The board member perspective

The IT representative on the board does not have to be an IT person

“There is definitely a need at board level to have somebody representing the IT world. Does that need to be an IT person or not? We’ve taken the decision it doesn’t need to be and that it can be represented by anybody and in this particular case we’ve got the chief finance officer (CFO) doing that.”

So says Stefan Cassar, CFO of House of Fraser, and a man who in October 2006 was among those behind the sale of the Rubicon Group ­ owners of high street retail chains Warehouse and Principles, among others­ a deal that paved the way for his involvement in the consortium that snapped up House of Fraser the following month.

A restructuring followed and the title of IT director was sent packing from the shareholder board. Cassar assumed responsibility for technology in the highest echelons of the company, aided by two new directors ­ one of IT solutions and one of IT services ­ whose input is felt at the lower, operational board level ­ at least when the agenda requires their presence.

CIOs of the world need not unite against him and his fellow board leaders, though, says Cassar. “We don’t tend to get too hung up on titles here. There’s a whole change in culture that we are trying to effect and titles don’t mean anything really.

You can call someone an IT director, a finance director but in essence they either are or they aren’t. If you need a title to allow you to do your job then you’re probably not the right person to be doing it,” he says.

“Really, the moves we’ve made are about starting from the shareholder board level downwards to try and integrate IT into the business, to get people throughout the IT organisation liaising with their relevant counterparts throughout the business.

And vice versa too, which is probably even more of a challenge ­ actually getting the business all the way down talking and using their counterparts in the IT department so that we actually integrate the two and don’t have a separate IT department and these other departments but, instead, an actual business.”

Cassar insists the boardroom tweaking does not reflect in any sense on the business commitment to technology investment. “I think we run very good technology within House of Fraser but it would not be sensible to stop the IT spend,” he says.

“What it is sensible to do, we believe, is to look at how we’re spending money on IT and make sure the business case stacks up when we do spend. There’s no point spending money on IT for the sake of it, having gold plated systems if that isn’t what the business requires. Equally, if there are areas in IT where we can spend more money to deliver a better business solution, we ought to be doing that ­ that is where the interaction between IT and the business needs to happen.”