Driving 15 years of IT transformation in 5

In 2018, the day after his employer publicly announced it was being acquired, Lynn Lovelady, then VP of IT at Energen, received a pivotal phone call that would reshape his career.

It was from Charlie Nowlin, then CFO at McWane, who for more than a year had been searching for the company’s first chief information officer.   

After a long courtship that included lunches with members of McWane’s C-suite to ensure a cultural fit, Lovelady signed on to helm IT as CIO at the global manufacturer of ductile iron products, valves, hydrants, fittings, plumbing products, fire extinguishers and suppression systems, and steel pressure vessels.  

The Birmingham, Ala.-based McWane’s growing corporate IT department had existed only since 2008, and for Lovelady there was a lot of work to do. =

“We were transitioning from a decentralized IT model to one that increasingly relied on corporate IT, which necessitated enhancing the planning process, governance, and implementing consistent policies on cybersecurity,” says Lovelady, reflecting on a department that was responsible for supporting the more than 20 operationally diverse businesses under the McWane umbrella.

To address the growing pains, Lovelady reinforced the importance of strategic planning for IT.   In addition to rationalizing applications and other tactics you would expect, Lovelady knew establishing influence across McWane would be essential for the IT makeover to succeed, and that in turn would require over-communicating, driving accountability, measuring success, and rewarding high performance. With these principles in mind, Lovelady and his team launched their strategy, dubbing it “fifteen in five,” representing their bold ambition to drive fifteen years’ worth of transformation in the next five, and to shore up IT capabilities in doing so.   

But executing wouldn’t come without challenges: multiple ERP implementations, a reluctance to adapt to new ways of working at a storied company, and perhaps most daunting, the reality that IT in each of the 20-plus businesses had grown accustomed to operating independently.

According to Lovelady, his team’s ability to overcome these headwinds hinged on three pillars that go beyond technical implementation.

Establishing trust

Lovelady admits that in the early innings there were some who questioned whether hiring a CIO was necessary. The company, after all, had been successful historically. 

To buck the trend, Lovelady prioritized meeting with all senior executives upon his arrival: to sell his strategic plan, share how he planned to make improvements, and most importantly, state his intention to earn their trust by establishing a relationship based on frequent and transparent communication. “Whether they’re personal or business, relationships take work, but that work is how you establish trust,” says Lovelady, “and picking up the phone or walking down the hall fills the trust bank over time.”

Lovelady’s focus on communication earned him respect and support from the executive team, which included the general managers of the 20-plus portfolio businesses. It showed when he presented to them. Mr. McWane himself and other EVPs started endorsing Lovelady’s initiatives, and “this backing, coupled with some early efficiency wins, helped the GMs get behind the vision and get comfortable with the new chargebacks,” Lovelady says. 

To ensure his team embraced and embodied his philosophy, Lovelady purchased everyone a copy of Excellence Wins, by Horst Schulze. “While we can’t do everything the Ritz Carlton does, I think the spirit of having a customer-first mindset is critical. Following up, not assuming a problem is solved, paying attention: It’s critical we all share these values.”

Building and deploying the A-team

Before Lovelady arrived, many major IT initiatives, especially those — like ERP projects — meant to drive efficiency across the businesses, were viewed as non-strategic. This kept top talent on the sidelines. Lovelady turned this approach upside down. “Do you really want the software you are going to run for the next 15 to 20 years being designed by just anyone?” posits Lovelady. “Or do you want it designed by your A players?”

Combined with an outstanding internal ERP implementation team, Lovelady worked with business units to put their best talent on the ERP initiatives, which in 2023 alone, led to four on-time deployments. It also led to the consolidation of seven separate CRM environments. Those two efforts combined have enabled for the first time ever end-to-end visibility of McWane’s value chain for select businesses, from the manufacturing of products, through the sales process, all the way to recognizing revenue.

An ERP veteran, Lovelady knows that technology alone isn’t what makes ERP implementation successful. “It’s about having the right people, following the right processes, and avoiding common pitfalls like customization.”

And for Lovelady and McWane, the right people are often those with substantial IT experience. “Around here, young talent are people in their thirties,” explains Lovelady, “and a lot of our team members came with backgrounds as directors, vice presidents, or even CIOs at well-respected companies.”

It is to this talent philosophy Lovelady attributes McWane’s ability to service their approximately 6,000 employees across its global footprint with less than 30 full-time corporate IT employees, and only a handful of longstanding strategic partners. 

Driving smart centralization

Key to reigning in and forging partnerships with the portfolio of operationally diverse companies was the deployment of what McWane refers to as “smart centralization.” Through this strategy, Lovelady and his team have struck the often difficult to balance attributes of business unit flexibility with enterprise scale. 

“At corporate, we focus on things that can be done globally,” says Lovelady. These include network management, help desk, establishing and enforcing policies related to information security and risk management, and several other IT functions. “These are strategic capabilities for IT, and we have more purchasing power when we address them horizontally across our portfolio,” says Lovelady. “Besides, our businesses shouldn’t have to worry that outdated network equipment is putting their operation at risk.”

Still, the businesses operate with a high degree of local decision-making authority, Lovelady says. “We’ve simply implemented guardrails and policies to make sure we are influencing the domains where we have expertise, and we are making decisions that serve the greater good of McWane, not just an individual business.”

Results: Modern IT and a legacy of transformation

About five years have passed since Charlie Nowlin phoned Lovelady in 2018, and McWane’s corporate IT is firing on all cylinders. IT’s seat at the table has been cemented for many reasons. Chief among them are a rationalized, simplified, cost-effective ERP footprint; a maturing IT security and risk management capability that includes regular audits; a help desk that receives positive ratings from more than 90% of users; and a successful data center migration, which included moving more than 400 servers in real-time, so seamlessly, Lovelady says, that nobody even noticed.

Communication from corporate IT is proactive, includes regular site visits, frequent updates to demonstrate progress against the strategic plan, and plentiful impromptu calls and drop-ins. Business and IT are rowing in the same direction, with the shared goal of making the right decisions for the greater good of McWane.

Lovelady, who announced his retirement in the fourth quarter of 2023, will leave a legacy of transformation at McWane — one that will be synonymous with service excellence, integrity, and collaboration. The results he achieved are enviable, so we asked him what advice he’d share with CIOs pursuing similar journeys. He vehemently referred to the annual strategic plan that started it all, highlighting the importance of trust.

“It takes years of hard work to build trust, and it can be lost in an instant,” says Lovelady. “Don’t breach that trust, and you’ll go far.”