Delivering Technology Innovation: Interview with Christian P. Hagen, Principal with A.T. Kearney

In this ten minute interview with Christian P. Hagen, Principal with A.T. Kearney’s Strategic Information Technology Practice based in Chicago, Mr. Hagen who specializes in helping clients leverage information technology to increase efficiencies, improve customer relationships, and gain competitive advantage shares findings of the IT study entitled “Delivering Technology Innovation”.

 

 Delivering Technology Innovation: Interview with Christian P. Hagen, Principal with A.T. Kearney: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Delivering Technology Innovation: Interview with Christian P. Hagen, Principal with A.T. Kearney: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Christian P. Hagen is a Principal with A.T. Kearney’s Strategic Information Technology Practice and is based in Chicago. He specializes in helping clients leverage information technology to increase efficiencies, improve customer relationships, and gain competitive advantage. He advises clients in the retail, financial services, high-tech, and automotive industries.

Chris has led several global business technology studies for A.T. Kearney and is the author of nearly 40 published articles and papers on low-cost competition, complexity management, eBusiness, and IT strategy. Prior to joining A.T. Kearney, Chris traded options at the Chicago Board of Options Exchange and consulted with KPMG Consulting.

Chris has a MS in Public Policy and MIS (with honors) from Carnegie Mellon University’s H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, an M.B.A. (with high honors) from Indiana University and a B.A. from Valparaiso University.

Transcript:

Bill Cullifer: I am on the phone with Christian Hagan, Principle of A. T. Kearney’s Strategic Information Technology Practice based in Chicago. Mr. Hagan specializes in helping clients leverage information technology to increase efficiencies, improve customer relations and gain competitive advantage, good afternoon Mr. Hagan and thanks for agreeing to the interview.

Christian P. Hagen: Thanks for having me.

Bill Cullifer: You bet. You just published a comprehensive report and titled Delivering Technology Innovation, what prompted the Delivery and technology innovation study?

Christian P. Hagen: Sure, well we have been doing this study I think three or, four times over the past decade I think the first one that we did was in 1999, and as anyone knows those where a heady times in the IT space and we have tried to do this every other year since that time, and so we have gotten three or four done over the past decade. So, it’s part of just the overall path we like to take in the IT strategy market, and really understand that the direction of IT, and certainly a lot of our clients participate in this study, and we tried to do it both in the United States and North America as well as in Europe, so we leverage some of our colleagues across the pond if you will, to leverage some of their client contacts to have them participate as well.

Really the thesis of our study and they are pretty, a thesis is pretty similar, year over year, but we will like to really take a pulse of how that’s changed, is that the companies that are successful in managing their IT and understand how to take innovative IT solutions to market to transform the business are in a much better position for growth and success than the ones that are not. So, there is really haves and have not in this technology innovation space, and we like to essentially test that in the market and I think that bear through in the results we are seeing in this latest study.

Bill Cullifer: What are some of the key findings?

Christian P. Hagen: Well, I think the main findings that we’ve had over the past year is again over 90% of the responders identified IT is important or extremely important strategic differentiator for their company, so it’s really if you ask the executive both from an IT standpoint and a business standpoint is IT important, everyone is saying that it is, and I think that is very encouraging. And also important to note is that almost 85% of the executives reported that IT innovation is growing in importance. So, compared to how the IT innovation was positioned five years ago, it’s much more important for the board, for the CEO, and for the C level executives that participated in the study, I think the thing that is interesting however given all that importance that the executives are saying IT invasion now has is that the actual investment in IT innovation lagged it’s target level by over 75%, and given.

I think this is surprising, because if you read the business press innovation is really positioned as very important both from a product standpoint and an IT standpoint, and one would have expected that this, that the investment in IT innovation would have increased year over year in the last decade, but instead it has gone down, and I think that was one of the biggest surprises that we saw in the survey. We also found that there is, plenty of barriers in delivering IT innovation, particularly around IT complexity and inconsistent data. So, the complexity notion is certainly one that we’ve, that we are acutely interested in at A. T. Kearney and we do a lot of work around IT complexity to help better position, IT departments to deliver results for the business.

Bill Cullifer: Define IT innovation for us?

Christian P. Hagen: Well, we define it in a pretty clear and straight forward manner, and I think how we basically set it up is that innovation, are investments in IT that really are game changers in a particular industry, we don’t define it as it’s got to be the latest wiz-bang technology that is out there, and we have actually found that you can be very innovative in your use of IT, and in your results by using standard and mature technologies in innovative ways across your supply chain, and working with your customers and integrating your customers, supply chain and products together, so we don’t define it has how mature that particular technology, is all though often that certainly provides an opportunity to create that breakthrough in business performance.

