In this podcast, Sam Coursen talks about the steps he has taken to ensure that his company continues to derive business impact from IT. He also provides the three things CIOs should do it they want to ensure that IT initiatives result in business impact, and the takeaways CIOs can use for working with their CFOs on capital IT investment decisions.

In 2005, Freescale Semiconductor, the $5.7 billion global leader in the design and manufacture of embedded semiconductors, began rolling out an integrated manufacturing system. The company, however, acknowledged a lack of progress automating some of the key semiconductor manufacturing steps involving IT systems, such as process control. That year, Sam Coursen, the former CIO of NCR Corporation, stepped into the CIO role at Freescale Semiconductor. Armed with experience transforming NCR's IT organization, Coursen immediately launched a strategic program with manufacturing management. The business impact of IT for this program returned about $38 million to shareholders.

He says, "We began a multi-year program to close those gaps, and to become equal to or better than the best-in-class practice for each of those manufacturing processes. That resulted in substantial savings."

Bio
Sam Coursen is the vice president and chief information officer for Freescale Semiconductor in Austin, Texas. Before joining Freescale Semiconductor, he was vice president and CIO at NCR Corporation, where he held the position from 1998 to 2005. He also held other IT leadership positions at NCR. In 2007, the Austin chapter of the Association of Information Professionals named Sam Coursen as IT Executive of the Year. Computerworld named him to its list of Premier 100 IT Leaders for 2009.

Resources
IT Leaders Who Shatter the Mold - InfoWorld
CIO Values - InformationWeek
Freescale's CIO Builds on IT Foundation - Computerworld

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis