Business-oriented IT strategy places VP on global list of honor

Computerworld names Chr. Hansen’s Thomas Okke Frahm, VP, Global IT Management, to “Premier 100 IT Leaders”.

IDG's Computerworld announces Thomas Okke Frahm, Chr. Hansen, as a 2014 Premier 100 IT Leaders honoree. This year’s Premier 100 spotlights 100 leaders from both the technology and business sides of companies for their exceptional technology leadership and innovative approaches to business challenges.

"The Premier 100 awards program, now in its 15th year, shines a well-deserved spotlight on a group of talented, creative and hard-working men and women. These IT executives are driving technology innovation in business, education and government across the country and around the world," said Scot Finnie, editor in chief of Computerworld.

"Technology advances quickly, and these leaders excel at keeping pace with the changing needs of customers and employees, and making fast technology decisions that map to their organizations' top priorities. They have developed a deep bench of talented IT staffers at their organizations and managed to keep their own skills fresh by constantly mastering new technologies and processes. We are privileged to recognize the leadership and achievements of the 2014 Premier 100 honorees."

Better user support
41-year-old Thomas Okke Frahm was headhunted to the position as VP, Global IT Management at Chr. Hansen one year ago to establish a more business-oriented IT organization. The company wished to create a unit that contributed to the value creation, based on efficient IT operations. In late summer Frahm presented a new strategy aiming at bringing IT closer to the business through better IT operations, better user support and a new IT Governance structure.

”It is actually quite simple,” explains Thomas Okke Frahm. ” What it all boils down to is that we want to ensure much more aligned objectives between the business personified by users and the IT function. In other words: We want to take out bureaucracy and complexity in the user experience.”

Focus on business critical applications
The strategy focuses on Chr. Hansen’s business critical IT applications to ensure a much more efficient and transparent system structure for the most important processes in Chr. Hansen: Sales, production and innovation, and a number of organizational changes have made to that effect. The users have welcomed this, already experiencing a better service and access to their IT colleagues, who have become much more visible in the organization.

“The IT Strategy 2013-2015 marks new ways of working with IT in Chr. Hansen. I trust that it will bring IT closer to the business, ensuring that IT tools are perceived and acknowledged to be part of the profitability in the company,” concludes Frahm, who is the first Dane ever to be present on Computerworld’s list of the 100 best and most innovative IT Leaders in the world.


About Computerworld
Computerworld is the leading IT media brand helping Sr. IT, business decision-makers and key influencers navigate change with effective business strategy. Computerworld enables the IT value chain with unique editorial coverage from setting strategies to deriving value from core to edge technologies. Computerworld’s award-winning website, publication, focused conference series, custom solutions and research forms the hub of the world’s largest (40+ edition) global IT media network and provides opportunities for IT vendors to engage this audience. Computerworld leads the industry with an online audience of over 7.1 million monthly page views (Omniture, February 2013).