Sponsorship vs Execution

In the case of 7-Eleven, Australia's first and largest convenience store chain, it has been the CFO, Andrew Manning, driving the company's major SAP implementation and supply chain management project since 1998. And, according to Manning, the financial component was not the main driver when 7-Eleven went looking for systems - it was the logistical aspects.

"It was always possible to lose our business based on the financial systems being inadequate, but we were never going to win it on the strength of them," Manning reflects.

While Manning is the project's sponsor, 7-Eleven's IT manager, who reports to Manning, is accountable for its technical execution, and Manning says the two of them have jointly evolved the way they want to use the system. He admits that differences of opinion between them do arise periodically and that, being the boss, he can always win if he chooses to. However, he prefers to resolve any such issues through the IT steering committee, to which they both belong, and then ultimately the managing director, also a member of the steering committee, has the call if need be.

Manning says that it is a common view of where systems can add value to the business that makes for a constructive relationship between CFO and CIO, and generally that is no longer in the financial area.

"They [CIOs] certainly can and do add value in the financial area, but in our case, and I think increasingly in a lot of cases, it's in the wider merchandising and supply chain areas where they can add that value. We generally agree on that and where technology adds value to the business is, to me, the one thing you can't outsource. Everything else becomes a matter of price rather than philosophy as to whether you outsource it or not," Manning says.

Mutual Support

At Perth-based BankWest, CIO Leigh Sprylan says that he and the CFO, Ross Hughes, are clients of each other. They also both report to the general manager of the finance and corporate services division in the bank, along with the human resources, legal and premises functions.

"We provide IT services and infrastructure support to Ross and he provides financial support, analysis reporting, budget tracking and the like to me," says Sprylan. "So we rely on each other as customers and suppliers of service."

BankWest is currently completing an ERP implementation that includes a suite of Oracle financial applications, supporting technologies and analytical and business intelligence tools. According to Sprylan, this is viewed very much as a business project, and as with most ERP implementations, technology tends to be the easiest part. Sprylan and Hughes' boss is the overall project sponsor and chairs the steering committee. The project manager is in Hughes' team and, says Sprylan, IT has played more of an enabling and support function in the project.

In addition, most of the technology is now in place so Sprylan himself no longer sits on the steering committee, and given BankWest's organisational structure, he says he and Hughes are not set up to go head-to-head with each other.

"We have a good working relationship and I think that being peers and partners on the same management team avoids a lot of the animosity you might find between the CIO and the CFO in other organisations," Sprylan says. "We've worked on a couple of major projects in the past and we have a mutual respect for each other's capabilities. We tend to feed off and complement each other rather than be in opposition.

"The fact that I control my own budget and have the delegation to spend within that also means I don't have to go cap in hand to Ross all the time and that probably enables a smoother relationship. Only when I want to go over and above [my budget] would I engage other levels of authority within the bank and then Ross would get involved if there was something I needed to do that was going to have a material impact on the bank's bottom line."

According to Hughes, the level of trust between himself and Sprylan also enables them to resolve quickly any issues that may arise between their areas. He also thinks there is an increasing focus in business these days for finance to support IT in examining the value that IT can add to the organisation, as opposed to just delivering infrastructure.