Frank BOnCIMInO
Frank Boncimino
SVP, CIO
Time Warner Cable
Frank Boncimino is senior vice president and
chief information officer for Time Warner Cable.
Before joining Time Warner Cable in 2003,
he was vice president/partner of Telecom, Media and
Networks at Cap Gemini Ernst and Young.
Cable CIO job descriptions vary widely, from
company to company. What in a nutshell is yours?
My responsibilities include, but are not limited to, setting the IT technology strategy for the company and
delivering technologies that are aligned and in support of our business growth and operations objectives.
These include:
• Customer care solutions like desktop applications to reduce call handle time or IVR and other
contact center technology to automate and therefore reduce the calls going to live CSRs
• Marketing solutions to support “the customer
experience” and grow the business through new
channels such as online e-commerce; other marketing tools to understand our customer behavior and develop enhanced marketing campaigns
and enhanced offer management capabilities
• Solutions to grow the commercial services business selling new products
My responsibilities at Time Warner Cable also include
billing system operations and BSS delivery and support; IT transformation to support our service oriented architecture; enterprise data center operations
and back office network operations.
How has your role shifted over the past five years,
since joining from CapGemini Ernst & Young?
We have been running 1,000 miles an hour. TWC is
rolling out new products and building new business at
a tremendous pace. The technology support required
is complex and needs to be nimble to support growth
and delivery. This pace, complexity and accountability
is a great environment for me and a lot of fun. (We are
aging in dog years.)
Do you think that MSOs have a distinct set of IT
requirements—distinct from traditional telcos—or
has the line sufficiently blurred?
It has blurred. However, the competition breeds inno-
Supplement to Communications Technology
vation, and the MSOs have advantages to innovate
in different ways, and that difference will provide a
competitive advantage.
What is the best role for IT/technology consultants
in the MSO world?
The best role for IT and technology consultants to
play is to understand our business and technology
strategy and bring new ideas or accelerators to us
for consideration.
What aspect of your job do you find the most
challenging? The most rewarding?
The most challenging aspect of my job is how to
integrate our legacy and new technology to support
new businesses and new products in a pace that
supports our business growth opportunities.
The most rewarding is working with our people
and the teaming required at all levels of the organization to support our operations and growth.
For several years, there’s been an effort to get
individual services and their respective back offices
out of silos and into a more unified whole. Do
you see this actually happening? If so, how has it
affected your job?
Our strategy is to create a service oriented architecture that has the services built from our legacy
applications and new applications to support our
third-party relationships/new ventures and other
new applications. This strategy is maturing and
is how we are keeping up with the demands on
IT. Over the last few years, IT has grown to be an
important part of our business operations.
What are some of the trickier IT challenges
involved in offering business services as opposed
to residential?
Business services have different SLA commit-
ments, which require different investments and
technology to support. The tools are also differ-
ent. We are implementing new technology
to support our sales executives during the pre-
sales process and new technology to support the
entire order management and customer care
processes. ■
