"Do not be IT people supporting the business, but business people supporting IT"

JESSE STRITTMATER
VP / CIO
Life Fitness, A Brunswick Company

Highly skilled, and experienced IT/IT Management professional Jesse has over 24 years of technology, and technology management, consulting and call center experience. His extensive background of implementing and leading technology initiatives includes Help Desk, LAN/WAN, Telecom, Data Warehouse, DBA, Development, and IT Management. He possess the ability to plan both tactically and strategically and a proven track record of team building, both from scratch and to improve or grow.

The areas in business environment where solutions do not yet exist or not up to the mark,
and which if existed, would've made job easier.
• Global ERP Maintenance
• Wireless (again, personal v. corporate liability)
• Sales Force Management / Quoting to Order CIO|176|Outlook 2 0 1 3

Challenges in technology to meet enterprise needs in 2013 and expectations.
• Wireless – Corporate Liable or Personal Liable Managing wireless is low value
• BYOD (Bring you own device) iPads, tablets and the like are already here, how do we manage?
• Large Global ERP – maintenance an growth, is one global instance viable, agile, practical??
• Business / IT Project Governance –  how do we do the right stuff, with low/no resources?
• Continue to grow Business Intelligence – Analytics, not just tactical. Expectations
• Provide cost effective options
• Show flexibility in support models
• Be AGILE
• Assist in ease up maintenance and  update
• Be a partner

The areas in business environment where solutions do not yet exist or not up to the mark, and which if existed, would've made job easier.
• Global ERP Maintenance
• Wireless (again, personal v. corporate liability)
• Sales Force Management / Quoting to Order

Technology Trends Impacting Enterprise Business Environment
• Phase out of desktop PCs (desk / laptop price points, tablets, smartphones)
• Remote workers, Telecommuting (VPN, ShoreTel, point to point VC, Virtual Call Centers)
• Telepresence – Manage a call, where  ever, on what ever
• Convergence of Cloud based apps with VoIP (ShoreTel, Oracle and SFDC)

My roles and responsibilities as a CIO
• In 2008 when the world turned upside down, CIOs went from trying to be strategic, to essentially survival mode. Keep the lights on, consolidate, do more with less. As things improved, we again had the opportunity to focus on projects and initiatives that were more value enhancing for the business, but due to costs, we could not quite reach that strategic partner goal. I have always said to my team, ‘we should not be IT people supporting the business, but business people supporting IT’ Put simply, understand the business, and then drive technology that enables that business. That is what we are trying to get back to.

Lessons I learnt as a CIO that can help you
• Engage the business early on all crossfunctional initiatives (Large ERP upgrades, WAN, Telecom.)
• Over Communicate. Let them delete extra emails, better too many than not enough.
• Be forthright. On dates, good news, bad news, all of it. If a project delay is the right move, delay. If going is worth the risk, then go.
• Demand correct environments, no shortcuts. Have a Dev, Test, QA an Prod environments.
• Test, test, test, and test again.
• Let the business drive priority. IT led business initiatives eventually die and IT gets blamed. (excluding necessary infrastructure, that we do) Do not have your own agenda. Your agenda is the business’ agenda.