Savvy CIOs step up to support business hypergrowth

Supporting business objectives has long been IT’s mantra, but how to go about doing that when the objective is aggressive business growth isn’t always cut and dry.

For Jim McCullen, CIO of Century Supply Chain Solutions, doing so effectively for the past several years has meant a lot of IT work on the fly.

As a global logistics provider, Century saw enormous growth during the COVID-19 pandemic and IT played a pivotal role in facilitating that growth. Key to that effort was an accelerated IT roadmap on many fronts, McCullen says.

First was expediting a final push to move all remaining servers into the cloud for scalability, stability, and security. Acceleration plans also included fast-tracking the evaluation and implementation of new technologies, such as AI to enhance robotic process automation (RPA) and optical character recognition (OCR), as well as delivering new cloud-based data storage and analytics systems.

“We had to advance the technology to handle the growth that was coming,” recalls McCullen. “From an IT perspective, that’s one of the key factors to being able to handle growth. You don’t always know what’s coming or when it’s coming, and the ability to adapt and scale your platform when you need it is so critically important.”

Delivering for growth

Today, McCullen is creating new technical foundations to ensure that adaptability, and further support ongoing business growth. Key to these efforts are advances in Century’s automation strategy and forays into generative AI.

Century does a lot of business in Europe and Asia, and RPA has helped propel the company’s growth, ensuring a high level of service without having to add headcount, McCullen says.

The company has also started using “copilot tools,” including chatbots, which he says will be useful for “creating a gateway or transition period to take processes into a fully automated state … a lot of offshore processes tend to be repetitive work and are a great opportunity for automation.”

This will be helpful to operators in making complex decisions about shipment routes, he says. As chatbots get smarter, they can help with cost considerations and customer requirements, and bring together data to show an operator what the options are.  

“In the past, it would have taken a lot of time to document and share the value we bring to the customer in these decision processes,” McCullen says. “We make critical supply chain decisions on behalf of our customers every day,” and tracking down the necessary information used to be a cumbersome and manual process.

“With these new technologies, the available options and final decisions can all be documented to show customers how we met all their requirements, including lowering costs, delivering on time, meeting carrier commitments, and reducing [our] carbon footprint.”

One of the main issues that comes with growing the business is staffing, given the highly specific nature of logistics, he notes. “There’s still the human factor because it takes time to get people up to speed,” McCullen explains. Technology can scale, but people can’t, he adds.

McCullen has seen some companies “bet too big and then have to pull back dramatically, so we have to figure out the sweet spot of the resources we need to run the business today and meet the demands of tomorrow,” he says.

What helps is the approach Century takes to building out teams. “Even though we’re a large company, we’re entrepreneurial and give people a lot of autonomy, and that’s appreciated,” he says, noting that he has been with Century for 34 years and has staff who have been with him for decades.

“It’s a lot about creating an environment where staff feel they add real value and help customers solve complex supply chain challenges,” McCullen says. “Each supply chain is unique and special, and there’s a lot of passion across the organization to support our customers. … That is rewarding and keeps our teams excited and engaged.”

Still, staffing remains a “constant challenge, and we have to keep evaluating and adjusting so people see the value and feel valued and appreciated and want to stay with us,” he says.

As for balancing Century’s desire to grow with the challenge of keeping costs down, McCullen takes a two-sided approach. The first is having a clearly defined strategy on where the company wants to go, and the second is ensuring IT is prepared to execute.

Doing so requires McCullen to play the roles of two CIO archetypes at once: the foundational IT chief focused on managing IT infrastructure and the strategic CIO who prioritizes understanding business needs.

“It’s critically important to companies today that the CIO has a true ability to understand what the business is doing, and what they sell to their customers,” he says, “because that will help them on the strategy side in terms of what they need to be working on next.”

On the foundational side, McCullen takes a partnership approach, engaging and working with technology partners when needed, building out small proof-of-concept projects first to prove out capabilities and determine fit before making the large financial and time commitment necessary to implement the new technology into Century’s IT engine for growth.

Build for one, scale for all

Annie Baymiller, senior vice president and CIO at Owens Corning, is another firm believer in staying very connected to business strategy as a means for supporting business growth. To that end, one of Baymiller’s direct reports also sits on a corporate team to stay abreast of Owen Corning’s growth strategy and ensure IT stays aligned with that strategy.

To stay ahead of any issues that come with scaling the business, Baymiller’s approach is to be nimble, and build for enterprise use — one division at a time.

“We work hard to build the technology or capability for the business that has the most near-term opportunity or ability to gain value from that [capability] and then scale to the other business [units] when the time is right,” she says. “It’s build for one and scale for all, and that’s helped a ton because it doesn’t create additional costs.”

