cirque de soleil
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HEC027
Volume 9
Issue 3
September 2011
Visioning Information Technology at Cirque du Soleil
op yo Case prepared by Professors Anne-Marie CROTEAU,1 Suzanne RIVARD2 and Jean
TALBOT3
tC
Danielle Savoie, recently appointed Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Cirque du Soleil, was delighted. She had just met with the firm’s Executive Committee to present the very first information technology (IT) strategic plan in the history of Cirque. The plan presented a coherent and organized vision of IT use at Cirque. The Executive Committee had reacted very positively to her recommendations, although the members of the committee were not accustomed to discussing issues as technical as IT. At Cirque du Soleil, IT was deemed a significant but not always necessary cost. Indeed, it was sometimes perceived as a useless expense. Danielle
Savoie’s main challenge now was to discover how IT could best serve Cirque. She was convinced that in order to meet this challenge, she had to develop an IT strategic vision that would be accepted by Cirque’s top management, deploy a highly professional IT group and enhance the credibility of IT among the leaders of the firm.
Do
No
Before being hired by Cirque du Soleil in April 2000, Danielle Savoie was the Vice-President of
Strategic IT projects at Desjardins, a credit union and one of Quebec’s largest financial institutions. Obviously, the transition from a financial institution to one of the world’s most innovative and creative enterprises represented a major challenge, yet Ms. Savoie also considered it a very interesting one. Her mandate as the first CIO at Cirque du Soleil was clear: she had to find an effective way for IT to support growth at Cirque. She had given herself three months to assess the current IT situation. It was at the end of this three-month period that she presented her strategic plan to Cirque’s Executive Committee.
1
Anne-Marie Croteau is an Associate Professor in
HEC027
Volume 9
Issue 3
September 2011
Visioning Information Technology at Cirque du Soleil
op yo Case prepared by Professors Anne-Marie CROTEAU,1 Suzanne RIVARD2 and Jean
TALBOT3
tC
Danielle Savoie, recently appointed Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Cirque du Soleil, was delighted. She had just met with the firm’s Executive Committee to present the very first information technology (IT) strategic plan in the history of Cirque. The plan presented a coherent and organized vision of IT use at Cirque. The Executive Committee had reacted very positively to her recommendations, although the members of the committee were not accustomed to discussing issues as technical as IT. At Cirque du Soleil, IT was deemed a significant but not always necessary cost. Indeed, it was sometimes perceived as a useless expense. Danielle
Savoie’s main challenge now was to discover how IT could best serve Cirque. She was convinced that in order to meet this challenge, she had to develop an IT strategic vision that would be accepted by Cirque’s top management, deploy a highly professional IT group and enhance the credibility of IT among the leaders of the firm.
Do
No
Before being hired by Cirque du Soleil in April 2000, Danielle Savoie was the Vice-President of
Strategic IT projects at Desjardins, a credit union and one of Quebec’s largest financial institutions. Obviously, the transition from a financial institution to one of the world’s most innovative and creative enterprises represented a major challenge, yet Ms. Savoie also considered it a very interesting one. Her mandate as the first CIO at Cirque du Soleil was clear: she had to find an effective way for IT to support growth at Cirque. She had given herself three months to assess the current IT situation. It was at the end of this three-month period that she presented her strategic plan to Cirque’s Executive Committee.
1
Anne-Marie Croteau is an Associate Professor in