Byrnes knew the company would need the services of a systems integrator, but he worried about entrusting the project to outsiders who couldn't possibly understand ACI's rather complex business. So Moore took charge, selecting the company (Creative Business Concepts, based in Irvine, Calif., which he had used before and liked), supervising its work and--most important--making sure everything it did was in ACI's best interests. For example, rather than simply accepting CBC's recommendation for an E-mail package, Moore saw to it that half a dozen ACI employees took it for a test-drive first; when they weren't satisfied, he told CBC to come up with something else. "That relationship would have been a fiasco without Moore managing it," Byrnes says.
With the systems standardization chugging along nicely, Moore turned a businessman's eye toward ACI's crazy-quilt processes. Starting with customer-acquisition issues, he created an electronic prospect-information form accessible to everyone in a shared file on the network--and detailed strict rules for using it. Now employees in sales, marketing, and accounting could instantly access a wealth of prospect information--contact data, type of plan, probability of closing a sale--simply by typing in a case number. "Most of that information used to reside in the benefits consultant's head," Moore says.
Armed with that information, accounting personnel for the first time could accurately assess future staffing needs, and data that Byrnes used for long-term planning no longer went missing. Perhaps most significant, the new system allowed ACI to track how much business individual benefits consultants brought in and closed, and to compensate them accordingly. The change in compensation caused revenues per employee to rise dramatically--from $80,000 to $110,000 in 1997. "It helps the consultants have ownership in what happens," says Byrnes.
With customer acquisition under his belt, Moore has begun working on eliminating paper and improving communication within the company by E-mail. "People laugh at me because this is a pretty paper-intensive business, but whatever paper I can eliminate, I'm going to do it," he says.
Two years after Moore joined ACI, his work is visible everywhere: not only in the freshly upgraded network and technical standards but also in the employees' ease in using those systems. (Moore did much of the training himself.) Under his guidance the company has developed security and backup procedures, something it never had before, as well as a telecommuting program. Byrnes now has so much confidence in ACI's ability to handle more customers that he has launched two new lines of business--compensation consulting and executive benefits.
Eighteen months after Moore's arrival, Byrnes promoted him to vice-president of operations and technology. As one of Byrnes's seven direct reports, Moore sits in on all management meetings and is directly involved in hiring. While he manages only one computer-support technician, he works closely with employees in every part of the business. "We are benefiting from Howard's experience, his discipline, his ability to work with people, and his ability to bring the needed change to our organization," says Byrnes. "This is one hell of a better strategy than when we just had the computer guy."
The Groundbreaker
For Rodney Weary, launching a company without an IS director was never an option. Over the past two decades Weary has founded and sold three cable-television companies, one paging company, and a cellular-phone business. He credits the successful initial public offering of one company and the easy and profitable sale of several others to his strategy of bringing in CIOs from the get-go. Investment bankers and potential buyers demand solid information such as sales reports and market analyses, he explains, which makes managing the technology that gathers such data a task of first importance. "I don't think you could make it in this business without an IS director," he says.
So when Weary dreamed up satellite-television distributor Golden Sky Systems, in 1996, he wasn't about to let the start-up go CIO-less. "I find it easier to bring a CIO in early, so they are instantly involved in the core planning and strategies of the company," says Weary. "You don't want the CIO to arrive and waste time having to rebuild a bad database."
Golden Sky Systems, now a $50-million business based in Kansas City, Mo., markets and distributes programming provided by satellite-television company Direct TV. Golden Sky creates customized packages--love sports? Get 50 channels' worth--and feeds them into customers' homes through satellite dishes mounted in yards or on rooftops. The company operates in more than 40 rural territories in 19 states. Last March, Golden Sky had 120,000 customers; Weary's recent purchase of territories with more than a million potential customers could increase that number significantly.
Having hired for the position before, Weary knew what he wanted in a CIO: a team-oriented manager with equal parts technology and business skills. "We want the IS director to fit in well in the boardroom," Weary says. "He should wear a suit comfortably and speak the language of business without getting bogged down in the technical details."
Weary brought on Eric Tucker as one of Golden Sky's first 10 employees in April 1997, just a few months after hiring Rob Weaver, the chief financial officer to whom Tucker would report. Tucker came from Garmin International, a global-positioning-systems manufacturer in Olathe, Kans., where he had moved up the ranks from network administrator to IS manager. At Garmin he had handled everything from the soup of building a systems infrastructure to the nuts of negotiating long-distance service. Golden Sky offered him the chance to participate in sales and strategy meetings and confer about acquisitions and operations. "I'm much more involved in executive management decisions here," Tucker says.
