"The intersection between what a company wants to achieve and what a company can achieve now happens in the CIO office"

Jordi Mullor
Operations Specialist
Lexington Wealth

Jordi earned a Master’s degree in Business Administration and a Master’s degree in Finance from Bentley University in Waltham. At Lexington Wealth, Jordi led the assessment, selection of systems, transition and implementation of the company’s new CRMs.

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

Many aspects could be improved and are always improving. Email and file sharing outside the organization is one aspect that still causes pains for us. We deal with many stakeholders in our clients’ relationships such as Lawyers, CPAs, etc. File sharing and security is always an issue. Dropbox, yousendit.com, and other options mitigate this challenge to some extent only.

Technology trends impacting enterprise business environment

There is no doubt social media is now part of our entire corporate strategy. We use social media as an informative channel and not as a marketing channel, at least is how it’s planned based on our client demographics.

My roles and responsibilities as a CIO

Managing “Information” has definitely shifted to an eternal internal consultant job. My role has evolved to be more inclusive in operations and long term management decisions, since understanding data trends, technology trends, and more importantly what the organization is capable of changing, has become more and more essential. The intersection between what a company wants to achieve and what a company can achieve now happens  in the CIO office.

Lessons learned and advice for fellow CIOs

The biggest lesson we have learned is to always understand that most valuable asset you will always have in a company is its people. Knowing what would make your people work better, easier and more efficient is different than changing to a better, easier, more efficient system. The balance between these two key players in change (people and technology) has to be constantly revaluated and analyzed, but never forgoten.

Challenges in technology to meet enterprise needs in 2013 and expectations

At Lexington Wealth we have radically changed the way technology fits within our culture and operations, from being a supportive operational area before, to now being a tool that enhances interaction and collaboration among staff, clients, and third parties. Having mobility and flexibility as a core value for any technology strategy conversation and having made a big shift from static in-house infrastructure to a cloud base architecture, allows our company to quickly adapt and shift to new trends and needs.

Things done to elevate IT's relationship with the business

We have a great opportunity when changing IT infrastructure to rethink how we do things. By including IT innovations and trends as part of the discussion of long term strategic operational changes, we have been able to not just streamline operations, but to completely change processes. When changing to a cloud based software for CRMs, email client software, file sharing software and other aspects of IT software that used to be locally hosted, we redesigned processes in such a way that mobility and usability were at the top of our checklist.

Thoughts on how IT strategic planning supports organization-wide efforts to improve quality, cut costs and improves efficiency in the financial sector

This is where a comprehensive use of a CRM and an extremely open concept culture pays off. We have automatic reports on a daily basis of our clients’ outstanding tasks by RMs (Relationship Managers), Advisors, and Operations Team. Besides CRM advantages, I believe human interaction is still the best way to prevent that anything falls through the cracks.