Even though she is not a Canadian, Bernadette Nixon may have the right kind of experience to run CA Canada.
Before she joined CA, Nixon worked at the United Nations in Geneva as its head of problem management. Her job there was to run the IT help desk, but what the U.K.-born Nixon learned in Switzerland was how to work with the strong regional cultures. Switzerland is made up of a prominent French-speaking population along with an equally strong German-speaking community.Her background in Europe fortified Nixon’s belief that the Canadian operation of CA should not assimilate into the North Eastern U.S. region of CA’s business.
“Canada is a separate country in its own right, and that to me means an infrastructure that has a separate financial department with its own currency, a sell contained sales organization, and an independent marketing organization,” she said.
After deciding to maintain the status quo, Nixon embarked on cross-country tour of CA customers and employees to convey that message.
This tour also enabled her to better understand the major market segments in Canada.
From there she formulated a plan for the Canadian team that will start at the beginning of the subsidiary’s fiscal year (this month).
Part of the plan was to make significant changes to its channel team and strategy. Nixon discussed this and other topics.
CDN: Why did you want to take this job?
Bernadette Nixon: Living in Switzerland and conducting business there on a daily basis in two languages and working in two languages, I did a lot of French language business and I am looking forward to that in Canada. I have to say that I am more than a little rusty, but this job takes me back to the international market and I get a kick out of it. I am good at recognizing the diversity of the business. I was looking for a new challenge and this made sense to me. I feel comfortable with Canada. Maybe it is because the Queen is on the money. I think that there is a tremendous amount of potential in the Canadian market and we have a solid team that cares and puts the customers first. They also have an intensity to practice their craft, and that delivers value to our clients. The Canadian market place has a focus on solutions and there will be 16 new solutions from CA that we will be focusing on coming out of CA World.
CDN: Will you be making any changes to your channel team or strategy?
B.N.: Pino Blasé is the new head of channels (replacing the Chris Devlin). I made changes there and gave him responsible for global partner advocacy. It became obvious to me that our channel organization had a fragmented approach and this was not unique to the Canadian market. What we did was under Pino was combined some of the different channel groups. Pino will look after commercial global system integrators and the enterprise solution providers. It is volume and value, in a nutshell. All three groups were handled by different people last year. We needed to unify it they way it was a few years ago. We needed to go back to that.
CDN: CA Canada’s channel chief, Chris Devlin, and the subsidiary’s GM, Joanne Moretti, left the company in back-to-back departures, which left CA Canada basically without any strong leadership. Was it challenging for you to build that back up quickly?
B.N.: It may have seemed externally that it was rudderless, but it was not internally. There was a tight hand-off with Joanne and I. The biggest question on everyone’s mind was does this mean CA Canada would be assimilated into the North East, and that is why I did the road show. Canada is a separate market with its own two languages and its own currency and as such needed to be treated as its own country. From that point of view, it was smooth transition. At the time we chose not to come out publicly and bang the drum. We chose to focus on closing our fiscal.
CDN: Joanne Moretti was a high profile figure in the Canadian IT industry. Do you think you have big shoes to fill?
B.N.: Joanne was very vocal and active with customers, the press and employees. I do have big shoes to fill, and by the same token I am big believer in doing the right things on a daily basis. This is how you earn that respect from the customer and our employees. In just a short period of time I wanted to speak to the Canadian team. I was surprised how often I have been visiting them. In most of those trips I made it a point of meeting with customers and employees. It comes down to regular and effective communications and I want to be a presence. I will not be running the business from the corner office. I do not run the business remotely. I am hands on and I will be present.
CDN: Chris Devlin wanted to move CA Canada as much as possible to the channel. His goal was for more than 50 per cent of the subsidiary’s business to go through the channel. Are you keeping this strategy in place?
B.N.: Chris and I talked about Canada in its entirety. All commercial accounts are handled through the channel and that is big part why we did those channel changes. If you are going to have an effective channel strategy you need to segment. Commercial is completely channel and the enterprise accounts will have a combination. We will leverage global service integrators for complex implementations, and indeed we will use boutique players in Quebec for example. It will be a combination of direct and some influence by global system integrators, and some will be resold (by) enterprise solution providers and the commercial partners. It is a three-pronged approach.
CDN: Do you want to bring more CA Unicenter implementation services to the channel?
B.N.: The key thing is time to value and so it is important to the customers that CA Canada scope out that implementation and get the value as expeditious as possible, and from there it will be critical to engage with partners. They are ideally placed. They understand the business drivers to our solutions. Take service management for example. The process work for that implementation is significant and the enterprise partner and the global system integrators are well placed in that space to deliver value. So yes, I will be making a conscious effort to partner heavily in Canada and the North East. We will continue to do that. This year we will see heavier influences with partners on implementation services. Indeed we will be putting in place additional positions like an implementation director to aggregate partners nationally to leverage the service management opportunity to find the that partner who is the most skilled in that area. We need to be consistent across the board and with globalization consistency will be important.
CDN: Is EITM (Enterprise IT Management) going to be your No. 1 priority for your first year at CA Canada?
B.N.: You will hear about making EITM real. We’ll look at it in terms of how we manage the service, secure it and how we govern an environment. To make it real there will be 16 solutions under those three headings, and so, yes, it will be a key focus for us. We have invested a tremendous amount of money in training programs for employees, which are role based. We plan to hit the ground running to spread the word. So yes, there is a tremendous amount of focus and with the internal training it will be our No. 1 priority from an employee retention perspective. The investment we are undertaking will be significant and it has been well received from the ranks.
Comment: cdnedit@itbusi
