Mansfield Energy elevates IT to strategic business partner

IT executive Greg Allarding accelerates technology adoption and evolves IT organization to drive business results

Founded in 1957, Mansfield Energy is a family-owned company that provides energy procurement, supply, and logistics solutions to leading organizations across North America. With the largest independent fuel distribution network in the US, Mansfield delivers over 3 billion gallons of fuel and complementary products annually to more than 8,000 customers.

When Greg Allarding stepped into the role of CIO at Mansfield in 2016, he quickly observed that IT was operating with little involvement from the business side. “In my early days here, one of the things that I struggled with was driving digital adoption opportunities within the business. The need for technology was growing, but there was a disconnect regarding how to best leverage technology to drive the business forward,” said Allarding.

In addition to creating a better framework for technology implementations and improving collaboration with the business, Allarding also needed to modernize the IT department. “To help scale our business, we needed to mature the IT function from that of a small IT shop to an enterprise organization,” said Allarding.

“To help scale our business, we needed to mature the IT function from that of a small IT shop to an enterprise organization.”

– Greg Allarding, CIO, Mansfield Energy

Leveraging research and tools to accelerate IT evolution

In his early days at the company, Allarding noted that IT had a little-used subscription to Info-Tech Research Group. He was unfamiliar with the advisory firm but immediately saw the value in the best-practices research, step-by-step templates, and expert advisory services. “I saw the potential to leverage Info-Tech’s research to really accelerate the process of elevating our IT organization. As I started to build my team and introduce them to what was available with Info-Tech, we began to realize the value,” explained Allarding.

Allarding encourages his team to use Info-Tech as the go-to resource for every project: “I ask my team to think of Info-Tech first when they’re faced with a problem. Last year, I had a team member take on building a robotic process automation practice. We needed to define a governance model, and the first place I pointed him to was Info-Tech. He was impressed at how much content was there and how helpful it is to accelerate what we’re doing, rather than us starting from scratch.”

Gaining insight from stakeholder feedback to drive priorities

Over the years, Allarding and his team have used a number of Info-Tech’s proven solutions, from diagnostic surveys to five-day workshops. For example, to understand how stakeholders at Mansfield felt about IT services, Allarding and his team used Info-Tech’s CIO Business Vision survey – a high-impact diagnostic tool that gathers feedback from users to help inform IT strategy. Having run the survey multiple times now, Allarding finds that CIO Business Vision provides him with a ready framework to collect feedback and then formulate an action plan.

Allarding noted that the survey results have provided valuable insight into business perspectives: “One of the things that I have focused on here at Mansfield is how to drive digital adoption within the business. It’s easy to assume that the business leaders aren’t technology savvy or aren’t thinking about how to leverage technology to run the business. However, the Info-Tech diagnostic revealed to me that they’re actually hungry for it, but they’re waiting for me to tell them what to do.”

Negotiating the best deal on a major software renewal contract

Always looking for opportunities to save time and reduce costs, Allarding recently used the Info-Tech Price Benchmarking and Negotiation service to review a major software contract coming up for renewal. “Info-Tech was able to tell us where we could get a bigger discount and give us advice on how to negotiate with the vendor and what to watch out for with contract language and terms. We were able to reduce our spend by 9% and ensure protection from future price changes. This was largely attributable to the advice we received from the Info-Tech team,” said Allarding.

“Info-Tech was able to tell us where we could get a bigger discount and give us advice on how to negotiate with the vendor and what to watch out for with contract language and terms. We were able to reduce our spend by 9% and ensure protection from future price changes."

– Greg Allarding, CIO, Mansfield Energy

Building a plan to mitigate risk and expectations

With thousands of customers relying on Mansfield to supply the fuel that keeps their businesses running, Allarding knows the importance of keeping company systems online. He and his team recently participated in Info-Tech’s Create a Right-Sized Disaster Recovery Plan Guided Implementation to help set business expectations on the cost of uptime. He noted, “We used the output from that Info-Tech engagement not so much to drive the selection of the disaster recovery solution as to sell the cost of it back to the business. We met with the business stakeholders to discuss their objectives and the cost. It gave us an opportunity to have a rational discussion with the business and select a solution that was a better fit for what they really needed.”

Real-world guidance from a professional advisor and confidante

Recently, Allarding upgraded to an Executive Counselor membership with Info-Tech, which includes a dedicated advisor who has previous experience as an IT executive. The counselor offers expert guidance to help him drive greater business value and build his executive leadership brand. “The Counselor membership has been great because it gives me someone to confide in who’s had real-world experience. Sometimes you get stuck in the day-to-day, and you don’t really know if other people are dealing with similar challenges. My counselor has helped put those things into perspective, and she has also helped me make valuable connections with peers.”

Transforming IT to drive business results

As Allarding prioritizes IT initiatives at Mansfield, at the top of his list is developing an IT strategy and roadmap and ensuring that they are aligned with business objectives. He plans to use several Info-Tech solutions to support that process, including an IT Strategy workshop, the IT Management & Governance diagnostic program, as well as the CEO-CIO Alignment diagnostic. The data and insight gathered from these engagements will help Allarding and his team define an IT roadmap that will deliver on strategic priorities.

Since his start at Mansfield, Allarding has focused on identifying the business’ objectives in order to understand where technology can help. “One of my objectives is to leverage technology to eliminate as many manual processes as we can, which will really help us scale the business. We can grow without having to add as many people to do it,” said Allarding. He points to the progress he has made: “We have changed the level of participation that we've gotten from the business. We are helping shift the mindset of technology being simply a cost center to something that can enable the business and drive results. It’s my good fortune to work at a company where the ownership recognizes the importance of technology to the future of the business and is willing to make appropriate technology investments to ensure success.”