How to keep it stable in the enterprise upheaval?

Author: Chu Yanna Wang Lei acquisition is painful for enterprise CIO. Mergers and acquisitions will inevitably bring about changes in business and management patterns, and it needs to change. But Nikolaos Costaras, the second-largest telecoms operator in Greece, Hellas Telecom's CIO, has changed its name two times, replaced 6 owners and 4 CEOs, and was still very calm after the takeover. After many changes, he let the company it into a stable phase. So how did Costaras do that? Nikolaos Costaras Profile: Nikolaos Costaras The CIO of the Greek Wind Hellas Telecommunications company. He has previously served as CIO for Tim Hella Telecom and Stet Hellas Telecom, as well as technical director of Vodafone's Panafon.　　In the 1980s, Costaras was involved in the installation of the first computer control system of the Greek credit bank; In the 1990s, he developed one of Greece's first pay-as-you-go mobile billing services. The long accumulated experience of innovation and the spirit of innovation are probably the main reasons why Costaras can keep it stable after the company upheaval. Costaras has been working as a CIO for nearly 30 years and has worked in the telecommunications field for nearly 20 years.　　Innovation is the main melody of his career. When Nikolaos Costaras was a teenager in the 1970s, he became obsessed with it.　　He then received a computer science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then a master's degree in computer Science and software design at Newcastle University in England. It was still quite new to study computer science. There were 80 Greek students at Newcastle University with Costaras, most of whom studied the naval architecture. "I am the only one who studies computer science. "I'm the kind of person who's always attracted by novelty." "The creative spirit of Costaras continues to this day.　　In the aftermath of the Greek economic crisis, he has been busy offering new services to the shy Greek users, making it possible to set up a monthly mobile-phone budget. When the user's phone charges are close to the monthly limit set by him, they send a message to the user.　　When cell phone charges reach a limit, they send a message that allows users to choose between € 10, € 20 or € 30, until the end of the month. The service appears to be simple, but Costaras is not easy to see from the technical architecture of service delivery. "It took us a lot of time, a lot of careful system integration work, and a lot of communication and testing with the suppliers."　　"It is understood that the service was launched earlier this year and that it is unique in the Greek mobile market." Tortuous career path because from an early ageFascinated by it, so after completing his studies at Newcastle University, Costaras's careers are almost all related to it.　　But the road didn't go as smoothly as it had imagined.　　Costaras, who returned to Greece for military service in 1985, got a manager position at the Greek credit bank. At that time in Greek banking, operations were almost entirely dependent on manual operations. "The work of bank branches relies entirely on index cards and paper forms, and branch managers are in urgent need of computerization." "Costaras said. To this end, the Bank of Greece organized a team to implement a computer system, which is mainly used for current account management. Costaras is a member of the implementation team.　　They opted for a system already operating in the UK Trust Savings Bank (now Lloyds Banking Group). "I mainly write system customization code that meets the needs of the Greek market. "Today, some of the transactions executed on some of the bank computers are based on the code I wrote 25 years ago," he said. At the time, we added annotations to the program, so today's application developers can still see my name and code comments. These programs are still in use. "I got a lot of fun from this job." "The code was very satisfying, and they changed the way people work and how banks operate," he said proudly. "In 1988, Costaras was dug out by digital equipment companies. There he spent 5 years as a pre Sales manager/consultant.　　At that time, he recalls, digital equipment companies were in an incredible growth period: employees were highly paid and the company grew rapidly. Costaras joined the mobile communications Company in 1993 at the invitation of Vodafone's Panafon managing director. As Panafon's technical director, he faced the problem of lack of software to support new business. "Everything has to be developed from the beginning.　　"he said. Cost control and simplification in 2002, however, Costaras learned that Panafon's parent company, Vodafone, was to outsource its IT business. As a result, he switched to Panafon, then the biggest competitor--stet Hellas Telecom.　　Since then, the company has replaced 6 owners and 4 CEOs, and the company has renamed it twice. With the change in equity, the company changed its name to Tim Hellas and Wind Hellas in 2007. The company was bought in December 2010 by a group of 6 international private equity funds. They now manage more than 8 billion dollars of money globally. To buy Wind Hellas Telecom, the new shareholder traded nearly 1 billion euros in bonds, injecting € 4.2 million in cash to the company and working on a long-term exit strategy.　　But after all these changes, Wind Hellas Telecom's it has shifted to a stable phase. "As a department, we were audited more than 30 times, andI stay here all the time. Every time we try to convince the auditor that our it is doing well and should be allowed to develop. "He says that no matter how the business changes, he's focused on two goals in it: spending money carefully and keeping it neat." "I inherited a very complex infrastructure," he said, "So my strategy is very clear, install new systems, use the default features of the software package when needed rather than customize it, and stay streamlined and update the infrastructure."　　"His main achievements include the implementation of a complete customer relationship management system, the creation of a data warehouse and a business intelligence environment, and a reform of the billing system that makes it possible to provide each customer with a single invoice, including landline, mobile and internet services." With the advent of data services, the entire mobile industry is looking for new business growth opportunities and it must play a role in this process, Costaras said. He believes that if it wants to achieve its goal of it-driven business development, it will not only deliver new products and services to its customers, but also provide recommendations for new business. Share to: