These leaders and their teams are ready to take on the world -- and the perception that tech's more about cost than innovation.

InformationWeek Staff, Contributor

May 22, 2009

8 Min Read

This is a fascinating but also precarious time to be a CIO, particularly one with global responsibilities. CIOs are being given more strategic roles than ever before, yet they're simultaneously seeing their budgets cut while expectations remain unrelenting, and of course the global recession only complicates the situation. CIOs are being asked to drive business change while at the same time many are trying to replace old and inflexible infrastructures with modern and flexible ones. They're being given responsibility for establishing global standards in applications and related processes, but sometimes without the organizational authority to enforce those new standards. And across the globe, CIOs are fighting the stubborn perception that IT in general and CIOs and their teams in particular are cost centers rather than creators of value and accelerators of innovation.

In this best-of-times, worst-of-times scenario, CIOs can find enormous value in seeing how their peers around the world are dealing with these difficult and urgent imperatives. So InformationWeek's Global CIO has developed a couple of projects to give you some of that global peer-level perspective:

• In the Global CIO 50, we've identified 50 of the top CIOs from around the world and profiled them and the strategic contributions they're making to their companies. We selected CIOs and their companies based on market leadership, innovative IT-enabled business practices and results, and the achievement and impact of the individual CIOs.

The Global CIO research report, "Small World, Big Opportunities," is based on an exclusive, primary-research survey conducted across multiple countries to determine top priorities, approaches, and attitudes for CIOs around the world. We received more than 2,000 completed surveys, but because we wanted to focus on CIO-level reactions, we culled the 861 responses from CIOs and VPs of IT and built our study on their input. The entire study is available for sale here.

Read all 50 Global CIO profiles

Study The Research
Our exclusive report, based on surveys with 861 senior IT executives, is available for purchase.

Network With Global Peers
Our July 29 virtual event provides a unique, free forum to hear from global IT leaders and interact online with peers around the world. Speakers include GM's Ralph Szygenda, Aviva's Toby Redshaw, Cardinal Health's Jody Davids, and more.

Among the key findings from our Global CIO best practices report are the three top priorities cited by CIOs from around the globe: working to spend less money on internal IT issues and more on external, customer-facing projects (our old friend, the 80/20 ratio); developing and refining new ways to capture and communicate the business value of IT efforts and expenses on global projects; and shifting the internal outlooks of worldwide IT organizations to reflect global perspectives rather than domestic ones.

And you'll see those themes reflected in the achievements of the Global CIO 50: UPS CIO Dave Barnes noting that UPS aircraft now fly more miles outside the continental United States than inside; Coca-Cola, recognizing China as its third-largest and perhaps fastest-growing global market, opening a $90 million innovation and technology center in Shanghai; LG Electronics CIO Kim Tae Keuk leading an effort to replace more than 80 different ERP systems around the world with a single, global system capturing 440 business processes; and more.

So please come meet the Global CIO 50. While it's up to you to act locally, we hope this package helps you think globally.

Select a name below to read their profile

Coca-Cola

New tools help teams borrow what works

Wipro Technologies

Building IT for scalable software services

UPS

Technology is built from the start to be global

Ranbaxy Laboratories

Priorities include speeding products to market

FedEx

Standard tech at hubs in China, Germany, U.S.

Fiat Group

Digital design-to-production for speed

Banco Bradesco

Testing biometrics on its ATM machines

Reliance Industries

ERP used across the conglomerate's units

Fuzhou General Hospital

IT helps serve booming patient demand

JPMorgan Chase

Integration and innovation drive his team's agenda

Reliance Communications

Leads the telecom's IT and its IT services arm

Cardinal Health

IT-driven transformation with customer focus

Serasa

Data-driven innovation key to credit data growth

Univ. of Pittsburgh Medical Center

Defies IT boundaries by driving global expansion

Xian-Janssen Pharmaceutical

Controls cost and risk, making data accessible

Tata Chemicals

Works with groups outside India, especially on ERP

Shoppers Stop

Leads IT for retail stores and heads a business unit

Eli Lilly

R&D portfolio now managed globally, centralized

IBM

Global IT plan: Simplification before automation

Boeing

IT critical to complex global supply chain

NTT Group

Focused on next-gen networks and new businesses

LG Electronics

Business needs process expert, not "technician"

GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals

Getting vaccine test data out of Africa -- faster

Sinosteel

IT key to move to services and related businesses

Shenzhen Airlines

Data helps segment customers, offers new services

Royal Dutch Shell

Innovator in unified communications worldwide

JWT

Brings innovations of global ad company to India

Bharti Enterprises

IT leader on businesses from wireless to agriculture

Eaton Latin America

IT innovation is part of growth plan

Rolls-Royce

CIO and director of business process improvement

Hewlett-Packard

After transformation, pushing to the next level

Alcoa Brazil

Network reaches mines in the Amazon forest

Procter & Gamble

IT "consumption reports" saved $3.5 million

State Street

Align IT with customers, not "the business"

Avnet

From regional IT teams to a unified, global team

Gol

Innovation's baked into the tech strategy

BT Group

Has brought people in from beyond telecom

ABB Group

Driving to make a more simplified organization

Aviva

Web 2.0 push typical of "big and agile" philosophy

Larsen & Toubro

Measures business-IT alignment in each division

Chiquita

Bottom-line discipline, SaaS believer

Flextronics

Connecting global supply chains, driving SaaS

Giant Interactive Group

Tech is central to online game company's strategy

General Motors

Rewriting the rule book for outsourcing

Taiwan Semiconductor

Experience from marketing to R&D to IT

ArcelorMittal

After megamerger, apps need consolidating

ICICI Bank Group

Leading IT and process automation strategy

JuneYao Group

Modernized call center, infrastructure, services

Li Ning

Retailer integrates design, supply chains, retail

Belide Group

Sales data drives short fashion product cycles

CIO profiles from India and Brazil were written by Network Computing India and InformationWeek Brasil, InformationWeek sister publications.

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