Empowering its 37,000 employees with the tools to do their jobs
well is the main aim of Reed Elsevier's vice-president of
information systems and technology alliances. Ross Bentley talks to
Computer Weekly's guest editor Nigel Stevens.
Reed Elsevier is a £5bn global information provider and publishing
company made up of four distinct business areas - legal, science,
education and business-to-business publishing. As well as owning
strong brands such as Science Direct Harcourt, Ginn and
Butterworth/ Heinemann its publications include international
medical journal The Lancet, the legal profession's premier
information source Lexis Nexis, New Scientist and Computer
Weekly.
The man tasked with the responsibility of empowering the 37,000
employees around the world with the tools and technologies they
need to undertake their jobs effectively is Nigel Stevens. He is
responsible for, amongst other things, technology alliances and the
organisation's Platform 2000 project, which will see Reed Elsevier
deploy Microsoft Windows .net Server and Office XP on XP across
most of the business by 2004.
Stevens, whose full job title is vice-president of information
systems and technology alliances worldwide, also has to cope with
the additional complexities that come as a result of Reed's
acquisition strategy and the diversity of its individual
businesses.
"In a strategic position such as mine, you must present a vision,"
he says. "In fact, you must sell that vision in order to get the
funding you need to do the things that need to be done."
Stevens says that although IT is the "absolute lifeblood of the
company", it is still seen by many as an "overhead, not an
opportunity," and although things are changing, winning mindshare
is a slow process. He says, "For example, someone said to me
recently, 'all you are doing is giving my secretary more tools so
she gets even more confused. Doesn't she have enough
already?'"
Employees
In fact, giving employees the tools to do
their job is his biggest challenge, he says. To clarify his vision,
Stevens divides his task into three segments: providing the
appropriate technology strategy for employees; doing the same for
customers; and product delivery.
"The employee architecture is always understated in importance," he
says. "When we talk about big implementations we think of complex
financial or ERP [enterprise resource planning] systems such as SAP
or Oracle.
"There is no similar song and dance about the client and server
arena - people take it for granted that it is there to allow people
to do their job and that's just the point. While small groups use
SAP or Oracle applications to service their functional
responsibilities, everyone uses Microsoft Office and e-mail every
hour, every day," Stevens says.
"If you then consider all the add-ons required in this space -
external and personal firewalls, other utility licensing costs,
remote access and secure authentication and now things like
peer-to-peer videoconferencing there is a lot to consider and if
you do the math, the overall cost to an enterprise is massive."
He continues, "In the 21st century [the desktop] should be
approached far more strategically and holistically. I think we
still have a hangover from the time when we called our desktop our
'personal computer' - people still sadly think 'It is mine - it's
my personal computer' rather than seeing it as a portal hung off or
transparently connected to the enterprise network and the Internet
beyond."
Stevens says his company spends £80m to £100m a year on operating
costs for the current desktop environment for all 37,000 employees.
"People don't see end-user computing on that scale," he says. "For
example, you can buy and run a mainframe for £5m to £10m and people
see and accept the initial investment and ongoing costs. However in
reality organisations need to realise that servicing the employee
base with what appears to be £1,000 utility clients actually works
out to be a much bigger overall cost."
Currently, most of Stevens' time is being devoted to the Platform
2000 project, co-ordinating a multinational global team involved in
the design and implementation of Microsoft .net and Microsoft
Windows XP. ".net and Active Directory will be central to employee
architecture and we will be running Office XP on XP with Exchange
2000 as our core e-mail backbone," he says.
The business goals are:
- Globalisation - "We are looking to globalise the way we
think about and run our employee architecture."
- Standardisation - "The complexity of the existing
architecture and inter domain trusts leaves plenty of room for
improvement. We want to have a far more standardised and simplified
architecture."
- Flexibility - "We want to be a lot more flexible in
future migrations to the next generation architectures. With this
new architecture and the way it is deployed, we are looking to be
able to migrate to Longhorn and Blackcombe - the codenames for the
next generation Microsoft platforms in a six- to 12-month
timeframe. This is a fraction of the cost we are currently faced
with to move forward and keep us on the latest versions of
software."
Stevens says the facilities that this platform offers the company
are key as it will allow a far more seamless integration and
transportation of the corporation's content which comprises many
terabytes of general text, rich content, multimedia, video and
images etc - facets that are vital for a global information
provider to stay competitive in the 21st century.
"We recognise the issues with a Microsoft platform but equally we
have selected this as the best investment for our employee
architecture. We are part of the .net joint development programme,
which allows us access to Microsoft's new releases as soon as they
become available and this allows us to stay ahead of the curve and
exploit any new features.
"Moving forward we want to implement a standardised architecture
with a design, especially with Active Directory, that comprises a
single forest and can be deployed by each of the business units."
So what about Active Directory? "It scares the hell out of me,"
says Stevens. It puts your entire corporation in one place. That's
a good thing and a bad thing. You just have to have your eyes wide
open from the start.
"If Active Directory gets corrupted, there's a possibility that
37,000 employees won't be able to log on. To put this right would
mean a significant outage. They say it won't happen but you need to
know what you would do and how long it would take if it does.
