ACADEMIA

Procter & Gamble Chief Information Officer Filippo Passerini honored for seminal vision and ideas

The Haas School's Fisher CIO Leadership Program has named Procter & Gamble Group President of Global Business Services and CIO, Filippo Passerini, recipient of the first annual Fisher-Hopper Prize for Lifetime Achievement in CIO Leadership. Passerini was honored for changing the way CIOs may view and implement information technology. Passerini created an Information/Decisions/Solution (IDS) framework at P&G that shifted the IT focus from a service-based function to a solution-based one.

The award was announced Friday evening, September 14, 2012, at The Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, California.

The Fisher CIO Leadership Program established the award to honor a currently active CIO for his or her lifetime achievements in CIO leadership. The award is in memory of Haas alumnus Don Fisher, BS 51, co-founder of The Gap and supporter of the IT Leadership program at Haas, and Max Hopper, the visionary behind American Airlines' SABRE Systems that computerized and revolutionized travel reservations.

"Our bi-coastal panel of judges identified 22 distinguished candidates and four finalists. Mr. Passerini was selected for the magnitude of his accomplishments coupled with his reputation as a well-respected yet humble leader," says Jim Spitze, executive director, Fisher CIO Leadership Program at Berkeley-Haas' Fisher Center for Management and Technology.

"I'm deeply honored and humbled by this award from the Haas School and the highly-distinguished panel of judges," Passerini said. "It recognizes that at P&G, we are achieving our vision of transforming IT from a back office commodity to a strategic and competitive advantage—a journey we continue each day. This wouldn't be possible without the tremendous talent and drive of our organization—and I share this accomplishment with all of them."

Passerini led the integration of P&G's IT and services groups to form one of the largest and most progressive shared services organizations in the world. He was one of the first CIOs to deploy an "open innovation" strategy of outsourcing IT and other services. In 2005, he also delivered the largest integration (Gillette) in P&G history in record-breaking time. The "commercial integration" alone spanned 69 countries, 115 distribution centers, and 71-thousand new products. The scope of projects included demand management, order-shipping-billing, employee services, core financials, and business reporting – followed by the integration of manufacturing and supply planning, and the Gillette infrastructure. Under Passerini's leadership, P&G estimates it has saved more than $1 billion to date in back office systems and solutions.

Prior to becoming CIO in 2004 and P&G Group President in 2011, he held leadership roles in the U.K., Latin America, Greece, Turkey, and the United States. Passerini is a native of Rome. In 1981, he began his P&G career as a systems analyst in Italy.

Passerini says he believes that CIOs need to remain closely connected to the business.

"We're at a unique point where the stars and the moon are aligned for the CIO to play a dramatically different and much more transformational role in the business. I believe it's less about technology, and much more about being a business person with an interest in technology. This mindset has helped our organization transform the way we do business at P&G."