[kictanet] IT posts for full circle

[Phares Kariuki]

On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 2:17 PM, Charles Maye <cmaye at ke.nationmedia.com>wrote:

> Actually, IT on its own cannot create profits.
>

I choose to strongly disagree. Equity Bank credit's a large chunk of
it's profitability to good use of IT. Will give a basic example, Business
Intelligence. A forte of IT which enables a business to make informed
decisions e.g. Starbucks previously had an issue with declining coffee
sales. BI enabled them to figure out *which* demographic was not buying
coffee and they started positioning the lot for coffee consumption (move
them from the regular milkshake to frappuccino to cappuccino to latte and
hopefully espresso enthusiasts). IT can lead to new services that can create
profits, the CIO's job is to create these...


> ****
>
> Airtel Kenya has a network that is as good as any. But they are losing
> cash. Same goes for Telkom Kenya. Africa Online was a great idea born by IT
> experts. It was ahead of its time and never made money. When a technology is
> new to the world, it can generate profits. The moment it is duplicated and
> commoditized and for the rest of its life, it needs another set of skills.
> That set of skills is what makes organizations select people other than IT
> experts as CIO’s.
>

This is actually a failing of business, not technology. Correct me if I'm
wrong but Airtel had the best *technology* circa 2001, but the problem was
that they chose to go for per-minute not per-second billing, the CEO, not
the CIO was at fault in this case....

We have some brilliant CIO's in Kenya and beyond, the issue, in my opinion
is a HR issue (i.e. getting the right CIO for your organization with the
right blend of technical and commercial skills).

I find it ironical that we claim to be a country that is aiming to be at the
bleeding edge of technology that has no hope for the role of CIO or jobs in
the IT sector in general....


-- 
With Regards,

Phares Kariuki

| T: +254 720 406 093 | E: pkariuki at gmail.com | Twitter: kaboro | Skype:
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