Partnering With the CIO: The Future of IT Sales Seen Through the Eyes of Key Decision Makers

The Vice President of Transparency

When you’re selling IT to a big company such as First Data Corporation, you will meet lots and lots of people. But you might never meet Mike Blake.

Mike Blake is the senior vice president of IT finance at First Data. Companies such as First Data are increasingly hiring people like Mike Blake to ride herd over their IT spending.

But Blake wasn’t hired to cut costs. He was hired to measure value. Blake represents a new breed of IT executive: the techie with a degree in finance.

“My number one responsibility is bringing financial transparency to the IT organization,” Blake explains. “My job is taking this big black hole of IT expense and putting it in a cost accounting framework.”

Blake is a certified public accountant. He also holds an MBA from the University of Chicago School of Business. For Blake, real transparency begins with good accounting.

Once you’ve agreed to approach IT spending with the mind-set of an accountant, it immediately becomes easier to identify the true costs of specific applications and services within your IT portfolio.

“Sometimes this transparency stuff can be pretty scary,” he admits. “Not all people are comfortable with transparency. It’s like taking your shirt off in public. Suddenly you don’t look so good anymore. When you have IT transparency, you find out which apps are consuming your resources. It can really surprise you.”

Blake remembers a situation that occurred several years back, at another company. “We retired ...