Create a plan for how IT and the business can work collaboratively to deliver the Savvy Store program successfully

Il at Hetty Hardware "IT is a pain in the neck." groused Cheryl O'Shea, VP of retail marketing, as she slipped into a seat at the table in the Hefty Hardware executive dining room, next to her colleagues. "It's all technical mumbo-jambo when they talk to you and I still don't know if they have any idea about what we're trying to accomplish with our Savvy Store program. I keep explaining that we have to improve the customer experience and that we need IT's help to do this, but they keep talking about infrastructure and bandwidth and technical architecture, which is all their internal stuff and doesn't relate to what we're trying to do at all! They have so many processes and reviews that I'm not sure we'll ever get this project off the ground unless we go outside the company." "You've got that right," agreed Glen Vogel, the COO. I really like my IT account manager, Jenny Henderson. She sits in on all our strategy meetings and seems to really understand our business, but that's about as far as it goes By the time we get a project 99 going my staff are all complaining that the people don't even know some of our basic business functions, like how our warehouses operate. It takes so long to deliver any sort of technology to the field, and when it doesn't work the way we want it to, they just shrug and tell us to add it to the list for the most release! Are we really getting value for all of the millions that we pour into ITT "Well, I don't think it's as bad as you both seem to believe," added Michelle Wright, the CFO. "My EA sings the praises of the help desk and the new ERP system we put in last year. We can now close the books at month-end in 24 hours. Before that it took days. And I've seen the benchmarking reports on our computer operations. We are in the top quartile for reliability and cost effectiveness for all our hardware and systems. I don't think we could get IT any cheaper outside the company." "You are talking 'apples and oranges her said Glen. On one hand, you're saying that we're getting good, cheap, reliable computer operations and value for the money we're spending here. On the other hand, we don't feel IT is contributing to creating new business value for Hefty. They're really two different things "Yes, they are agreed Cheryl. Td even agree with you that they do a pretty good job of keeping our systems functioning and preventing viruses and things. At least we've never lost any data like some of our competitors. But I don't see how they're contributing to executing our business strategy. And surdy in this day and age with increased competition, new technologies coming out all over the place, and so many changes in our economy, we should be able to get there to help us be more flexible, not less, and deliver new products and services to our customers quickly! Sienith. And] D. Mcke Delivering tot hierty Handwa 3-4.10-ECOL, Queen School of Busine, May 2010, prodhpunity School Kingston, Ontario, Canada 98 99 Delivering Bee Vee with it at Helty Hardware The conversation moved on then, but Glen was thoughtful as he walked back to his office after lunch. Truthfully, he only ever thought about it when it affected him and his area. Like his other colleagues, he found most of his communication with the depart- ment. Jenny excepted, to be unintelligible, so he delegated it to his subordinates, unless it absolutely couldn't be avoided. But Cheryl was right. It was becoming increasingly important to how the company did its business. Although Hefty's success was built on its excellent supply chain logistics and the assortment of products in its stones. It played a huge role in this. And to implement Hetty's new Savvy Stone strategy. It would be critical for ensuring that the products were there when a customer wanted them and that every store associate had the proper information to answer customers' questions In Europe, he knew from his travel, I was front and center in most cutting edge retail stores. It provided extensive self-service to improve checkout multichannel access to information inside stres to enable customers to browse an extended product base and better support sales associates assisting customers and multimedia to engage customers with extended product knowledge. Part of Hetty's new Savvy Store busine strategy was to copy some of these inutiatives, hoping to become the first reta North America to completely integrate multimedia and digital information inte its 1,000 stores. They'd spent months at the executive committee meetings wor this new strategic thrust using information and multimedia to improve the experience in a variety of ways and to make it consistent in each of their store they had to figure out exactly how to execute it, and I was a key player. The que in Glen's mind now was how could the business and IT work together to deliver on this vision, when I was essentially operating in its own technical world, which bore very really like in the field? What seems like a good idea here at corporate