Stories by: Kym Gilhooly

When Tony LoFrumento joined Morgan Stanley in 2001, he was given a wide-ranging goal: to create a CRM and business intelligence (BI) infrastructure that would enable the financial services company to transition from a product-focused entity into a client-centric business. In developing a CRM strategy for Morgan Stanley, LoFrumento opted to put his resources into customer analytics -- building a centralized data mart, developing predictive models for such areas as client profitability and performance measurement, and bringing in BI, analytics and Web-based reporting tools to analyze and disseminate information -- rather than deploy an operational CRM platform.

For global companies developing business-critical applications, time to market is of the essence, particularly as they launch e-business initiatives. An approach that has worked in the past adding second and third shifts here at home doesn't play well these days, with skyrocketing salaries and a lack of IT talent defining the market. Increasingly, global companies are taking advantage of the fact that they have offices in multiple time zones and are expanding their development efforts by opening development centers around the world and staffing them with people who work in shared environments with U.S. teams.

Think you went beyond the call of duty when deploying your network globally? Then consider the experiences of Sara Lee's Lance Kull. When Kull and his networking team traveled to the Dominican Republic to install equipment and cabling in a plant in Atabo, they found themselves in the midst of a riot as they drove their minivan through the streets of Santo Domingo.

If you think finding qualified IT personnel to staff worldwide operations is difficult, try adding "must have sea legs" to the list of attributes you demand of prospective IT workers.