CIO Insight Announces Winners of Its 1st Annual Partners in Alignment Award(TM)Award Recognizes Companies that Increase Business Value by Aligning Business & IT
NEW YORK, Sept. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — CIO Insight magazine, the premier information source for best practices for IT business leaders, announced today the winners of the first annual Partners in Alignment Award(TM) recognizing those companies that have increased the value for their shareholders by aligning technology with business strategy. The first annual winners — Capital One and United Parcel Service (UPS) received their awards at the Strategic Alignment Summit 2002: Teaming IT & Business For Breakthrough Results, which was held Sept. 18-19 at the Renaissance Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. The summit was produced by CIO Insight magazine and Balanced Scorecard Collaborative and provided strategies for aligning IT with the business needs of the organization to senior technology and business executives.
“The alignment of IT with business strategy is the number one priority of CIOs, yet achieving it has been a perennial challenge for many corporations,” said Ellen Pearlman, editor-in-chief of CIO Insight. “The Partners in Alignment Award is a benchmark for CIOs, highlighting those companies that have successfully integrated IT into their business plan.”
Capital One Financial Corporation has revolutionized the credit card industry through the use of technology. The company’s Information Based Strategy (IBS) treats credit cards as information — and utilizes technology to achieve mass customization so each customer gets the right product, at the right price, at the right time and through the right channel. Since 1988, new technology capabilities and enhanced analytical tools opened up opportunities to analyze customer characteristics and behaviors so Capital One could market better products to customers.
“Capital One’s success — we just posted 20 consecutive quarters of record earnings — underlines the power of IBS as a tool to identify and meet customer needs,” said Gregor Bailar, CIO, Capital One Financial Corp. “IBS’ strength comes from the effective collaboration between IT and the business with the common goal of continuous innovation.”
Bailar added, “The Partners in Alignment Award is testament to the talent and hard work of Capital One’s associates, especially those in IT who thrive in the company’s entrepreneurial culture.”
UPS invests more than $1 billion a year on its technology infrastructure. The company has a best-in-class IT operation that enables the daily movement of 13.6 million packages around the world, allows the rapid transfer of funds, and transmission of information that fields more than 7 million on-line tracking requests a day. Through their four processes that collaborate IT and business strategy — Customer Relationship Management, Package Management, Product Management and Customer Information Management — the company can identify root causes of issues and improve their quality and thus their success.
“Technology is a fundamental element of our strategy to help businesses around the world to achieve their goals via our global transportation, information and financial network,”
explained Ken Lacy, chief information officer for UPS. “It not only generates efficiencies in our core operations, but it has also created opportunities for new adjacent lines of business that provide extended services to our customers.”
CIO Insight’s editorial staff, Editor-in-Chief Ellen Pearlman, Executive Editors Allan Alter and Marcia Stepanek, along with Balanced Scorecard Collaborative’s Senior Vice President Robert L. Howie, Jr., determined the winners. Organizations, which can be companies, governments and not-for-profits, or individual business units or agencies within these entities, were evaluated on the following criteria:
- A clear articulated business strategy;
- Processes that foster alignment between IT and the business;
- A culture of collaboration between IT and business;
- Investment in technology to execute or accelerate the business
- strategy;
- Measurable results in such areas as revenue, profit or market share
- growth, customer retention, customer satisfaction or productivity; and
- Headquartered in North America.