doesn't always work out there, and we need to balance our corporate needs with those of our store operations." He remembered going to one of Hefty's smaller stuees in Moose River and seeing how its managers had circumvented the company's stringent security protocols by writing their passwords on Post-it notes stack to the store's only computer terminal So, on his next trip to the field he decided he would take Jenny, along with Cheryl and the Marketing IT Relationship Manager, Paul Gutierer, and maybe even invite the CIO, Farrad Mohammed, and a couple of the IT architects. It would be good for them to see what's actually happening in the stores," he reasoned. Maybe once they do, it will help them understand what we're trying to accomplish A few days later, Glen's e-mailed invitation had Farzad in a quandary. He wants to take me and some of my top people including you-on the road two weeks from now," he complained to his chief architect, Sergei Gromny "Maybe I could spare Jenny to go, since she's Glen's main contact, but we're up to our waroos in alligatis trying to put together our strategic IT architecture so we can support their Savvy Stones initiative and half a dozen more top priority projects. We're supposed to present our IT strategy to the steering committee in three weeks "And I need Paul to work with the architecture team over the next couple ed weeks to review our plans and then to work with the master data team to help them outline their information strategy," said Sergel. "If we don't have the infrastructure and 100 100 Section 1. Delivering Value with IT integrated information in place there aren't going to be any Savvy Semes? You can't send Paul and my core architects off on some boondoggle for a whole week. They've all seen a Hetty store. It's not like they're going to see anything different "You're right," agreed Farzad. "Glen's just going to have to understand that I can't send five of our top people into the field right now. Maybe in six months after we've finished this planning and budget cycle. We've got too much work to do now. Il send Jenny and maybe that new intern, Joyce Li, who we're thinking of hiring She could use some exposure to the business, and she's not working on anything critical. I'll email Jenny and get her to set it up with Glen. She's so great with these business guys. It know how she does it, but she seems to really get them oraside." Three hours later, Jenny Henderson arrived back from a reshing pocetime workout to find Farzad request in her priority in box. "Ohrer she wee She had a more finely nuanced understanding of the politics involved in this situation, and she was standing on a land mine for sure. Her business contacts had all know about the invitation, and she knew it was more than a simple request. However, Farrad, har ing been with the company for only eighteen months, might not recognize the line branch that it represented, nor the problems that it would cause if he tumed down the trip or if he sent a very junior staff member in his place. Thave to speak with him about this before I do anything." she concluded, reaching for her jacket But just as she swiveled around to go see Farzad. Paul Gutienes appeared in her doorway, looking furious. "Got a moment?" he asked and not waiting for her answet plunked himself down in her visitor's chair, Jenny could almost see the steamcoming out of his ears, and his face was bet red. Paul was a great colleagues mentally put ting the "pause" button on her own problems, Jenny replied. "Sure, what's up? "Well, I just got back from the new technology meeting betwee marketing and our R&D guys, and it was just terriblet" he meaned. I've been trying to get Cheryland her group to consider doing some experimentation with cell phone promotions know, using that new Japanese bar coding system. There are a million things you can do with mobile these days. So, she asked me to set up a demonstration of the technol ogy and to have the R&D guys explain what it might do At first everyone was really excited. They'd read about these things in magazines and wanted to know more. But our guys kept droning an about 3 and 4G technology and different types of comme tivity and security and how the data move around and how we have to model and architect everything so it all fits together. They had the business guys se confused we never actually got talking about how the technology might be used for marketing and whether it was a good business idea. After about half an hout, everyone just tuned out I tried to bring it back to the applications we could develop if we past invested a linie in the mobile connectivity infrastructure, but by then we were dead in the water. They wouldn't find the project because they couldn't see why customers would want to mobile in our stores when we had perfectly good cash registers and in-sne kiske "1 despairt" he said dramatically. "And you know what's going to happen doet you? In a year of so, when everyone else has got mobile apps, they re going to want us to do something for them yesterday, and we're going to have to throw me stopgap