Information Technology isn't generally an art, but Aristocrat chief information officer Angelo Grasso likened his greatest achievement this year to a "graceful beautiful swan".
profile Information Technology isn't generally an art, but Aristocrat chief information officer Angelo Grasso likened his greatest achievement this year to a "graceful beautiful
swan".
Angelo Grasso (Credit: Aristocrat)
The company has gradually been moving its premises both here and
overseas to modern offices with all the IT trim. January this year
saw the company move its headquarters into new North Ryde offices,
while mid this year, the US office was relocated.
Grasso, who has been with the gaming company for two years, said
that that move was the task he thinks of most proudly. He led the
preparation for employees to move in, installing VoIP, video,
smartboards, but also everything they needed just to get on with
their status quo.
"So think of a swan, swimming across a lake, a graceful
beautiful swan. I don't care how much peddling was underneath, I
said it's got to be able to go off one day, come in the next day
start and we're all ok," he said.
The move was, however, by no means the only achievement Grasso
has completed in recent times.
In 2007 he implemented Avaya VoIP using Microsoft Communicator
2005 in four major offices in Australia and the US. Now he is
looking to extend that to other parts of the world such as India
and to upgrade to Microsoft Communicator 2007.
It hasn't been a walk in the park. "We did have a number of
challenges. This technology, a lot of people say 'it's fantastic.
It works out of the box'. I can tell you it was not out of the
box," he said.
Yet the benefits have outweighed the initial teething problems,
according to Grasso, who said that the company got everything it
intended out of the roll-out and probably more. Employees have free
mobile calls into the office. Anyone using a BlackBerry can pick up
their voice mails anywhere in the world free of charge.
Grasso has plans to implement Microsoft RoundTable to create
virtual team rooms which will compliment the desktop video at
workstations and smartboards in meeting rooms.
"It's got to be set up right. There are some interesting
challenges there, because it comes down to also training. Not only
do we have to set up the room accordingly we've to train the people
to make sure they make the most of it."
August saw Grasso go live with a new human resources management
system by PeopleSoft (the old one was an ADP system), which was
rolled out to 2200 employees as well as persons of interest.
Australian vendor Tripoint helped with the integration.
In another area — distribution requirements planning —
Aristocrat has rolled out a system by Infor which enables vendor
managed inventory.
"[Suppliers] can see what are the demands are coming through, they can
see what inventory is sitting in the various centres because they
own that inventory until we consume it. Therefore we are also able
to make sure we don't run out," Grasso said.
The project saves freight costs by pooling transport between
suppliers and helps keep inventory down.
"This particular project had a very good return on investment —
hard numbers where the owners are now looking to make those savings
accordingly and demonstrate those savings," he said. The return on
investment was less than 18 months.
Grasso is a stickler for hard numbers. He doesn't believe in
doing a project unless it will bring real benefits — either savings
or business enablement, and, true to his role as a "business
enabler" also won't do a project unless he has someone in the
business who is willing to be accountable for it.
Unless there's someone who's prepared to work to work in a partnership with us in IT to actually own the benefits up front, we'd rather not do it because we know there's a very high statistic of projects not working
"Even though you've got all these investments that people would
like you to make, unless there's someone who's prepared to work to
work in a partnership with us in IT to actually own the benefits up
front, we'd rather not do it because we know there's a very high
statistic of projects not working," Grasso said.
His logic is just as clear when he's deciding whether to take up
new technology. Software-as-a-service has been the subject of his
critical eye.
"At the moment you look at your total cost of ownership over
five years and you get burned at about year three or four if you
look at Salesforce.com and others," he said. "When you compare
apple to apple, then over the years you find that year three starts
to cost a bit more. Year four, year five it's more expensive. Then
at the end of five years — the professional divorce. What do you
do? Who owns the data? How do you get the data in a form which you
can go put in a new system? There's a whole heap of other
complexities, I think the market is still maturing."
He'd used the concept where it made sense in commodity areas
such as spam filtering or small accounts payable products. "It's
quick and easy to implement and the cost of ownership is really a
no brainer," he said.
Yet for the larger scale, there are still stumbling blocks such
as the US's Patriot Act which allows the government access to data
within its borders.
One new trend which has received is approval is virtualisation,
something he's ramped up considerably since he started with the
company. It just makes sense, he said, as it brings a reduction in
power, total cost of ownership, service time and allows inbuilt
disaster recovery.
He implemented VMWare's lab manager to allow R&D engineers
and employees in the casino system management space to self
provision.
"I come from a commercial background running companies and
learned IT on the hop. I keep saying well why do we have to have so
many bodies, arms and legs doing this stuff? What VMWare Lab
Manager does is give us the ability to give a set of systems to our
casino management systems people and they can create new
virtualised environments without having to come to the technology
team to set things up," he said.
Provisioning time has been reduced from weeks to hours.
Yet, infrastructure, (including implementation and software
costs) is not a large part of IT costs, Grasso said. He said that
outsourcing can address the largest proportion of total cost of
ownership, and he has driven outsourcing hard since moving in.
Applications maintenance, infrastructure and managed services,
service desk and desktop is all outsourced. Aristocrat uses Patni
computer systems for application support and projects, Tripoint for
managed services and infrastructure, NTT for Japan and smaller
organisations for NZ, Macao, Sweden and the UK.
However, he cautioned that outsourcing only worked with the
right IT service delivery model. The key was to outsource the right
things. Where core competencies of internal staff were enhanced by
the knowledge of the service, Aristocrat provided it. Where that
was not the case, and equivalent or better services were available
externally at commercially attractive rates, outsourcing was
considered.
As an example of where this tenet has not been followed, Grasso
chose the Commonwealth Bank. "They outsourced the entire lot. They
outsourced the crown jewels. They didn't have any retention of
business knowledge or business process knowledge. Therefore, the
outsourcer is able to really take huge advantage and you have an
unbalanced relationship then."
Following his own advice, Grasso has kept some services in
house. "We chose core skills. So we have architecture in house, we
have business analysis in house, we have account management in
terms of relationship management within internal stakeholders. We
have project management in house. We have contract management in
house."
Like many of his other operating tenets, such as his philosophy
of business ownership of IT projects, Grasso's service delivery
model helps him to steer Aristocrat clear of the tech disasters
many firms face. Under the surface, his feet are peddling away
under the water keeping the IT running, but all the business sees
is the graceful swan.