One aspect of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer appointment of Paul Domnick as global chief information officer (CIO), with effect from 12 January 2009, is that it moves the firm one step closer to SAP.

The firm has been working with SAP on the HR systems front for some time – as we reported on this blog on 21 May 2008, Simon Niven, head of programme management at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, even gave a presentation on talent management and how the firm is using SAP's HR system to provide a cradle-to-grave – or at least from new recruit to retirement and/or 'termination' (his choice of word) – system for monitoring and managing the career progression of fee earners at SAP's annual conference in Berlin last year. But, while comment on the appointment of Domnick has tended to focus on the fact he has the title of Global CIO – whereas his predecessor David Hamilton's role was 'Head of IT Department' – has anyone looked at his CV?

Domnick was previously group chief technology officer and deputy head of IT for Zurich Financial Services (ZFS) responsible for technology strategy, standards, enterprise architecture and applications architecture across the entire business. Before taking on this role in early 2007, he was head of global IT sourcing for ZFS – and he joined Zurich in 2004 from Deutsche Bank where he was global head of data centres. Guess what? Both Deutsche and Zurich are large SAP ERP customers. A very interesting development.