No fear

Chaos is part of the landscape for Johnny Sy. Barely three months in office as chief information officer of ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp., Sy is right in the middle of implementing the company’s ambitious Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution via SAP.

Taking up the project from his predecessor, Sy oversaw the SAP cut-over last June, completing the run of required systems tools in the areas of accounting, financial management and procurement.

"We should have a stronger grip on our financial management parameters. It’s making sure that we capture all the essence of revenue as well as all the essence of cost. At the end of the day, we should have a faster process of capturing these and generating the financial reports. We are targeting to close our financial reports four days after the end of each month," Sy said.

He cites other benefits such as eliminating paper and related time delays. ABS-CBN has established close linkages with its suppliers and is participating in the electronic procurement site, BayanTrade DotCom, Inc.

"All our purchase requisitions are done online. That means very strong inventory management. As a consequence, our people can focus more on analytics and planning and making sure we respond to business changes rather than capturing all the detail on paper from the different sources," he said.

The second phase of the project is the SAP rollout in ABS-CBN subsidiaries such as Studio 23, ABS-CBN News Channel and ABS-CBN International. Sy expects to complete this phase by the first quarter of next year.

The third phase will involve rolling out in the other organizations in the Lopez Group’s Communications Sector (CommGroup), of which Sy is the concurrent CIO.

Sharing services

Sy calls the project implementation an "evolutionary process" and, over time, expects to migrate towards group-shared services. Given the multiple lines of businesses of the CommGroup, there are common functions like accounting, information technology and logistics.

"When you talk of IT, each company has its own data center. And that means we have equipment in the group that is probably not 10% utilized and doing the same thing across every single company. There are economies of scale in server consolidation. We can save money on real estate and operational expenses by having them in one location rather than in having them in multiple locations. It will be easier for us to back it up, easier for us to ensure that support for operations is sufficient. And we save a lot of money for the whole group–money that can be diverted to actual better investments to get revenues growing for the group. That’s the direction we will ultimately take. SAP will be the cornerstone of that."

Sy believes the project will help ABS-CBN and other CommGroup companies which are growing their businesses to avoid unnecessary costs while maintaining the high level of services their customers expect. He hopes to strengthen shared services in the next two to three years.

Bare qualifications

As a student of electronics and communications engineering, Sy headed the De La Salle Computer Society for three years. But he says CIOs are not necessarily technology persons.

"He could be a technology person who has a strong business background. Or he could be someone who understands technology and is able to leverage that for business. He should know how to run a business. He must know how an investment in technology will benefit his organization. Otherwise, you’ll have a mismatch. IT investments are huge and you don’t expect businesses to buy toys."

Sy heads a complement of 50 at ABS-CBN’s IT department and another 15 for the CommGroup. He believes being open to learning is the key to success in the field. "You have to welcome-non-stop learning. What you know today could be obsolete tomorrow. You must have a healthy attitude towards change. Don’t fear change. Don’t fear stress. Don’t be overwhelmed by chaos. It’s all part of the landscape.