Bill Cullifer: You know it all sounds really logical, but I wonder where the disconnect is, so if delivering technology innovation increases ROI, why isn’t the metrics in the investment there currently?

Christian P. Hagen: Yeah, I think it’s the problem that we have seen so, well we imagine that we saw decreasing investment in innovation over the last decade, one theme that has been consistent over the last decade, is just the inability to get business and IT to work better effectively, to have people the IT folks that can speak the language of the business, for the business folks to really position IT as a board level initiative and that is certainly one, one thing that we found coming out of the study that we felt was interesting is that more and more folks are defining or, I should say assigning specific positions in charge of IT innovation, and this person is really on the hook to evaluate the technologies in the market place that could prove beneficial to a particular company.

And also work with the business and IT to identify the opportunities to bring this IT to bear within that company and really set up almost pilot type environments where companies can experiment to push forward these projects, because a lot of time there is really, we are finding that IT departments are almost a barrier through this IT innovation from the stand point to business is coming up with great ideas, on how they can use technology to improve their products, supply chain and relations with their customers, but the IT departments are so bogged down in IT, their day to day IT operations and IT complexity that that becomes a real mountain for them to climb and oftentimes they are not very successful climbing that mountain.

Bill Cullifer: You mentioned in the study there is five areas of IT innovation; can you give us a couple of high levels of what those are?

Christian P. Hagen: Yeah, I mean I think that basically we are seeing innovation across five key areas, so information, creating richer more interconnected experiences with the data and really being able to integrate this data in a much more effective manner across their value chain, again from their customer, suppliers to their products and their supply chain. We are often seeing it in applications, so the web oriented architecture is a software as a service, the service oriented architectures are really beginning to take root, and while they are far from mature, we are starting to see companies really reap some benefits from those types of architectures, the peripheral advices around mobile devices, well again I think they are fairly mature, and a lot of companies are using them now we’re seeing significant benefits from select companies in using these devices, particularly in field services and how they are really getting more out of their asset base and their human capital in using these devices.

That we reference in this paper a retail gas or propylene company that is been very successful when I was transformed their industry through the use of mobile devices and other technologies, connectivity just the ability to, the broadband techno that is really creating a connected work force at a global scale, and then also finally in hardware so that virtualization and grid computing and [indiscernible] [00:08:00] form as a servicing cloud computing we’re really seeing that, that transformed help people to procure IT and really transforming some of their cost structures as well, so those are really the five areas that we are seeing and there is a bit more detail in a paper, but again these really should be areas that all CIO are working at to drive innovation within their company.

Bill Cullifer: I am heading up on advocacy initiative entitled why IT now, the purpose of this advocacy effort is to promote education, bridge some of the relationships between business industry and education, but also to fill some of the skills gap between technology workers and management, any advice or suggestions on how we can improve that?

Christian P. Hagen: Yes, I think that you know, if you look at IT and how education, how IT education particularly computer science education has been structured over the past 20 years, I mean it’s typically a [indiscernible] [00:08:49] that of math departments and been very focused on the actual I will say programming, and programming languages and what we have seen over the past I think ten years, particularly at the graduate school level is really this notion that business and IT needs to begin to work together much more effectively and this whole notion of management information system has really bridged that gap.

And now the majority of folks who work in IT, particularly in business technology have never been hardcore computer science or, program folks. So, I think we are starting to see some of this shift in education to move into not only the under graduate ranks, but I would think that we should also begin to see that move into the high school ranks as well and you know, I will given an analogy my father is physics professor and he once looked at my cousins work that he was doing as the senior in high school, and he looked at that and he said yes, we did this when I was a senior also, a senior at MIT. So, consistently seeing this move earlier this education move earlier and earlier in education, and I think I would like to see IT do that as well, particularly this notion of business technology and really move that earlier in the education life cycle, it may not be the most important thing that the first computer class that you take is Pascal or C++, it may be much more appropriate for you to really take systems design or, to take more of a database class to really understand how information can be used, and understanding how you are gathering business requirements and working with business liaisons to define a business technology solution.

Bill Cullifer: I certainly appreciate your perspective very well report delivering technology innovation and for your time today.

Christian P. Hagen: Yep, thank you very much, I appreciate it.