Taking care of business

Simon Gould-Thorpe, chief information officer of Honda New Zealand, defines himself as such a person, taking risks to boost the bottom line of the business.

“As CIO you get to wear different hats and one of the hats that I’m beginning to wear is corporate entrepreneur,” says Gould-Thorpe. “And if it is not a hat you wear already, you may want to consider adding that to your wardrobe.”

As Gould puts it, an entrepreneur is a person who organises and manages any enterprise usually with considerable initiative and risk.

Though, he says one of the things that he is doing slightly different from his roles in other companies is that at Honda, each project is taken as a business venture.

“That involves a lot of creative links and initiative that all incur an element of risk, which also is an important element of the venture part of it.”

Simon says he likes to play down the risk part of the CIO’s job, but it is ever present and risk does temper his decisions.

“Over the years, I have learnt to take risk as just another factor and not something to react to emotionally. Every project is undertaken as a business venture, and all that entails. Keep in mind there are very few IT-only projects, most are business projects and IT is just one facet,” he says.

“With every business venture you weigh the risks against the possible gains. It isn’t about cost versus benefit, because that equation assumes a successful completion of the project, which we all know is not always the case. So again, it comes down to risk versus possible gains. Risks include the financial loss, but more often than not, the risk is what project are you not doing, to do this one,” he continues.

Honda New Zealand’s ICT systems play a critical role in the company’s success. Agile technologies, he says, support and rapidly deliver business process change.

The company develops and supports its own ERP/CRM system in-house, employing a unique development cycle that involves a rapid succession of “greenfield” projects from scratch.

While this might seem risky, he says such a system actually helps minimise the risk and delivers projects successfully.

“The IT development model at Honda is one of moderate risk, but we know what the risks are and we weigh them against the benefits,” he explains.

A career shift

Gould-Thorpe had majored in organic chemistry at the University of Auckland and also worked as a laboratory technician and at a printing press. He then went on his OE, traveling and working in Europe for 18 months. While overseas the Sinclair ZX81 and Atari 400 PCs were released.

Gould-Thorpe bought an Atari, sparking his interest in IT. Returning to New Zealand in the early 1980s he went back to school, securing a certificate in data processing from the former Auckland Institute of Technology, now AUT University.

In his fourth and final year, he worked at NZI Life, developing and re-writing a series of programs “no-one else wanted to touch”. In the following six years Gould-Thorpe worked his way from junior programmer, through several roles, to that of database administrator.

In 1994 he joined Tegel Foods as applications development manager, just as the company had suspended an ERP project. He was brought in to help devise a roadmap to successfully implement the project, a process that took six years, though the actual implementation itself was just 18 months. “The first implementation failed because all the business processes around the country were not aligned, so success was not possible. We had to fix up the systems and processes and consolidate all the regional databases into one. They were all reliant on reporting and no two reports gave you the same answer. We implemented a data warehousing solution on top to address that.”

He also helped the IT manager implement Movex ERP, a project done internally rather than externally. “The key thing I learnt is that the biggest gains can be made by keeping the project management internal. You are closer to the business, you understand the business challenges better, you are closer to understanding the constraints and where the problems are,” he explains.

A flat management structure

Gould-Thorpe joined Honda New Zealand in 1999 as IT manager. He was attracted by the autonomy of the post and the flat management structure. He reported directly to the managing director, as did other department heads, but still took charge of the applications team.

He was given a brief to implement radical changes in the ICT department. The managing director, he says, believes that the company’s IT systems are key to its success, through having an agile system that can drive and cement rapid business change.

The primary goal was to deliver the best software solutions for the business. The infrastructure team is focused on providing the framework to deliver and support these applications.

Honda New Zealand is autonomous from its Japanese parent. This freedom allows him to make a difference in new selling methods, operations and software development.

Gould-Thorpe says that Japan does the R and D for automobiles, while Honda New Zealand spends its R and D on software development.

“Having come from an applications development background, I realised the importance of freeing up the developers to do what they do best. Our systems’ development lifecycle is different to everyone else.

We start off with a new project. Choosing the development team is a collaborative process between the CIO and the development team. For very large projects, I will act as project manager, otherwise one of the project team will project manage it,” he explains.

“They take it through the full systems development lifecycle to the project, all the way through to user interviews, prototyping, development, testing and go-live and after-implementation support. All are done by the same team. We have no specialist business analysts, testers or technical writers. The business units take responsibility for the documentation.”

Gould-Thorpe estimates such a policy means the Honda IT team members enjoy 80 per cent development work, 20 per cent maintenance; a proportion that is said to be the reverse in some other enterprises.

A ‘greenfields’ philosophy

Honda also uses an object-orientated philosophy whereby a new subsystem is built every time, but this can be built from existing platforms.

“We treat each new project as a new venture and we select the project team.

“Not so much like Dragons’ Den, perhaps almost like more of a Mission Impossible. You pick your project team and architecture for each project as we embark on it early on,” he says.

“Each potential project goes through an approval process, generally a discussion with the whole management team and we see if there’s a business case. If approved, the project will involve a basic rewrite from scratch, using the best technologies and cutting out old systems, including the removal of ‘cobweb code’.”

The benefits, he says, are happier workers as their projects are more exciting, new and challenging. Because it’s a new project, there are better financial benefits on depreciation allowances. Such jobs, typically completed within three months, also allow ‘instant gratification’ for everyone concerned.

Gould-Thorpe says this ‘greenfields’ philosophy primarily came from his staff. His teams, he says, are also autonomous, with Honda’s flat and open management system allowing quick decision-making. This completely immersive involvement provides faster development, a better quality product and deeper commitment from development staff.

“Two to three times a day, I will wander around and check on progress — ‘management by walking around’. It’s a combination of strategic management and operational management.

“It’s about getting the balance right. You hear IT managers say they work X hours a week. I rarely work more than 45 hours a week. You have to be careful not to get too bogged down in the detail, you need to keep an eye on the strategic direction. You don’t want to lose the sense of fun,” Gould-Thorpe advises.

Honda, he says, is proud to have all applications on one platform, an IBM i520 (AS400). This includes its ERP/CRM system, the trade website, public website, Lotus Notes mail and calendar. The development architecture is usually RPG/ILE and Java. Web applications use Tomcat and Apache and are bound together using web services.

The result is an application development infrastructure that is far more agile and productive. “Our development team is producing more modular, reusable code; along with the ability to prototype, unit test and develop full blown sub-systems far more efficiently than before.”

Such development with its rapid lifecycle coupled with the freedom, makes for an exciting and fun work environment. It also allows his team to show creativity, something Gould-Thorpe values as a developer.

Through all these, he has to weigh up issues of risk and failure. Though he says these methods have resulted in just a few failures out of 20 projects.

As for the factors of entrepreneurial success, he says: “A lot of times I think laterally, as well as having a talented team. I’m just one cog in the wheel!”

Fairfax Business Media