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

Infrastucture operating level hardware & bar T Achilecione integrated business 2" intergrated bosiness & IT blue print. MINI CASE Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware VP of retail marketing, as she is a pain in the neck," groused Cheryl O'Shea, slipped into a seat at the table in the Hefty Har executive dining room, next to her colleagues. "It's all technical mumbo-jumbo whe Ues. "It's all technical mumbo-jumbo when they talk to you and I still don't o to accomplish with our Savvy Store now if they have any idea about what we're trying to accomp ogram. I keep explaining that we have to improve the customer experience and that ed IT's help to do this, but they keep talking about infrastructure and bandwidth technical architecture, which is all their internal stuff and doesn't relate to what te 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 going, my staff are all complaining that the IT 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 tell us to add it to the list for the next release! Are we really getting value for all of the millions that we pour into IT?" "Well, I don't think it's as bad as you both seem to believe" added pad as you both seem to believe," added Michelle Wright, the CFO. "My EA sings the praises of the help we put in last year. We can now close the be it took days. And I've seen the benchmarking are in the top quartile for reliability and ings the praises of the help desk and the new ERP system now close the books at month-end in 24 hours. Before that, e benchmarking reports on our computer operations. We le for reliability and cost-effectiveness for all aveness for all our hardware and systems. I don't think we could "You are talking 'apples and oranges' here saying that we're getting good, cheap. money we're spending here. On the othe creating new business value for Heft "Yes, they are," agreed Cheryl. "I'd any cheaper outside the company." d oranges' here," said Glen. "On one hand, you're cheap, reliable computer operations and value for the the other hand, we don't feel IT is contributing to ofty. They're really two different things." v. "I'd even agree with you that they do a pretty oms functioning and preventing viruses and things. At ome of our competitors. But I don't see how they're ness strategy. And surely in this day and age with gies coming out all over the place, and so many d be able to get them to help good job of keeping our systems for least we've never lost any data like se contributing to executing our busin reased competition, new technolopi nges in our economy, we should be em to help us be more flexible, not rices to our customers quickly!" less, and deliver new products and Delivering Business 10. Reproduced by per siness Value with IT at Hefty Hardware." #1-L10-1-001, a by permission of Queen's University School of Busin 2 Smith, H. A., and J. D. Mckeen. "Deliver Men's School of Business, May 2010. Repro Ontario, Canada. Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware The conversation moved on then, but Glen was thoughtful as he walked back his office after lunch. Truthfully, he only ever thought about IT when it affected him and Wie area. Like his other colleagues, he found most of his communication with the depart vent. Jenny excepted, to be unintelligible, so he delegated it to his subordinates, unless absolutely couldn't be avoided. But Cheryl was right. It was becoming increasingly ortant to how the company did its business. Although Hefty's success was bum its excellent supply chain logistics and the assortment of products in its stores, IT played huge role in this. And to implement Hefty's new Savvy Store strategy, IT would be 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 travels, IT was front and center in most cutting odge retail stores. It provided extensive self-service to improve checkout; multichannel ss to information inside stores to enable customers to browse an extended product ase and better support sales associates assisting customers, and multimedia to engage customers with extended product knowledge. Part of Hefty's new Savvy Store business strategy was to copy some of these initiatives, hoping to become the first retailer in North America to completely integrate multimedia and digital information into each of its 1.000 stores. They'd spent months at the executive committee meetings working out this new strategic thrust using information and multimedia to improve the customer experience in a variety of ways and to make it consistent in each of their stores. Now, they had to figure out exactly how to execute it, and IT was a key player. The question in Glen's mind now was how could the business and IT work together to deliver on this vision, when IT was essentially operating in its own technical world, which bore very little relationship to the world of business? Entering his office, with its panoramic view of the downtown core, Glen had an idea. "Hefty's stores operate in a different world than we do at our head office. Wouldn't it be great to take some of our best IT folks out on the road so they could see what it's 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 stores in Moose River and seeing how its managers had circumvented the company's stringent security protocols by writing their passwords on Post-it notes stuck 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 Gutierez, and maybe even invite the CIO, Farzad 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 take me and some of my top people including you on the road two weeks from he complained to his chief architect, Sergei Grozny. Maybe I could spare Jenny since she's Glen's main contact, but we're up to our wazoos in alligators trying to er our strategic IT architecture so we can support their Savvy Stores initiative ozen 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 of w our plans and then to work with the master data team to help them mation strategy," said Sergei. "If we don't have the infrastructure and