Hal Zesch: Achieving Operational Excellence

Hal Zesch, CIO, Valero Energy took time out recently to talk to ITO America about how his corporation keeps pace with change.

When asked what impact IT has on efficiency and what key processes should be implemented to promote integration, Hal Zech replied. 'When we've carried out integration, we utilize best practices across the company... We find a way activities are done the best anywhere in the company, and then we try to use that activity throughout the company. One of the slogans we use is: Do work one, do it right the first time and share the results with whoever needs it across the whole company.'

Zesch asks, 'Does the benefit to the company justify the amount of work done? If not, how can we make the job better?'

ITO asked Hal Zesch if he felt that SOA has allowed Valero to stay ahead of the competition by bridging the gap between innovation and standardization. Hal answered, 'Yes, and I think you will see the impact improving even more. I just looked at a very recent research study that was talking about what CIOs in their organizations going to be spending time on 2008. The biggest single area was a combination of enterprise services architecture and web services.'