May 27, 2008

Pipeline Profile: Frank Boncimino

The CIO Perspective

Title: SVP/CIO, Time Warner Cable

The CIO perspective of our industry is one that most of us seldom see. In an effort to correct that, CT published IT Executive as a supplement to our May issue. In it, Boncimino is joined by CIOs from cable operators large and small to programmers and vendors. To read them all in their entirety, click here. - CT

Cable CIO job descriptions vary widely, from company to company. What in a nutshell is yours?

My responsibilities include, but are not limited to, setting the IT technology strategy for the company and deliver technology that are aligned and in support of our business growth and operations objectives. These include:

• Customer care solutions like desktop applications to reduce call handle time or IVR and other contact center technology to automate and therefore reduce the calls going to live CSRs

• Marketing solutions to support "the customer experience" and grow the business through new channels such as online e-commerce; other marketing tools like Unica and Customer Enterprise Data Warehouse to understand our customer behavior and develop enhanced marketing campaigns and enhanced offer management capabilities

• Solutions to grow the commercial services business selling new products

My responsibilities at Time Warner Cable also include billing system operations and BSS delivery and support; IT transformation to support our service oriented architecture; enterprise data center operations and back office network operations.

How has your role shifted over the past five years, since joining from CapGemini Ernst & Young?

Ever since hitting the ground at TWC, we have been running 1,000 miles an hour. TWC is rolling out new products and building new business at a tremendous pace. The technology support required is complex and needs to be nimble to support growth and delivery. This pace, complexity and accountability is a great environment for me and a lot of fun. (We are aging in dog years.)

Do you think that MSOs have a distinct set of IT requirements - distinct from traditional telcos and other service providers - or has the line sufficiently blurred?

It has blurred. However, the competition breeds innovation, and the MSOs have advantages to innovate in different ways, and that difference will provide a competitive advantage.

What is the best role for IT/technology consultants in the MSO world?

The best role for IT and technology consultants to play is to understand our business and technology strategy and bring new ideas or accelerators to us for consideration.

What aspect of your job do you find the most challenging? The most rewarding?

The most challenging aspect of my job is how to integrate our legacy and new technology to support new businesses and new products in a pace that supports our business growth opportunities.

The most rewarding is working with our people and the teaming required at all levels of the organization to support our operations and growth.

For several years, there's been an effort to get individual services and their respective back offices out of their individual silos and into a more unified whole. Do you see this actually happening? If so, how has it affected your job?

Our strategy is to create a service oriented architecture that has the services built from our legacy applications and new applications to support our third-party relationships/new ventures and other new applications. This strategy is maturing and is how we are keeping up with the demands on IT. Over the last few years, IT has grown to be an important part of our business operations.

What are some of the trickier IT challenges involved in offering business services as opposed to residential?

Business services have different SLA commitments, which require different investments and technology to support. The tools are also different. We are implementing new technology to support our sales executives during the pre-sales process and new technology to support the entire order management and customer care processes.