Bringing IT under one roof

by Bonny Georgia

February 27, 2001 —

As a globally dispersed company, Iomega learned firsthand that no IT division should be an island unto itself.

In 1996, Iomega's IT department was decentralized and administered by managers inside the firm's headquarters in Roy, Utah, and by regional managers scattered throughout the globe. With these regional teams operating independently from headquarters, expensive redundancies and incompatibilities had developed that undermined the company's IT budget and response times.

The desire for better flexibility, speed and more efficient decision-making drove the storage manufacturer to rein in these divisions and centralize systems around a common application and hardware platform.

"Recentralization of IT for Iomega was a long-term process change involving clear objectives and measurable goals," says David Woffinden, IT manager of strategic planning at Iomega.

The company gradually transformed its IT reporting structure over the next two years, beginning with the establishment of a single Oracle system for management of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and financial reporting. The IT process improvement team and regional IT managers began reporting to the CIO, coordinating internal transition efforts and centralization projects outside corporate headquarters. "Business process owners were identified and used as key points of contact to manage change," Woffinden says.

The last step was to ask IT managers across the country to prioritize projects and identify 50 with the potential to provide the highest rate of return.

Centralization took planning, perseverance and plenty of effort, but the result was a highly streamlined chain of command with clear reporting and management responsibilities. The IT teams include:

Infrastructure: Evaluates, implements and operates IT architectures, performs vendor management, and directs projects.

Functional: Focuses on business process improvements.

Regional: Supports remote and international users.

Strategic planning and analysis: Coordinates efforts and future plans between all IT groups, and works with the CIO to develop methods for transforming the company into a "seamless virtual entity," Woffinden says.

Only a handful of IT functions remain outside the corporate IT umbrella, including manufacturing systems, software test labs, research and development, business sites too small to support a full-time IT professional, and localized Web content, although these areas are reassessed on an annual basis.

Woffinden says the centralization efforts cost Iomega about $50 million over several years, but the benefits have greatly exceeded costs. For example, the move slashed support costs for internal global reporting by a factor of 15. A staff of two or three now handles the work that previously required 20 or more employees, and a centralized help desk provides worldwide support around the clock.

Shorter response times and greater flexibility have been a huge boost to IT managers. "We recently upgraded our ERP system to a new version level. The upgrade was successful and was completed on time and under budget," he says. "In the past, this effort could have taken at least 50% more work and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Moreover, recent improvements to Iomega's supply chain management wouldn't have been possible without centralized systems. "Our current IT infrastructure is designed for future company growth, and the time required to develop solutions or upgrade systems has improved dramatically," he says. "Centralization of the IT department has been one way we have been able to create a winning team with a common vision for providing the highest level of service to our customers."

Network World