VIC DATTA IS IBM’S BUSINESS INFORMATION Executive, Americas—the CIO who has been a bean counter in previous stints. Beginning as a traditional chartered accountant, Datta worked with the Deloitte group, slowly moving from accounting to strategic finance operations.

Moving with Deloitte’s operations from Dubai to London and thence to the U.S., Datta has been in the enviable position of flirting with the CIO and new technologies at various clients—with ample opportunities to evaluate the ROI models in the many projects he handled. From Deloitte, Datta moved on to work with United Technologies-Carrier Corporation and eventually joined Big Blue in 1996, with a mandate to start a financial practice centered on developing solutions for CFOs for IBM’s eastern region in the U.S. A part of this job focused on supporting the then-fledgling CRM practice at IBM, in the industrial sector. Datta took on a fairly involved role within the CRM business, becoming a principal, a leadership role that involved business and practice development in the Contact Center and Marketing CRM space .

Datta’s outside-in and inside-out role play from his consulting and IBM stints has given him a good perspective of the CRM market. “Three factors affect a successful CRM impletion: who runs it, who funds it and who buys it,” says Datta. If the CRM project runs off a “C” level desk, the executive who runs it will engender his/her flavor into the process, and other stakeholders will vie to compete or spoil.

Second, if the funding is sourced from the IT offices, the project takes on a decidedly “inward” looking flavor, where the customer-facing teams are left out of the development. Finally, of course, rationalizing the project within the company and demonstrating the ROI plays a role in the success factor of the project. In an interview in the past, Datta has said, “Let me not be shy here, I don’t think the leadership in most corporations are prepared for the work it takes to get to a grounded vision, to develop an understanding of CRM for their business/industry, or know how to deal with the enormity of the transformation program that they will have to undergo to get to a single, customized view of the customer. I certainly don’t want to be in their position, as it does require the intestinal fortitude to make the $75 to $150 million dollar investment and “change-tires-when-your-car-is-moving-100-miles-an-hour” decisions.” In 90 percent of his experience, says Datta, the CIO has used his consulting services to build a business case and justification to sell the project within the company.

With the acquisition of PriceWaterhouse Cooper's consulting practice, Datta was chosen as one of the key team members to head the integration effort following the acquisition. “IBM Business Consulting Services (BCS) is a significant part of the IBM Global Services, (IGS), and my position as the Business Information Executive was created to more adequately support BCS within the IGS structure,” says Datta. BCS outsources most of its internal IT to IGS, and the consequent relationship management falls within Datta’s responsibilities. The integration itself involved migrating and imaging over 20,000 desktops, servers and systems, simultaneously buying users’ acceptance to adapt to the new environment, all the while ensuring “business as usual” work continues and the consulting practitioner is well supported.

Datta’s new role demands managing the relationship between the provider communities—both the application development teams and the infrastructure divisions, making the on-demand services a reality within the BCS. For example, if a client—say a leading banking firm—needs a new application to be implemented, a customized demonstration conceived and generated at IBM’s Lexington datacenter would be made available to the client and management team. The demo would then be saved in a flexible repository. In the past, the corporations did not know where to look for such a facility. But with the on-demand, utility-based environment within IBM, the fluidity of dataflow and available visibility of past archives delivers a world-class speed of service.

With PWC expertise made available in-house now, there is a culture change in IBM, says Datta. “You need not be part of any particular tribe now,” laughs the Executive. The structure is now very flat and information flow within the organization itself has generated larger brush-stroke changes. Many think that outsourcing and on-demand are synonymous, says Datta. “They are not. While outsourcing is a process of sending out for help, on-demand is really capitalizing on consulting and improving upon the integration pieces to deliver agility that has never been seen before.”

As a CIO who has seen it from both sides—he has hired IBM in the past to execute projects—Datta insists that the way to build a client relationship is by developing testimonies. “There are numerous ways of portraying ROI, but the only believable one is from talking to my past clients,” says Datta. IBM, he says, encourages this client-side homework by asking prospective clients to speak to past clients. “Sandbox environments, where we can demonstrate the process maturity and successes, have helped IBM make bigger inroads in the business,” says Datta.

There is consolidation waiting to happen, says Datta. “Products haven’t given a 100 percent success rate, and the larger fish are waiting,” warns the CIO. On a parallel note, he outlines a market where the mid-sized vendors are bound to suffer. “There continues to be pricing pressures that will hurt the marginal competitors. It is only the very large and the niche players that will survive and do very well.” Stick to one DNA, advises Datta, which the client appreciates and understands. “They should know that you are going to be around and can deliver constant value.”