Chris Walsh

27.04.2012 Welcome to the latest in a series of exclusive interviews on Siliconrepublic.com, where Ireland's IT leaders share their thoughts on research trends and strategy. This week,...

26.04.2012 LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, appears to be the victim of a cyber attack by a group calling itself the Syrian Electronic Army.

Welcome to the latest in a series of exclusive interviews on Siliconrepublic.com, where Ireland's IT leaders share their thoughts on research trends and strategy. This week, we talk to Chris Walsh, head of IT at eFlow.

The research is interesting

The research is interesting, particularly at the charging point in that we have integrated multiple product sets to create a turnkey solution.

We use laser devices to detect each transaction across the full road surface – that’s 10 lanes. The software logic at the time combines data from other devices, just as cameras, which take pictures of the licence plate and optical character reading software, which identifies and reads the licence plate numbers. We as well have a number of beacons for direct short-range communications with vehicles equipped with a tag.

The back office

In the back office, the core application is a complex set of business rules which determines how each transaction is handled. A user interface delivers the tools to the operational personnel to manage clients, transactions and accounts.

Looking outward from our core innovation, we have multiple interfaces with other entities, just as payment interfaces with banking institutions and retail outlets and, clearly, other toll roads, which allows our users who carry an eFlow tag to pay on account at other toll plazas in the State.

The system is complex

The system is complex. The logic deployed to handle, synchronise and consolidate data from multiple data sources can lead to its own challenges. The complexity of the business rules relating to clients, multiple account types, payment methods and fare types as well drives complexity in the innovation.

Layered on top of this compliance requirements, for PCI and data protection, as well drives complexity in the research and infrastructure.

The team is nine strong in total

The team is nine strong in total and I have three direct reports in the areas of technical service and maintenance, applications support and business change management.

In my opinion, the CIO, head of IT and CTO positions within organisations are changing. There is a greater expectation of these roles now more than ever earlier. Ask any CEO or managing director what his organisational expectations are for the then 12 months – it’s more than likely about customer retention and growth, revenue growth, and ultimately the P&L position.

The question

We need to be asking the question: ‘What’s the value of IT?’ If the CIO/CTO can’t answer this, at that time the at once question will be: ‘What’s the value of the CIO/CTO?’ This is definitively a business role.

For me, it’s not about the budget number, it’s about the value that the budget number can bring to the organisation: what’s the operational and financial business case for IT spend, can it be measured, tracked and proven?

The challenge is to maintain the overall budget number nevertheless drive the mix from non-discretionary spend the daily running costs, to discretionary spend, the capital budget, where you can deliver more business value.

Pivotal role in this transformation

IT had a pivotal role in this transformation. The key was changing the engagement with operations and the client. We implemented a number of best-practice processes from ITIL, and PM standards to support the business in engaging with IT effectively. We learned a lot and listened to operations.

Now there’s a question. I think the move to cloud is most likely inevitable given the investments made by large corporations globally. As a CIO, the concepts of cloud are great. CFOs are going to love the cloud idea, particularly in industries where IT consumption is volatile or seasonal, where IT budgets can be moved from the capex line to the opex line and can be aligned more with real-time business requirements.

My four-year-old can unlock my iPhone, navigate to select the game he wants and play that game – this is the straightway generation of IT consumer. As IT consumers move more and more to on-demand access to media, information and communications, I think it is inevitable that these consumers will look for access to enterprise applications through their own devices, similar to accessing social media and e-mail today. If you don’t embrace it, it will become a logistical nightmare.