On 19 April 2012 during CIO CITY, European Commissioner Neelie Kroes will hand out the European CIO of the Year Awards 2012. Oliver Bussmann, Executive VP and Chief Information Officer of SAP AG is one of the 13 nominees. Check out his profile below.
During his first 100 days at SAP, Oliver developed an IT strategy with the objective to effectively support SAP's corporate goals. He realigned the Global IT organization with SAPs strategic objectives, transforming it into an agile operation to meet SAP‟s growing business demands. As a result, Global IT became a strategic enabler and trusted business partner for SAP. Oliver has been recognized for his contribution to SAP‟s success and his ability to implement a successful strategy with maximum benefit in a very short timeframe. This was a key factor in SAP Global IT winning the coveted IT Strategy Award 2012, from the “Handelsblatt”, Germany's leading business paper. In addition to the successful implementation of the Global IT strategy, the award jury also praised the successful stakeholder engagement, the introduction of the role of business information officer, the implementation of the enterprise architecture roadmap, and the simplification and optimization of IT processes.
Oliver conceived and evangelized the unique “SAP Runs SAP” program that highlighted IT and Product Development in areas of Enterprise Mobility, In-Memory Technology, Green IT and Cloud. As a result, SAP Global IT has become the company's best customer reference, and Oliver frequently speaks to customers about his team's first- hand experiences with SAP software. Additionally, Oliver ensured that SAP employees have the best business mobility options available to them, and SAP is ranked second among businesses for the number of tablet devices deployed across the company ́s enterprise.
Since 2010 Oliver has been a member of the IVI Advisory Board (Innovation Value Institute of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth) and has been admitted to the Hall of Fame at the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) for his accomplishments.
Pioneering and employing „business building‟ social media strategies in his roles as CIO, Oliver has estbalished a successful reputation for thought leadership in emerging information technologies. He was named one of the “Top 25” Executives in Technology by the Wall Street Journal in 2011. Building SAP ́s brand as a leader in this market, Oliver launched the CIO blog, built an extensive Twitter community and earned more than 100 media mentions through social media campaigns.
Prior to joining SAP, Oliver was the regional CIO for North America & Mexico at Allianz. Other previous roles include Executive Vice President of Group Information Technology for the Allianz Group in Munich and IT Managing Director of Allianz Global Investors in San Francisco and Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt. He began his career as a manager for IBM‟s Financial Services Division.