H
ello everyone…. If
any of you don’t know me, my name is (Blank). I am the Chief
Information Officer for (Blank). I appreciate the rare
opportunity to be able to speak to everyone as we meet
professionally and socially at our company conference. I would
like to thank everyone for being here, and especially for having
the patience to listen to my ramblings. I assure you I won’t
take up too much of you time.
The modern face of technology and
innovation continues to change at a rapid pace in our personal
and our business lives. The depth of our company and its many
divisions and operations makes some necessary changes take place
a little slower than would be anticipated in many less complex
organizations. It is quite obvious however that our size and
diversity in and of itself is cause enough to make this process
worth the wait and worth the investment. Many multiple and
seemingly disconnected functions can be streamlined in order to
ultimately save money, time and resources, and most of all save
our place in the future by enhancing our overall competitiveness
and profitability. This fast paced technological climate we are
in can be summed up in a quote by R.D. Lainge "We live in a
moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to
see the present only when it is already disappearing."
Using innovation through process change,
flexibility has become a prime criterion, since the various
businesses within (Blank) cover such a very wide range of
manufacturing situations and needs. They range from job shops to
repetitive manufacturing and some plants with both, which we
call mixed-mode plants. In addition, we wanted a “one stop shop”
for software and services that could provide support for all the
companies worldwide. Another key criterion was overall cost. We
were interested in the total cost acquisition and labor cost in
implementing and support of systems. Today, we are standardizing
all plants and its corporate headquarters on the (Blank) by
(Blank) solutions. We are consolidating the IT infrastructure
onto six hubs that will each support a group of companies. Our
objective of this project is to improve management reporting to
corporate headquarters. With this consolidation efficiencies
will reduce our labor costs.
(Short Pause)
Our Corporate goal is to build an IT
infrastructure with standardization, to manage our hardware,
software, and business applications from a single, or group of
divisions, with the least amount of labor and cost and have the
ability to share information, while reporting by division and
group.
The high point of this software
conversion is the following.
Create more efficient front end linkage to
customer and consolidate back room activities “Shared Services
Centers” like: (Note: Stress each individually and ask for
questions after each point) (In don’t know but this would be a
good place to give more information)
1. Accounting Functions
2. Consolidations of reporting
3. Facilitate global purchasing strategies
4. Consolidation of IT support activities
5. Standardized documents and forms
Over the next three years we will
complete the rollout of the remaining divisions (US & Overseas)
with a new version of the software that will take (Blank) to
next generation of full integration of seamless flow of data
within all companies. This new software will have even more
creative and innovative multifunctional capabilities. This will
most certainly have even more significant affect on the bottom
line and enhance our efficiency and presence in future markets
worldwide.
Each group represented here today will feel
the benefits of these changes over time and it is our
responsibility to bring everyone on board to accept these
necessary changes. The problem we have today is change is a hard
thing to accept by everyone, especially when the benefits are
not readily felt. The power of these software tools is the
journey into imagination for change. These events in time though
technology will help us to be a leaner and stronger business and
I encourage everyone to bring the message home to each
individual in each group while these changes become implemented
through training and utilization exercises. Result will speed up
the process each step of the way.
G.C.Lichtenberg once said: "I cannot say
whether things will get better if we change; what I can say is
they must change if they are to get better."
Thank You
