At home, Greg Oberland, the CIO and senior vice president of information systems at Northwestern Mutual, experiments with digital photography, listens to music on a Nano iPod (recently purchasing a docking station that allows him to listen to his iPod no matter where he's located), and uses TiVo to record television programs on his high-definition TV. The father of four college- and post-college-aged children also relies on his Razor cell phone's text messaging feature to communicate regularly with his kids, who live in different parts of the country.
Oberland is the first to admit, however, that using the latest high-tech gadgets does not come naturally. He relies on technology--both at work and at home--out of necessity to be as efficient and productive as possible. "Learning and understanding IT was something I really needed to do in order to perform my job responsibilities," he explains.
Oberland joined Northwestern Mutualin 1982 as an attorney in its law department, after earning his J.D. from Georgetown University Law School. He worked as an attorney for the Milwaukee-based insurer for five years before moving to the business side, where he ran a claims operation, led the disability income product line, and oversaw the company's underwriting function.
Throughout his 24-year career at Northwestern Mutual, Oberland worked on various operational and enterprisewide projects, such as business continuity planning and electronic content management. He says all his roles at the company prepared him to lead the IT department.
"When you run a business area, especially during the past 20 years, you become exposed to technology because it is such a big part of the success of your operation," he notes. "All of my positions here helped me understand the inner workings of our IT department."
Northwestern Mutual provides life insurance to 3.1 million policyholders. Other insurance lines include disability income, long-term care insurance, and annuities. The company also offers its own mutual funds and other investment products. Revenue in 2006 was $18.4 billion.
The IT department employs more than 1,200 people as well as 800 domestic and offshore contractors. Oberland's operating budget is $300 million, which contains $100 million in corporate project support. The IT budget accounts for roughly 30 percent of the company's overall budget.
Oberland acknowledges he leads a department that was well run by his predecessor, Barb Piehler, who retired in January. Northwestern Mutual ranked 15th in Computerworld magazine's "100 Best Places to Work in IT" in the June 2006 issue.
"My job is to keep up the momentumand direction Barb established," he asserts. His first-year goals as CIO consist of achieving a seamless transition, getting up to speed on the company's technology, and developing an IT-business strategy for the next several years.
"We don't need to be on the cutting edge of innovation, but IT does play an important role in helping our company become more productive," Oberland contends. "I want to pursue opportunities that focus on solution delivery and service management."
Major IT initiatives under way at Northwestern Mutual include producing new investment-product-line applications for financial representatives and integrating them with current systems; creating new products; and transforming business processes to provide front-end to back-end electronic workflow and document management systems for life policy underwriting. Oberland expects these projects will help the company reduce costs, improve customer service, and increase system efficiencies.
Another strategic effort involves leveraging the company's legacy systems. Northwestern Mutual's open systems architecture environment includes close to 600 servers and several IBM mainframes. "We want to build out the legacy system components in a way that will create better flexibility and speed," Oberland explains.
To stay abreast of all these projects, Oberland relies heavily on his laptop and Palm Treo to conduct business, access e-mail, and update his calendar. In addition, he often participates in videoconferences to stay connected with staff that works in the company's second campus in Franklin, Wis.
Although Oberland did not begin his career in IT, he recognizes using technology now is embedded into his way of life, both at work and at home. "Every major thing I do is dependent on it," he concludes.
