ROI: Return on InformationQ&A with Gap Inc. CIO Ken HarrisContinued from Page 1 IE: Have you put business intelligence or analytic tools into the hands of people in your stores? Harris: Probably the greater short-term opportunities are in merchandising, planning, and supply chain areas. We are working on these now. The customer-facing side — including the stores, call center, and Web site — provide longer-term opportunities. IE: Stovepiped architecture is a big challenge to overcome there. Are you addressing integration issues at Gap Inc. in order to get the right information into the right hands? Harris: Absolutely. Our "to-be" palette integrates technology, information, and business process toward an end-to-end view. Over time, we are putting the pieces together to make it happen, including working with our strategic technology partners to ensure that their products integrate fully and seamlessly. In addition, we're leveraging middleware technology to move toward the vision and help integrate existing stovepipe applications. This is a long-term effort, but we are making good progress. IE: You've identified data integrity as a major objective. Can you discuss the role and importance of data integrity in the retail value chain and your best practice in the area? Harris: It all starts at the point of sale. You've got to collect information timely, accurately, and thoroughly and get it flowing through your systems in real time or near real time. You've also got to assure that data audit changes get processed through all affected systems. It's a lot easier to do that when you approach this process from the top down. In other words, start by developing the architecture for systemwide data integrity, then work toward it, piece at a time, from wherever you are. The process and technology to assure data integrity should be an integral part of an overall technology strategy. IE: You've been a prominent advocate for standards. As an IT executive, what do you see as your role in the standards-development process? Harris: Ultimately, a standard becomes so through universal adoption. I don't know that what CIOs have been doing has achieved the standardization objectives as much as we would like. Fortunately, however, some technologies such as XML are naturally becoming standards. Perhaps a new approach will help. As I mentioned before, I believe greater collaboration between technology developers and users is the way of the future. In this collaboration, the measure of success will be the benefit to the customer. Hence the technology selection process may naturally gravitate to those technologies that are easier to integrate and support; that is, more open and more standard. That is naturally the objective for technology users; through closer partnerships, it may naturally become the objective for developers as well. In other words, in the future, the standards and integration problem may be more equally borne by technology developers and users. If that happens, the move toward standards will accelerate. IE: Finally, the entire retail industry was caught flat-footed by oversupply and under-demand last year. Will collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment (CPFR) preclude that problem in the future? Harris: I think there will always be mismatches between supply and demand though CPFR can significantly help to minimize negative impact. I believe that CPFR will become more universal when it is broadly evident that supply chains that adopt it outperform those that don't. Until then, there will continue to be both technical and political challenges for CPFR. IE: If you had to impart one piece of advice to readers, what would it be? Harris: Keep your focus on the customer, not the technology. Ultimately, customer benefits justify technology investments. So that's where technology professionals should start and stay.
|
 |
Most Popular This Week
IE Weekly Newsletter
Subscribe to the newsletter
| |
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
