Skills Combo Pays Off

There were lots of reasons for Randall Carrier to jump on the opportunity to become First Horizon National Corp.'s first customer-knowledge officer a year ago. Apart from the fact that it was a promotion that would let him put to use the varied experiences he'd had during 25 years in financial-services IT, Carrier knew it was a smart career progression at a time when traditional application development is giving way to business-driven reuse of software components.

After spending his first 20-plus years in IT working on everything from credit- and debit-card systems to international money-management applications, Carrier had moved into working on front-end systems such as First Horizon's teller platform and Internet banking application. He had spent three years familiarizing himself with customer-facing business processes when he was approached by First Horizon's chief marketing officer to consider a hybrid customer-knowledge position that would require him to report to both the chief marketing officer and the chief technology officer.

It was a logical step in a career arc that had him moving toward solving business problems and away from focusing on meeting technical specifications.

Instead of trying to develop a new application that would let customers do something they'd never done before, he started thinking first about what customers would want and let his technology work be driven by those business needs.

That's just where Carrier believes the role of IT is headed--a seemingly good match with a job that lets him combine his technical capabilities with his growing business savvy. "I have more opportunities in this type of role than in the historical application-manager role," he says. "You get a broader view of the corporation and how technology can be leveraged into new arenas, rather than simply applying pure technology."

The expanding adoption of services-oriented architectures is morphing the role of IT, Carrier says, and IT staffers have to take a more active role in evaluating and building the business case for development efforts. In his own case, that means continuing to refine his understanding of First Horizon's overall business objectives, knowledge that will help him become a more valuable driver of the company's technology strategy.

"Technologists can no longer afford to be order-takers," Carrier says. "They have to be part of the conversation."

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