technology in place to deal with it, and everyone's going to be con that it isn't helping the business with what it needs! Jenny was sympathetic "Ben there, done that and got the T-shirt." wryly. These tech guys are so brilliant but they can't ever seem to come our guys kept droning on about and 4G technology and different types of connec tivity and security and how the data move around and how we have to model and architect everything so it all fits together. They had the business guys so confused we never actually got talking about how the technology might be used for marketing and whether it was a good business idea. After about half an hour everyone just tuned out I tried to bring it back to the applications we could develop if we just invested a little in the mobile connectivity infrastructure, but by then we were dead in the water. They wouldn't fund the project because they couldn't see why customers would want to use mobile in our stores when we had perfectly good cash registers and in-store kiosks "I despairt" he said dramatically. "And you know what's going to happen don't you? In a year or so, when everyone else has got mobile apps, they're going to want us to do something for them yesterday, and we're going to have to throw some sort of stopgap technology in place to deal with it, and everyone's going to be complaining that IT isn't helping the business with what it needs! Jenny was sympathetic "Been there, done that and got the T-shirt," she laughed wryly. "These tech guys are so brilliant, but they can't ever seem to connect what they 101 Delivering Business Value with IT at Helly Hardware know to what the business thinks it needs. Sometimes, they're too farsighted and need to just paint the next couple of steps of what could be done, not the flying around in jetpacks vision. And sometimes I think they truly don't understand why the business can't see how these bits and bytes they're talking about translate into something that it can use to make money." She looked at her watch and Paul got the hint He stood up "Thanks for letting me vent," he said. "You're a good listener 1 hope Farzad is," she thought grimly as she headed down the hall. Or he's going to be out of here by Thanksgiving. It was a sad truth that CIOs seemed to turn over every two years or so at Hefty. It was almost predictable. A new CEO would come in, and the next thing you know the CIO would be history. Or the user satisfaction rate would plummet, or there would be a major application crash, or the executives would complain about how much IT cost, or there would be an expensive new system failure Whatever it was, I would always get blamed, and the CIO would be gone. "We have some world-class people in IT," she thought, but everywhere we go in the business, we get a bad rap. And it's not always our fault." She remembered the recent CIM project to produce a single customer database for all of Hefty's divisions hardware, clothing, sporting goods, and credit. It had seemed to be a straightforward project with lots of ROI, but the infighting between the client divisions had dragged the project and the costs) out. No one could agree about whose version of the truth they should use, and the divisions had assigned their most junior people to it and insisted on numerous exceptions, workarounds, and enhancements, all of which had rendered the original business case useless. On top of that, the company had undergone a major restructuring in the middle of it and a lot of the major play ers had changed. "It would be a lot easier for us in IT if the business would get its act together about what it wants from IT," she thought. But just as quickly, she recognized that this was probably an unrealistic goal. A more practical one would be to find ways for business and IT to work collaboratively at all levels. "We each hold pieces of the future picture of the business," she mused. "We need to figure out a better way to put them together than simply trying to force them to fit. Knocking on Farzad's door, she pocked into the window beside it. He seemed kost in thought but smiled when he saw her. "Jennyt" he exclaimed. "I was just think- ing about you and the e-mail sent you. Have you done anything about it yet?" When she shook her head, he gave a sigh of relief. "I was just rethinking my decision about this trip, and I'd like your advice." Jenny gave her own mental sigh and stepped into the office, 1 think we have a problem with the business and we need to fix it-Fast," she said. "I've got some ideas, and what to do about the trip is just part of them. Can we talk?" Farzad nodded encouragingly and invited her to sit down. I agree with you and I'd like to hear what you have to say, We need to do things differently around here. and I think with your help we can. What did you have in mind?" Discussion Questions 1. Overall, how effective is the partnership between IT and the business at Hefty Hardware Identify the shortcomings of both IT and the business 2. Create a plan for how IT and the business can work collaboratively to deliver the Savvy Store program successfully