The “Corporate IT Strategies in Russia and the CIS 2009” Summit
was held on 11-13 March 2009 at the Marriott Grand
Hotel in Moscow, for the 6th time, proving that despite the tough
times and severely reduced budgets it is vital to exchange views,
problems and achievements with colleagues.
Top industry leaders found time in their busier than ever schedules
to participate at the summit. IT directors demonstrated that sense
of humour is as important in driving through turbulent times, as
optimizing IT costs.
CIO WORKSHOP “IT Strategies
For Turbulent Times” run by Alex Peters,
a top analyst at Forrester Research, provoked
heated debate among the audience, proving that truth emerges
out of a healthy argument.
In the interactive session “LEADERSHIP PANEL: Success Strategies
in IT” CIOs defined the ingredients of the CIO career progress:
good education, willingness to take responsibility, obstinacy, and
.. a chance. Mikhail Senatorov, Deputy Chairman of the Central Bank
of Russia, noted that it’s individual’s choice whether to battle
your way through or adapt to circumstances and people, what’s important
is the result. Herman Epstein, CIO of Baltika and Carlsberg, believes
that CIO can take almost any role within a company as long as it
is of interests to him, but not many others directors can take a
job of the CIO. Therefore, CIO career prospects seem to be very
lucrative.
In conclusion the success formula was defined by all participants
in this discussion as “See the goal, believe in yourself and don’t
mind the obstacles”.
Another hot topic was optimisation of IT costs.
Providers demonstrated why it is important not to cut down on IT
investments, CIOs, while agreeing, noted how difficult to keep up
with business demands, retaining only key projects with fewer resources,
but with more efficiency.
All agreed that the crisis will be over sooner or later and IT
departments should help businesses to save not on IT, but with IT.
In a session devoted to a new trend for Russia and CIS “CIO
and IT department rebranding – how to increase a CIO’s
scope of influence and fully realise professional potential?”,
3 CIOs who already utilised it shared their personal insight.
The audience learned how in Akado Group IT department uses marketing-mix,
in particular everyone enjoyed clever classification of their
internal clients - users. Know your audience!
Dmitry Inshakov, the CIO of PWC talked how his IT department uses
marketing strategies in the company and what CIO personally can
do to promote himself. One of the suggestions was “to take people
by surprise” and he immediately proved his point by giving a brilliant
performance, singing “Californian dreams”, much to amazement and
enjoyment of the audience.
The last session “CIO uncensored: The board of Directors – I want
in” was a culmination of the summit, another hot debate, brilliantly
provoked by a chairman of this session Anatoly Tentser, Business
Development Director of “Katren”.
It was reassuring to see that CIOs have a real passion and love
for their work even in uncertain times, looking for more ways to
develop business and themselves.
Adam Smith team would like to thank all participants for making
the summit a success at this difficult period.
Yours sincerely,
Olga Kim, Producer
