Andre Garcia was one of the many high-caliber IT Executives who was a facilitator at NCS Madison’s 2019 Miami CIO Strategy Meeting on December 12, 2019.
Andre Garcia is the SVP of IT Operations and Quality Engineering for TracFone Wireless, an $8 billion telecommunications company serving over 20 million customers. Andre and his team are responsible for all infrastructure technologies, operations, cloud services, carrier integrations, call center technologies, and quality engineering. With over 30 years of experience, he has held various consulting, technical, and leadership positions with JP Morgan Chase, Microsoft, IBM, and Compaq. Mr. Garcia has a B.S. degree in Business and has certifications including CCISO, CISSP, CISM, CCSP, and CEH. Andre facilitated the Developing an IT Innovation Culture Aligned with the Business Culture in Miami. Please continue reading to learn more about this group discussion.
“It can be challenging for organizations to make progress on innovating processes, products or services when the staff and leadership still have their day jobs to do.”
When should an organization invest in an innovation program?
It can be challenging for organizations to make progress on innovating processes, products or services when the staff and leadership still have their day jobs to do. Organizations may consider investing in an innovation program as a way to introduce a parallel work effort led by an “innovation practitioner” to provide the proper rigor and governance to the process behind innovating.
What do you feel are the potential risks of implementing new technologies and systems?
Besides the obvious risks of failure and financial loss, implementing new technologies and systems can also result in loss of shareholder confidence, damage to company reputation, loss of time invested, damage to team morale, and many more.
What systems and practices have you used in the past to measure ROI for a new investment? Are you using any now? If so, please describe.
To properly measure ROI for a new investment, it’s important to measure the financial impact of a process or technology upfront so you have a baseline cost or baseline revenue to measure performance improvement by.
What example(s) can you give of a successful IT Innovation program?
Sometimes, taking a “build it and they will come” approach can work out favorably. I believed in the productivity gains and increases in collaboration that were achievable leveraging Office 365 and Microsoft’s suite of tools. At a prior job we embarked upon a grassroots innovation project by obtaining the subscriptions, giving them to “technology champions” and giving those champions access to training and use of the products and services. Within months, we had a backlog of users interested in learning more and leveraging the capabilities they saw their peers using, which led to company-wide adoption and excitement for change. Some people get new tools right away and others take longer to get there. This wasn’t your typical “innovation program,” but sometimes just having a vision and sharing your passion with others is enough to start getting people on board and building momentum towards change.
What is one thing you would like the attendees of your discussion group to leave knowing?
I hope attendees leverage the opportunity to learn from the diverse perspectives and experiences of others attending each session.
Why have you decided to join us at the 2019 Miami CIO Strategy Meeting?
I believe listening to others and sharing one’s perspectives help each of us be better at what we do.
Register for one of our upcoming 2020 Strategy Meetings now to participate in thought-provoking discussion groups such as this one.