CIO Forum in Atlanta: Seasoned Perspectives on IT-enabled businesses.

Several Senior Executives and entrepreneurs gather routinely at the recently started, well-timed and focused CIO forums hosted by Paalam, Inc. The forum has already attracted world-class speakers such as Dr. Don Rataczak, Dr. Jagdish Sheth and most recently, Jeff Hoffman. Hoffman is currently the Managing Partner at Smith-Hoffman Capital, an Atlanta based private equity firm focusing on early stage technology companies.

Hoffman’s seasoned perspective and extremely articulate style conveyed a consistent message throughout; nurture innovation and create an environment in your company where ideas bloom and flourish and then use management to provide an infrastructure where ideas turn into products that build companies. Speaking of his time at Walker Digital and at Priceline, he shared that “While staff meetings devoted strictly to brainstorming new ideas may seem like a waste of time to some in the organization, somewhere within the group is an idea that may be worth millions.” Emphasizing the need for ongoing innovation, Hoffman outlined a number of instances where his teams transformed ideas into viable businesses.

Hoffman, an accomplished entrepreneur and technology innovator started his first company while he was still attending Yale. Hoffman’s first startup, a software company in the travel industry named CTI, was acquired by American Express and today still serves as their technology division. For his achievements, Hoffman has been named one of the 25 Most Influential Executives in travel and tourism worldwide. His other notable startups include Virtual Shopping, acquired by Europe’s Wallenberg Group, and most recently, Priceline.com, where Jeff was one of the founding team and held two CEO titles in Priceline’s family of companies.

Hoffman explained that Priceline was started out id this same innovation process. The company was originally designed as an Internet service to organize and aggregate potential demand - by pioneering the ‘name your own price’ concept, which enables capturing of potential lost sales at a consumer’s ‘price line’, still preserving the brand. “We had just finished a large job designing an Internet travel service, and had the market relationships and technical staff primed, so this was a natural starting point,” Hoffman observed. However, to succeed as a business, Hoffman believes that ideas need to be sustained by strong economic and operational models. Priceline succeeded because of its economic model of ‘everyone wins’, a concept he believes is as important as the idea itself. “A good idea must also have the right economic model where the customer, the company and the supplier are happy with the results of the product transaction. When those two things are done, the idea that solves a problem and the correct economic model, you have a potential winning business formula.”

Hoffman’s advice to the entrepreneurial and operational leadership in Atlanta including the attendees and the companies at ATDC is exactly the sort of knowledge share that’s rare to come about in Atlanta despite its growing number of ventures and successes. The forum represented a wide diaspora including Venture Capitalists (Robert Ross from Veltac), legal firms ( Stuart Johnson from Powell Goldstein ), women entrepreneur and strategist (Babs Sachdeva) and several senior executives from verticals spanning across the Housing and Construction industry (Ron Marshall from RGM ) to packaging (Dexter Edmonds from MeadWestvaco ).

Brilliantly conceived by Dr. ‘Narsi’ Narasimhan and sponsored by Paalam, Inc. a company he co-founded, the forum brings excellent business perspective to an invitation-only group every month, but is open by request. Dr. Narasimhan is a noted and widely-quoted Atlanta technology entrepreneur and a former Professor at Georgia Tech. “The CIO Roundtable is meant as a discussion forum with ample networking opportunities,” Dr. Narasimhan commented. “This meeting was a good example of the CIO Forum bringing provocative information to IT executives where they have a chance to clarify what they are hearing from noted speakers and discuss issues in a relaxed, small group environment. We expect to have many more such luncheons in the future.”

Paalam, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, is a technology services company that specializes in managing globally distributed technology development teams for its clients. Paalam offers significant savings by providing fixed price contracts, guaranteeing quality and managing software development projects end to end.

The next three events will feature Dr. Jagdish (Jag) Sheth, Dr. Don Ratajczak and Dr. Benn Konsynski, respectively. Any IT executive wishing to attend one of the upcoming, limited-seating CIO Roundtable Forum luncheons can request a seat by calling Paalam at 770-209-9700 or email info@paalam.com to receive a schedule of upcoming events.