A Conversation with Lonnie Emard, Executive Director of the Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management

LowcountryBizSC:
What are the origins of the Consortium for Enterprise Systems Management (CESM)?  What is your mission?

Lonnie Emard:
For many years, I worked as the Chief Talent Officer for BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina.  It became apparent to both me and our Chief Information Officer, Steve Wiggins, that there was an insufficient pool of people who could apply information technology to fill our business needs.  We decided to do an informal survey across the region and found that many other organizations were feeling the same pain. To try and rectify the situation, everybody was trying to solve the problem individually.

Our vision was to form a consortium of organizations across South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia to band together to help overcome these challenges through a high degree of collaboration. We formed Consortium for  Enterprise Systems Management with a vision of increasing the pipeline of people entering into information technology  as a career,  to produce IT graduates who were equipped with skills and experience, and enhance existing professional development opportunities.

LowcountryBizSC:
What is IT?

Lonnie Emard:
The technology side of IT can be any type of equipment or mechanical automation, like, cameras, , sensors, planes, mobile devices, etc.  The information side is the systems that we put in place to pull, process and store data to drive the appropriate use of the technology. That information forms the basis for people to make decisions.

LowcountryBizSC:
Why is there a lack of IT professionals?

Lonnie Emard:
Fewer students have been choosing IT as a career across the country. There is a perception in our society that many of the IT jobs went offshore after the first dot com meltdown 10 years ago. There is  a perception that choosing a career in IT means a lifetime  in one of two areas: programming or  network administration..  There is  a perception that IT is for geeky males only. All of these are misconceptions that we need to address. 

We have to develop a broader view of IT and the incredible variety that a career in this area can bring. There are 27 different job families in IT!  Eight-five percent of the IT jobs are in companies such as Lowes, Bank of America, Wal-Mart BlueCross Blueshield or SCANA.. IT sits at the core of every busines ,financial, energy, transportation, government, education, insurance, retail and even culinary arts or forestry etc. – and is often a source of its competitive advantage. There is also the possibility for entrepreneurial start ups out of strong IT backgrounds. 

LowcountryBizSC:
How do you turn things around?  What tactics are you using to achieve your goals?

Lonnie Emard:
 We  promote IT from the classroom to the boardroom.  We accomplish that through programs designed to make IT more interesting and fun throughout K-12 education. We do that by helping companies implement cost effective ways to professionally develop their existing staff in the area of IT.

Our four focus areas are as follows.

Teach IT. For a few years now we have run a Create IT Computer Camp here in the Midlands where talented sophomores and juniors build their own laptops. The program has been so successful that we have replicated it in the Lowcountry and Upstate.  We have also implemented a program for young students called Virtual Job Shadowing, a very cool program that was put together by Microburst Learning that allows students to interactively follow IT professionals in a variety of IT careers. 

Enable IT.  Programs are in place to help companies learn how IT can help solve their problems and create business opportunities.  The Consortium can act in the role of connector by matching resources and providers to companies that identify skill sets needed in IT. 

Grow IT.  We believe there is also a clear economic development aspect to what we are doing.  By growing the quantity and quality of the local IT professionals, we will be able to attract new companies to the area and help existing companies better compete in the global economy.

Promote IT.  We are using all methods possible to get the word out about the strong need for IT professionals.

Another major initiative for us is our sponsorship of the annual Palmetto Open Source Software Conference here in Columbia.  This conference brings together all of the top talent in open source software development, a huge trend in the industry these days.  It has already outgrown its original location and is now at the beautiful Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. We have set the date for the 2011 conference. It will be March 23-25.

LowcountryBizSC:
What is your relationship with Innovista?

Lonnie Emard:
The University of South Carolina is one of the founding members of the Consortium.  We considered locating the Consortium in one of the Innovista buildings, but felt at this point in our history that it would be a better fit for us to locate in the Wilbur Smith building.  Innovista is an effort to transform the economy of Columbia, S.C. from one that has historically been dominated by government jobs to one that is more vibrant and centered around knowledge-based businesses that offer high-paying jobs. 

LowcountryBizSC:
How are you funded?

Lonnie Emard:
We are funded through the member contributions of the partners that join the Consortium: small medium and large size business, academic institutions and other organizations that have a vested interest in promoting a vibrant IT community. 

LowcountryBizSC:
Assess how IT is taught in our educational system.  Do you we need to make some adjustments?

Lonnie Emard:
IT is a young industry that started with the advent of the computer in the 1960’s. The engineering and computer science degree programs that are taught in the universities do an excellent job of teaching IT technical skills.  Business schools do an excellent good job of teaching Management Information Systems  to prepare business graduates with enough understanding to ask intelligent questions of their IT department.  

We would like to make sure that graduates understand the endless possibilities of a degree in IT and they are not just great technical people, but also great  business leaders.

LowcountryBizSC:
What is the role that IBM has played in your organization?

Lonnie Emard:
IBM is not just an initial investor into the Consortium, they have donated a large mainframe computer to the Consortium as part of its data center.  As companies such as Google have adapted server farms to implement their business plan, the mainframe computer model has tended to take a back seat in people’s minds.  But the enterprise server model never went away. In fact, it is a great fit for organizations that are involved with huge amounts of transactional information: insurance, banking and retail are perfect examples. Out of the Michael Porter study done at the early part of this decade, the Midlands was identified for its relative strength in insurance and technical services, so a cluster was formed in this area.  It is our hope that access to this computing power will provide a  virtual computing laboratory that will be a huge benefit for our partners and potentially a revenue source for us. 

LowcountryBiz:
How will you measure success?

Lonnie Emard:
Health sciences will be the highest area of demand jobs in the future.  In terms of cluster choices at schools, health sciences is the number one choice for students. They are perfectly aligned.  Compare that with IT, where it is ranked second in terms of future job demand, but was 11th on students’ cluster choice in 2009, and clearly there is a disconnect. 

One way will be to improve the career choice of 8th graders from eight to 2nd.  In our first full year, the Consortium has influenced this number and moved the needle to number 8.  With everyone’s help, we can see kids choosing this more and more.  Another will be to impact not just university enrollment into IT, but also the number of graduates.  These are easy things to measure. 

Lastly, we will track the number of IT-related jobs that are created in the Midlands through both homegrown companies and ones that choose to locate here because of the world class talent pool that we have created.