The strategy is grounded in the fact that, even as all companies become more digital every day, that doesn’t always mean 19,000 employees need the same technical capabilities at the same time, she says. Succeeding with this strategy requires staying clear on who needs the platform first — and building it “like it’s an enterprise platform” that could be rolled out everywhere eventually, based on need, she adds.

Even in supporting business growth, cost remains a key consideration, Baymiller says, especially as IT deploys more technology. Because of this, Baymiller must “be really clear on the value being created, so if we put a dollar in we get at least more than that out in productivity,” she says.

Sometimes business growth comes in the form of acquisitions, which has been the case for Owen Corning in recent years. There, the No. 1 priority for Baymiller’s team is to understand the security posture of the new company and make sure that anything that needs to be remediated is done before any integration work is done, she says. “It’s rigor and commitment to the strategy. We review that with our executive committee and the board and make no compromises on that.” The same is true for any new technology the company adds. “We’re relentless on our security posture so we have the right eyes on it at the right time,” she says.

Another aspect of Baymiller’s tech strategy is having a tight core of tools rather than several instances of ERP systems, for example, which also reduces cost complexity. That means IT gets “good cost leverage on the platform and then we can scale it to other users in the company and anchor those platforms to other enterprise platforms.”

Echoing McMullen, she says Owens Corning IT is working on “starting small on new deliverables so we can add business value.” If IT takes too long to gather all the requirements, then design, test, and build, by then the business requirements may have changed.

“This will help us make sure we’re not overinvesting or gold plating something,” which makes it hard to track metrics against value, “because there are so many things we could be investing in,” Baymiller says.

To better support business growth, Baymiller advises IT leaders to build connections with the heads of their business units and become part of their teams.

“Relationship building and candor are really important,” she says. “Having a clear security strategy and making sure it’s well known by the executive team and board, if applicable, is really important.” Being able to reference investments and tie them to business strategies makes it easier to make decisions, she says.

Wherever possible, Baymiller adds, “work toward getting enterprise leverage out of capabilities you have and find ways to standardize where it doesn’t create a competitive advantage for you.” Finally, she says, “Be nimble on things that do create competitive advantage so you can scale when the business needs it.”

Keeping growing pains in check with solid IT strategy and culture

CoinFlip’s steep growth curve in 2023 has kept Sebastiaan Gybels, global CIO and CISO, and his IT team very busy.

To support the crypto ATM provider’s expansion into seven international markets with more than 4,500 ATMs, Gybels and his team have been tasked with everything from deploying an international IT infrastructure with embedded security to implementing automated tools to facilitate onboarding efforts worldwide — all while launching a new digital platform.

To keep up, CoinFlip IT “proactively looks for ways we can automate solutions, optimize our current resources, and continue ensuring security for our customers and employees,” Gybels says, adding that, with employees in Canada, Europe, and Australia, his IT team also “fuels innovation by streamlining processes, fostering global collaboration and rapidly adapting to business demands while ensuring our team’s operations remain compliant with domestic and international regulations.”

All that requires listening to “the heartbeat of the organization and removing friction wherever possible” — and keeping an eye on costs while ensuring IT is doing its due diligence to protect users.

“To keep costs down as we quickly grow, I’ve prioritized centralizing our applications and systems across key departments,” Gybels says. “It helps eliminate redundant solutions, optimize our current contracts, and reduce expenses across the board.” 

Since it began operations, “CoinFlip has made concerted efforts to identify vendors that can be strategic partners that will grow with our business,” Gybels adds.

Like Baymiller, Gybels says IT leaders must enhance visibility, become more agile, and increase scalability to navigate security threats in high-growth environments. “A simplified security stack reduces the need for specialized expertise to manage multiple disparate solutions,” Gybels says. “Additionally, it provides a clearer view of our security controls and helps us respond quicker.” 

And, as McCullen notes, the right staffing mix is key, Gybels says. “You are only as strong as the people you surround yourself with.”

For Gybels, supporting business growth, especially in light of security concerns, requires embedding IT and security stakeholders within organizational efforts and groups.

“For example, with the rollout of the European operations, our data privacy manager played a key role in working across departments with our legal and business teams, establishing a runbook for the rollout in different countries,” he says. “This culture of collaboration increases understanding of business processes, aligns business needs and IT/security expectations, but also increases risk awareness throughout the organization.” 

In the fast-paced and dynamic world of crypto and startups, speed and responsiveness are critical for success, Gybels adds. “Having a responsive IT and security team that can quickly identify and resolve problems minimizes downtime and ensures smooth business operations.”