IT Leadership Award Honoree Anup Nair

Editor's Note: The IT Leadership Awards, presented by Pride Technologies, celebrate local IT professionals who help local, regional, national and global businesses run better through engaged leadership and a commitment to innovation. For the next 7 weeks, check back each Tuesday and Thursday as we highlight one of the 20 honorees of this year's award.

At Vantiv, a global payment processing and technology solutions provider headquartered in Cincinnati, technology is the business.

"Technology is convenience, speed, reliability and the fastest path to revenue for our users," says CIO Anup Nair. "When someone refers to ‘user experience’ today, what do they really mean? It’s almost entirely a technology question. So for a technology company, which we are now, we don’t talk as much about ‘leveraging technology.’ Our user experience is a technology experience. It is our core business."

And Nair thinks that in many cases, technology and business are nearly synonymous.

"The boundaries between business and technology are so blurred," he explains, "it’s tough to see the differences now. A lot of cool ideas come from techies because they’re familiar as users. At Vantiv, we are more a technology company than a banking company. We got here in terms of size and scale as a banking company, but we’re moving forward predominantly as a tech company with no boundaries."

He points to changing expectations in demonstrating the difference between business two decades ago versus business today. Businesses with more traditional operating models might introduce new products in store every 10 weeks. But amazon.com introduces thousands of new products every day.

"The metabolic rate of technology forces organizations to look at themselves differently to meet customer expectations," Nair says.

And this is no different at Vantiv.

Vantiv is "assuming a leadership position in the payments industry and we are one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the United States," says Nair. "Our headquarters is in Cincinnati and we have been attracting significant leadership talent, local and international, into the area. We’ve received appreciation from the industry as well as clients for the pace of our growth as well as product portfolio."

Nair says Vantiv is constantly striving toward innovation in the payment space. "We are a skill business, but with skill comes the importance to be resilient and to serve customers. We have to be thorough and be a great experience to work with from the first time. And we are constantly innovating. It’s front and center to what we do. It’s in our DNA."

He notes that his team concentrates on improving "speed, transparency, efficiency and empowerment of users and clients. Our technology focus has transformed, and will continue to evolve, to enable our customers’ rapidly changing demands for speed, simplicity and efficiency, and to deliver that anywhere, anytime, on virtually any channel. It needs to be always on. That is the demand for technology change that we are faced with. Our technology journey will serve that demand. We are there today with many of our products and services and you can expect more."

Previous honorees featured: Jay Brown, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for UC Health; John Kellington, CIO and Senior VP, The Cincinnati Insurance Companies; Vinit Kohli, Vice President of Management Information Systems for Sibcy Cline; Nelson C. Vincent, Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer for UC Information Technologies (UCIT) at the University of Cincinnati