Peabody Energy fuels a bright future with focused IT strategy

IT leaders analyze stakeholder feedback to drive IT improvements

Founded in 1883, Peabody Energy is one of the world’s leading coal producers, with mining operations in the United States and Australia. The company mines, sells, and distributes coal around the world for use in electricity generation and steel production.

While the company navigates a volatile industry, long-time Peabody employees Phil Wood and Suresh Shaddarsanam are helping to chart a steadier course for the IT department. Shaddarsanam, Director of Enterprise Applications & IT Services, and Wood, Director of Cyber Security & Digital Strategy, took a step back recently to review the progress of the IT organization, which had undergone some changes in the last few years.

Taking a data-driven approach to measure IT performance

The time was right to take the pulse of IT at Peabody as the department emerged from the challenges of the pandemic, major initiatives including an SAP cloud migration, and a restructuring that included the outsourcing of most IT operations. The team turned to research and advisory firm Info-Tech Research Group to conduct a survey to gather user feedback on IT performance.

Info-Tech’s CIO Business Vision diagnostic survey measures stakeholder satisfaction with IT services to help identify and prioritize opportunities for improvement. Wood explained, “We knew going into running the CIO Business Vision diagnostic that our scores weren’t going to be great, given recent challenges. But it was a good time to get a benchmark so that we could determine whether the things we were doing were having an effect. If you don’t measure, it’s hard to tell if you’re improving.”

“We knew going into running the CIO Business Vision diagnostic that our scores weren’t going to be great, given recent challenges. But it was a good time to get a benchmark so that we could determine whether the things we were doing were having an effect. If you don’t measure, it’s hard to tell if you’re improving.”

- Phil Wood, Director of Cyber Security & Digital Strategy, Peabody Energy

Valuable user feedback to inform IT decision-making

The survey was distributed to approximately 500 stakeholders across the organization and achieved a 40% response rate, much higher than the team expected. Wood noted, “We got an overwhelming response, which really shows there’s a huge appetite for giving us feedback about IT services.” Shaddarsanam concurred, adding that the majority of responses came from employees at the mining operations: “They’re not at a computer all day, but typically out in the field where there is no connectivity. For those employees to take the time to fill out the survey indicates they were very eager to share their feedback.”

The results of the survey, which include a comprehensive report with detailed scorecards on IT performance, revealed satisfaction scores that were disappointing but not unexpected. Wood saw value not only in the scores but also in the user comments: “There were reams of paper with comments that really helped us understand the numbers better and in a lot of cases validated some challenges that we had already identified.”

Making the case for IT investments

Armed with the CIO Business Vision report, the team is taking action on a number of fronts. To better address gaps in IT services, they are hiring additional resources and also plan to resume onsite training at the mines, previously suspended due to COVID-19 and resource constraints. They are also working with their vendor to improve the outsourced IT services and plan to centralize the support function to deliver greater efficiency and value. The team is also committed to improving communication with the organization to facilitate feedback and ensure greater IT transparency.

Wood cites the value of the survey report in driving these improvements: “We’re getting a lot of value from the CIO Business Vision report. When we have conversations with the business about what we can do to support them, we bring the report with us. It’s been really helpful at the senior levels to relay what the organization is saying. To have another source of information in a well-organized report provides that important credibility.”

“When we have conversations with the business about what we can do to support them, we bring the CIO Business Vision report with us. To have another source of information in a well-organized report provides that important credibility.”

– Phil Wood, Director of Cyber Security & Digital Strategy, Peabody Energy

Practical, actionable solutions to accelerate IT initiatives

As the team moves forward with various IT initiatives, they have found an invaluable partner in Info-Tech. They have leveraged workshops, guided implementations, and analyst advice on topics such as Cloud Strategy and Disaster Recovery Planning. They also leverage Info-Tech’s Price Benchmarking and Negotiation service for contract advice and savings with large technology vendors. Looking to the future with renewed focus, the IT team plans to repeat the CIO Business Vision survey to measure their year-over-year progress.

Reflecting on Info-Tech’s support in driving IT value at Peabody, Shaddarsanam compared Info-Tech to other advisory firms: “Info-Tech has targeted solutions that are much more relevant to what we need, which you can easily use and implement with little effort.” Wood agreed, “They are the experts in so many of the areas where we lack expertise. They get us on the right track really quickly and save us a lot of time. Info-Tech is a huge extension of our capability.”