When Geoff Lazberger was appointed as the first CIO of boutique funds manager MFS Group in January this year, the company’s CRM system consisted of three separate applications, one of them a spreadsheet.

“Our previous information systems were a mixture of Goldmine, Access and Excel, so a primary goal was data consolidation on Microsoft SQL Server,” Lazberger said. “Implementation of the new CRM application was one of the best projects I’ve ever worked on. From decision to roll out took 12 weeks.”

Lazberger told Computerworld stage one, valued at $500,000, of the CRM project worked for three “key reasons” which may also explain why some CRM projects “start but never finish”.

“We locked down our requirements specifically, picked the right product and vendor, and we chose the right people to work on it,” he said. “We picked a good core CRM product from Axcess Consulting Group, which is big in the financial services sector, and co-branded it. The investment side of the project was completed on June 28 this year.”

Interestingly, MFS decided against calling the application “CRM” so as to make it more appealing and thus relevant to the business’ needs. Home Of MFS Electronic Records, or Homer, became the new name in deference to The Odyssey and a path to the future.

“We see Homer evolving into one repository for our core business information including HR and asset management,” Lazberger said. “We were realising the value of the new system in the first week. It had a non-techie name, our own brand, and we set up a “sandpit” environment that is separate to production so new employees can be trained on it.

"The board can see real value in it as we don’t need datawarehousing or middleware. All the integration work was done in-house with the help of the vendor.”

MFS Group began four years ago and since then has grown from $50 million to $1.5 billion in funds under management, from 1000 investors to 13,000, and 14 staff to 140.

“This year there were a lot of infrastructure projects. We’ve done a typical one year to 18 month project in six months to prepare the business for growth and to provide remote access,” Lazberger said.

“Servers and memory were four years old and the software needed upgrading, which was not just linear as it impacted the business.”

MFS Group’s infrastructure consists of eight primary servers running Citrix Metaframe and Exchange 2003.

Lazberger believes the CIO’s role is to access the buffer between technology and business with the prime trait being able to introduce strategy into IT.

“The role changes but the fundamentals haven’t in the 25 years I’ve been in IT,” he said. “I constantly go around saying that if we don’t have a strategy we don’t have a plan. For projects the IT team then becomes a ‘murder squad’ on the plan.”

Lazberger’s background includes Internet business manager at Morgan & Banks, IT roles within banks and government, and running his own business for 12 years.

“The CIO is given trust by management and has the most influence over IT within the organization,” he said. “There is no such thing as a temporary solution in IT as it will become a legacy and all projects must be part of a big picture.”