close as
well as the constant contact that exist between them and the rest of the organization and
should also be responsible for pointing out the fact that the engagement is very much helpful
in fostering the growth by effective use of the IT (ComputerWeekly.com, 2019). However,
there is still a lot of work that is to be done. One of the key factors of getting the IT
organizations much more connected as well as more collaborative with the line of-business
units is by having an effective leadership.
The future Quantum computers should be associated with offering certain potentials
in order to solve this kind of problems at a faster rate than the conventional supercomputers.
Simply it can be stated that the optimistic problems are associated with considering how the
specific resources like the energy, time or money can be utilized in the best way possible for
specific scenarios. For this reason, the complexity that the tasks are having along with the
computing capacity requires a growth in an exponential way (ComputerWeekly.com, 2019).
By running of the optimization algorithm in cases when there exists a huge number of

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variables, is capable of quick overpowering of the conventional computers which in turn is
responsible for pushing then beyond their limits.
In future the organization should be associated with the usage of the chatbot known as
Toby and one of most important characteristics is that it is still learning and is also
specialized in provisioning of the information (ComputerWeekly.com, 2019). Which means it
might be associated with telling the customers regarding the procedures of using the device
abroad. The organization has been associated with undergoing massive changes in their
internal cultures.
The organizations should be associated with taking some of the best talents and
should partner with the new and the existing suppliers so as to consider the ways how they
would work in future and by rapid rate of experimentation along with including the customers
would be helping in describing the different solutions that is need in order to provide and
build support in the future. Buy despite of all this they should not be associated with creating
a gap between the execution that are being done right now and the solutions which would be
searched in the future (ComputerWeekly.com, 2019). For this reason, there should exist a lot
of bridging back along with lot of trying. Technology groups of today’s worlds are
continuously associated with the day-to-day execution along with the delivery of the future.
Prioritization would be the major challenge that is put forward while delivering the objectives
of the system along with acting as a major challenge for making good use of the suppliers in
maximizing the bandwidths. Prioritization and focusing upon the right choices are of constant
debate and this can be solved by team meetings where the team would be associated with
discussing about the things that are important and what the main focus includes.

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References:
ComputerWeekly.com (2019). CIO interview: Carlos Abarca, TSB. [online]
ComputerWeekly.com. Available at:
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/450431320/CIO-interview-Carlos-Abarca-TSB
[Accessed 14 Jan. 2019].
ComputerWeekly.com (2019). CIO interview: Juan Perez, CIO, UPS. [online]
ComputerWeekly.com. Available at:
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/450430453/CIO-interview-Juan-Perez-CIO-UPS
[Accessed 14 Jan. 2019].
ComputerWeekly.com (2019). CIO interview: Martin Hofmann, Volkswagen Group. [online]
ComputerWeekly.com. Available at:
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/450415212/CIO-interview-Martin-Hofmann-
Volkswagen-Group [Accessed 14 Jan. 2019].
computerweekly.com (2019). CIO Interview: Neal Sunners, CIO, Avis Budget Group.
[online] ComputerWeekly.com. Available at:
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/450425297/CIO-Interview-Neal-Sunners-CIO-Avis-
Budget-Group [Accessed 14 Jan. 2019].
ComputerWeekly.com (2019). Interview: Vodafone CTO juggles legacy network and cutting-
edge technology. [online] ComputerWeekly.com. Available at:
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/450423863/Interview-Vodafone-CTO-juggles-
legacy-network-and-cutting-edge-technology [Accessed 14 Jan. 2019].