Ken Piddington, Chief Information Officer of Global Partners LP

Summary: In this interview, Ken Piddington discusses World Class IT Principle Four, IT-Business Partnerships, and Principle Five, External Partnerships, with Metis Strategy. Some of the topics discussed include: Global Partners IT’s transformation from an order taker to a strategic partner The importance of communication in establishing credibility for IT and improving operations The way in which IT is focusing on analytics in order to provide the company with a competitive advantage The necessity to not only hold vendors to SLAs and manage them effectively in order to ensure you get what you pay for, but also the necessity to share the strategic vision with vendors so that they can more effectively operate on your behalf How Global Partners IT engages external clients to build relationships IT’s future role in mergers and acuquisition Eye on the trends: The pros and cons of the hot trends of cloud computing, social media, and iPad in the enterprise