"Microsoft still has a lot to do with Active Directory but with the
.net release there will be a greater take-up and it will gradually
become the cornerstone of the business - not just for the employees
but for customers and suppliers too. Everything could end up in
Active Directory or integrated to it in some way making its
reliability business critical. We are ensuring we have the
organisational structure to support it.
"You could be very cynical and say that Active Directory is the
next phase in the Microsoft plan. It has got us with Windows, NT
and the desktop and this is its next move to dominate the
enterprise. But we are going in with our eyes open, we've made a
decision to invest in Microsoft's platform and want to capitalise
on it."
Customers
For Stevens, Reed Elsevier's basic customers
fall into two categories: subscribers and advertisers. And to
define his strategy for providing these with a high level of
service he reluctantly uses the "c" word.
"CRM [customer relationship management] is what it is all about,"
he says. "But first we need to define what that actually means.
Within the organisation we have different business groups which
define customers differently and have differing processes for how
they work and interact with them.
"Of course there is a choice of CRM systems. Siebel has some deep
vertical features and is renowned for its sales modules. The
overall Oracle portfolio can incorporate lots of different aspects
while some niche players offer cheaper alternatives."
But for Stevens the crux of CRM is not about the system, it is
about the data architecture and the definitions assigned to that
data.
"Systems selection is a red herring. It is the data architecture
that is key - the fields that define certain key aspects of that
customer need to be the same everywhere across all business units
but also we need to decide where we are going to standardise and
where we are going to differentiate.
"Today companies must understand that each customer is an
individual. They need to know what each of their customers is about
and build up an appropriate knowledge base of this information," he
says.
"Our mission statement is to be the indispensable information
provider to educational, science, legal and business
professionals," he says. "This defines what we are looking to
achieve, to understand each customer as a person. We need to be
more granular and find opportunities to sell across our portfolio
of products.
"For example, we provide legal information but at the same time we
are world-leaders in publishing information about the aviation
industry. We need to be able to locate legal professionals who like
flying and add a broader level of value to those individuals - that
kind of thing."
Products
For Stevens the same granular approach to
customer service must be adopted when considering the delivery of
timely and relevant information. "Information products are what we
are all about," he says. "Without them we don't have a business and
technology is vital in enabling us to deliver focused and reliable
information to the right people in a timely fashion."
He says personalisation and accurate search technologies are
key.
"If the information is not reliable and our customers can't get to
it quickly they will go elsewhere. This means we must tag and index
in an appropriate fashion because typically there can be thousands
of variations on a particular theme," he says.
"This is true whether we are talking about employees, customers or
products - everything needs to be tagged the same and consistently.
So you only give people what they really want and avoid information
overload and general spam. And in this age of the mobile worker and
handheld devices we have to be able to deliver it to them whenever
and wherever they ask for it."
Stevens' tips for enterprise success
- There is a lot of focus on system selection but getting the
data architecture right is key. For example you may standardise on
PeopleSoft as your ERP system across all your business units but if
the data fields are different within those applications - in effect
you still have multiple different systems
- Customers are individuals now - in the past this was not the
case, but it is now reality and it must include the small spenders
as well as the big budget holders
- In our space - the product delivery is key and it is
technology-driven, permeating the whole environment. We have to
show that we can manage content reliably and securely. We need to
be able to take content in, aggregate and track it and then
re-purpose it in a timely and cost-effective fashion
- Historically, the employee architecture has focused on cost and
its continued reduction while CRM has been regarded as being
project orientated with costs and returns on investment and the
products have been seen as revenue generating. They are all revenue
generating and should be viewed as such.
How to manage supplier relationships
- The old salesman routine doesn't work any more and suppliers
realise that too. We are all more savvy than we used to be. It is
much more about them truly understanding what my business wants.
What do I want to purchase and why?
- Trust plays an important part. You have to treat a relationship
with a supplier like a marriage. There is a courting period and if
you get on well - you'll be in bed and married before you know it.
But that is only the start. Like a marriage it will have its ups
and downs, if you don't work at it - you will end up divorced
- It can be easier to deal with the big suppliers because they
are set up to negotiate big deals but at the same time it can be
difficult to navigate the organisation and you can get lost in the
lower levels of the overall framework
- The small niche players can sometimes be a little naïve but
they are more flexible and entrepreneurial
- You have to understand where the sales guy you are dealing with
sits in the whole of the organisation - has he got the authority to
guarantee what he promises? In negotiations I want to have the
global account guy in there from the start so he understands what's
been sold and what he's expected to deliver.
Company profile
Reed Elsevier has
- 37,000 employees worldwide
- 22,000 people based in the US
- 13,000 people in the UK and Europe
- 2,000 in the rest of the world
- Business-to-business publishing employs 12,500 people
- Lexis Nexis Group - 13,000 staff
- Science - 6,500 employees
- Education (Harcourt) - 5,500 to 6,000 employees.
Nigel Stevens: Job experience
Nigel Stevens has 20
years' experience in systems, project management, manufacturing,
distribution and engineering as a line manager and consultant. He
has a doctorate in mechanical engineering from Liverpool
University.
Stevens began his career as a development engineer with Rolls-Royce
and worked for a number of companies including Air Products,
Coopers & Lybrand and Unilever, before joining Reed Elsevier.