weeks to review our plans and outline their information strategy Vering Value with IT integrated information in place the send Paul and my core architects of seen a Hefty store. It's not like th "You're right," agreed a send five of our top people into th s! You can They've all en't going to be any 'Savvy Stores' a whole week! They its not like they're going to see anyt night," agreed Farzad. "Glen's just goin ind that I can't hs after we've know to what to just paint th jetpacks vision can't see how can use to ma Yll send Thanks for ing. She could use "I hope finished this planning and budget cycle. Jenny and maybe that new intern, Joyce Li, some exposure to the business, and she's no Jenny and get her to set it up know how she does it, but she seems to really ss guys. I don't a refreshing noontim going to be over every to in, and ther would plur complain a *@!" she swore. She tuation, and un alocut 18 to see anything different." en's just going to have to understand + held right now. Maybe in six months a cycle. We've got too much work to do now Joyce Li, who we're thinking of hiring. Sh. nd she's not working on anything critical with Glen. She's so great with these business pueb ms to really get them onside." Henderson arrived back from a refresh equest in her priority in-box. "Oh #*!#*@!" sh understanding of the politics involved in this si nd mine for sure. Her business contacts had all she knew it was more than a simple request. However, Far in the company for only eighteen months, might not recognize th it represented, nor the problems that it would cause if he turned d le sent a very junior staff member in his place. "I have to speak with him el do anything," she concluded, reaching for her jacket. Whatever i some worl get a bad Farzad, hay gnize the olive urned down the with him about She all of Hef to be a st divisions version peoplet of whic er answer, team coming had un ers hac togeth that th for bu Three hours later, Jenny Henderson workout to find Farzad's request in he had a more finely nuanced understandi she was standing on a land mine for sure the invitation, and she knew it was mor ing been with the company for on branch that it represented, nor the problem trip or if he sent a very junior staf this before I do anything," she but just as she swiveled around to go see Farzad, Paul Gutierez appeared in doorway, looking furious. "Got a moment?" he asked and, not waiting for her ans Prunked himself down in her visitor's chair. Jenny could almost see the steam out of his ears, and his face was beet red. Paul was a great colleague, so mentally ting the "pause" button on her own problems, Jenny replied, "Sure, what's up?" "Well, I just got back from the new technology meeting between marketing a our R&D guys, and it was just terrible!" he moaned. I've been trying to get Chervla her group to consider doing some experimentation with cell phone promotions know, using that new Japanese bar coding system. There are a million things von 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 on about 3G 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! futur them lost ing she this "I despair!" he said dramatically. "And you know what's going to happen don you? In a year or so, when everyone else has got mobile apps, they're going to war us to do something for them yesterday, and we're going to have to throw some sort stopgap technology in place to deal with it, and everyone's going to be complaing that IT isn't helping the business with what it needs!" Jenny was sympathetic. "Been there, done that, and got the T-shirt," she lausy wryly. "These tech guys are so brilliant, but they can't ever seem to connect what know to what the bus to just paint the next jetpacks vision.' And can't see how these h can use to make mone "Thanks for letting "I hope Farzad is. going to be out of here over every two years of in, and the next thing y complain about how Delivering Business Value with IT at Hefty Hardware 101 the business thinks it needs. Sometimes, they're too farsighted and need the next couple of steps of what could be done, not the 'flying around in And sometimes I think they truly don't understand why the business these bits and bytes they're talking about translate into something that it ske money." She looked at her watch, and Paul got the hint. He stood up. cale for letting me vent, he said. "You're a good listener." pe Farzad is," she thought grimly as she headed down the hall. "Or he's out of here by Thanksgiving." It was a sad truth that CIOs seemed to turn wo years or so at Hefty. It was almost predictable. A new CEO would come ext thing you knew the CIO would be history. Or the user satisfaction rate in, Lummet, or there would be a major application crash, or the executives would n about how much IT cost, or there would be an expensive new system failure. Whatever er it was, IT would always get blamed, and the CIO would be gone. "We have world-class people in IT," she thought, but everywhere we go in the business, we eet a bad rap. And it's not always our fault." She remembered the recent CIM project to produce a single customer database for 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 peeked into the window beside it. He seemed lost in thought but smiled when he saw her. "Jenny!" he exclaimed. I was just think- ing about you and the e-mail I 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 une office. "I think we have a problem with the business and we need to fix it-fast," he said. "I've got some ideas, and what to do about the trip is just part of them. Can talk!" Farzad nodded encouragingly and invited her to sit down. "I agree with you, a like to hear what you have to say. We need to do things differently around here, "I think with your help we can. What did you have in mind? n uo 1950 and other sou cussion Questions and brannbolo borgo no Hardware? Identify the ll, how effective is the partnership between IT and the business at Hefty are? Identify the shortcomings of both IT and the business. w o rk collaboratively to deliver th