October 11, 2004
ELITE Program Shows Students that IT Does Matter
In May 2003, the Harvard Business Review published an article
puckishly titled “IT Doesn’t Matter.” The piece set off a cascade of
contrapuntal commentary, as business professionals and educators debated
whether information technology is just another cost of doing business or
a source of competitive advantage.
The McCombs School of Business, with an undergraduate management
information systems program ranked #3 in the country by U.S. News, has
generally hewed to the latter point of view. The Procter & Gamble
Company, which has made information technology a company priority, has
done the same. So when P&G announced its Emerging Leaders in Information
Technology Experience (ELITE) seminar for a select group of
undergraduates, it was only natural that they turned to the McCombs
School of Business.
In early 2004, P&G Household Care IT Manager Tony Tsai and the IT Director of
P&G's Global Real-Time "Symphony" program Tony Saldanha met with Tom Shively, chair of
the MSIS department, and Prabhudev Konana, an associate professor and
director of the undergraduate MSIS department. ELITE, they explained,
would bring the nation’s top IT students to P&G’s Cincinnati
headquarters, where they would experience cutting-edge IT work through a
case study and competition. This would be an opportunity for students to
learn about career prospects in IT in general and at P&G in particular.
Daniel Domingue and Chad Kahunahana, both sophomores, were
selected to represent the McCombs School at the ELITE seminar,
held Aug. 2-6 at P&G’s Cincinnati headquarters. ELITE was an
opportunity for a very select few candidates across the nation
to see IT in action at a top company and earn an interview for
an IT P&G interview in 2005.
Along with 16 other top students, Domingue and Kahunahana collaborated
with P&G IT professionals on P&G's Symphony program. The project was
formatted as a case competition, and the students broke into several
teams.
Their goal was to develop an implementation plan that would
maximize the business impact of the Symphony program.
Kahunahana and Domingue were on different teams, and both teams
identified the same challenge:
to
ensure that the new system would help current P&G employees to continue
to migrate to higher-order work. “It needed to be backed
more as an enabling tool to allow them to become decision-makers than
just report generators and data collectors,” explained Domingue.
Kahunahana, whose team won the competition, said that his team had a
three-part adoption and implementation plan.
”First, we recommended that P&G take advantage of their core competency,
which is brand building, to build a brand around this new project,” he
said. “P&G needed to leverage these same brand-building skills
internally to bridge the gap between the IT visionaries who had
conceived it and the business managers and executives who would be using
it every day.”
In order to harness that potential, Kahunahana continued, “I designed
the Advocacy and Mentorship Program.” This program asked managers to
identify their best and brightest business analysts, those early
adopters who fascinate marketers wherever they appear, and secure their
participation. When these trend-setting individuals started to use the
new system, it created a buzz that elicited the curiosity of other P&G
workers. These first participants would also serve as a focus group to
hone the product. And when it came time to broaden the rollout of the
new system, the first users of the product would become trainers and
mentors for their colleagues.
“The early adopters could be a non-IT resource for help utilizing the
power of the new system and easing the transition from old systems,”
said Kahunahana. “They also added legitimacy to the new system.”
With that overarching strategy in mind, the team provided a plan for
rolling out the new system, with key deliverable dates established using
a framework they had learned about during one of week’s workshop.
While the case competition was the week’s main event, participants also
had a chance to attend workshops and network with both peers and
professionals. Domingue offers a perfect example of how networking is
more than just a way to add to your Rolodex. He met an MBA student
during ELITE who had worked with IBM Global Services for six years, and
the interaction piqued his interesting in consulting. “I have worked in
a couple different IT departments,” said Domingue, “but never really
thought about consulting as a career for myself. After meeting him, one
of my goals is to get a consulting internship or co-op before leaving
college.”
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
