Although Tucker has his own six-person staff and gets a say in practically every major move that Golden Sky makes, he is essentially a project manager. But the projects he manages--such as linking 40 disparate service centers with a central database of customer information--make up the company's core operations. Like Moore at ACI, Tucker is the point person for vendors and consultants, representing his employer's interests at every juncture and pressing hard for the best possible deal. For example, Tucker turned his formidable negotiating skills on AT&T, eventually cutting a deal that saved Golden Sky $50,000 a month. "I said, 'Look, we are on the road to spending $600,000 to $800,000 annually with you," Tucker told AT&T. "I want reduced rates--and the exorbitant fees removed."
In addition, having a dedicated technical strategist emboldened Weary to venture into untrodden territory: service for apartment buildings. Golden Sky uses Direct TV's billing system, which is fine for single-family homes. But the model falls apart when it's applied to multiple-unit dwellings. The problem: Golden Sky's charges are based on the volume and variety of programming received through individual satellite dishes. In an apartment building, 30 different units might purchase 30 different packages, all of them delivered through a single dish. "How do you bill them individually without putting 100 satellite dishes on the roof of a building?" Weaver asks.
You can't, Tucker explained at an executive meeting last summer, not using the billing system Golden Sky had then, anyway. Armed with suggestions from cable veteran Weary, the IS director embarked on a round-robin of conversations with contractors. He eventually chose Denver-based CSG Systems Inc.; together the contractor and the IS director created a system that customizes billing for multiple units served through a single dish and wire. "Eric has been the driver behind finding a solution," says Weaver. "It's been a long-term and complex project that we've built based on his recommendations."
Another reason for hiring a CIO: an IPO is always a possibility, and investment bankers look for what's missing from the management team, says Weary. "It would be an obvious flaw if we didn't have an IS director or plans for one," he says. The strength of the company's information systems and their ability to break open new markets is also critical. "The investors want to know that the systems are in place," he says. "But it is the CIO that drives the systems."
The Information Wrangler
Robert Rollo's business is helping senior-level executives find jobs, so his praise for the CIO position may come off as pure self-interest. But the CEO and managing partner of $3-million Rollo Associates isn't spending close to $50,000 a year on salary (plus benefits) for his own IS director just to prove his faith in his product.
Rollo Associates' stock-in-trade is detailed data on corporate leaders; its customers include major companies in the financial services, aerospace, technology, and energy industries. Two years ago growth stalled, and Rollo identified the problem as technology--both the stuff the firm wasn't using and the stuff it wasn't using well. Foremost among the latter was a 3,600-record database of job candidates and sources that employees could search by title (for instance, CFO) and by industry (say, financial) but not by both at the same time.
If the database had been his only concern, Rollo would have brought in a contractor to fix it. But there was also the Internet. During his own peregrinations on the Net, Rollo had recognized rich veins--job databanks, news articles, and corporate Web sites containing information about leaders, reorganizations, and industry developments--that he could mine for customers, candidates, and sources. He believed that Rollo Associates' ability to exploit those resources would mean the difference between "someone driving on a freeway and someone driving in the Le Mans," he says. "One person is driving straight at medium speed; the other is going incredibly fast around difficult curves without getting killed."
The Internet would increase exponentially the amount of information Rollo Associates could apply to its searches. But, like the frantic bus driver in the movie Speed, the company's employees couldn't risk slowing down long enough to explore what the Internet could offer. Rollo's business happens fast: he may receive a request in the morning for a customer meeting the next day, sending his researchers into a frenzy of data gathering. "We were just too busy with the tasks at hand," says Rollo. "We needed someone dedicated to technology."
Rollo conducted his CIO search on the Internet--the company's first foray into electronic recruiting. A notice placed on the JobTrak site turned up Jennifer Nelson, a Ph.D. candidate in institutional management at Pepperdine University, and Rollo hired her in April 1997. Nelson had little technical experience, but she had managed a sophisticated 20,000-record database of the university's alumni and business-school donors. What Rollo considered more important, however, was Nelson's history as a blazer of trails. At Pepperdine she had developed her own educational track, beginning with a concentration in psychology and culminating with a degree in "leadership"--the university's first. "That proved to us she was not following in someone else's footsteps," says Rollo, who was so impressed with Nelson's academic career that he agreed to pay for her Ph.D.
