Posted Date: 8/11/2011

RIS CIO of the Year Awards 2011

By The editors of RIS News
At the recent Retail Executive Summit, held June 20-22 in San Diego, California, RIS News had the honor of presenting the first annual Retail CIO of the Year Awards to five talented executives, for helping to guide their organizations through one of the toughest business environments in decades. The awards were divided into four categories. Three were open to nominations from retail industry executives during a highly promoted four-week campaign in April and May. One award was an Editor’s Choice, based on industry knowledge aggregated through the news-gathering process throughout the past year along with input from selected experts.

The categories that were open to nominations were the following:

• Innovation: Awarded to the CIO who implemented an emerging technology that drove ROI through top-line growth, improved customer satisfaction or increased bottom-line savings. A tie occurred in this category.
• Strategic Impact: Awarded to the CIO who implemented a project that is advancing the company in a new direction, market or channel.
• Rookie of the Year: Awarded to the CIO who made a significant contribution  in the first year on the job.

The final category, Career Achievement, was awarded to the CIO that made an outstanding contribution to the organization in the past year, and has also made significant contributions to the industry as a CIO for a minimum of 15 years. This award was selected by the RIS editorial team and based on industry knowledge and research.

Methodology
Through a rigorous process, RIS received 19 qualified nominations. The form required answering 13 questions that explained the reasons for the nomination and described specific projects that drove business value to the organization. Filling out this form required deep, fact-based knowledge of both the nominee and the company.

The questions focused on the following areas:

• Technologies, solutions, people and processes involved in accomplishing specific business goals
• Specific areas and departments of the business that benefitted from nominated projects
• Current status of nominated projects and timeline for full completion
• Time frame for ROI and other major benefits for the projects.

To ensure the awards reflected a valid and authentic retail perspective RIS brought together a judging panel that represented a broad range of industry viewpoints. Judges for the 2011 RIS Retail CIO of the Year were: Robert Fort, vice president of technology for Guitar Center; Greg Girard, program director for IDC Retail Insights; Eric Olson, vice president of education strategies for the National Retail Federation (NRF); and Lynn Olson, CEO of The Innovation Group. The editors of RIS were also judges.

INNOVATION

Driver of Customer-Centricity

Spearheading an aggressive and innovative mobile and sociaL initiative

JOHN KUBO, CIO, THE WET SEAL

While some CIOs assume the role of enabler of corporate missions, Jon Kubo takes it a step further and assumes the role of driver of customer-centricity to increase brand awareness, engagement and sales. As such, Kubo is an ideal choice for the RIS CIO of the Year Innovation Award.

The Wet Seal laid the foundation for a social selling and mobile strategy in 2008 with the development of the Fashion Community on Wetseal.com and Facebook, where shoppers can build, tag, share, rate and purchase outfits through a personalized boutique. In 2009, Wet Seal extended these capabilities to an iPhone application called iRunway, allowing customers access to a library of user-generated outfits and ratings while using their iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. The iRunway app created a cross-channel strategy by providing customers with the ability to scan an item in the store and be shown styles generated and rated by other consumers.

That same year, Wet Seal also enabled a mobile-optimized website that made it easy and convenient for consumers to instantly shop Wet Seal products and find store locations. It has become the centerpiece for an aggressive and innovative mobile marketing effort. Using the site, consumers can search The Wet Seal catalog, see the latest fashions and buy directly from any smartphone including iPhone/iPod Touch, Android and BlackBerry devices. In 2009 the iRunway app was a winner of the first annual Mobile App of the Year award presented by RIS News.

Under Kubo’s direction, e-commerce business revenue has increased more than 10-fold despite a sluggish economy. Since enabling Fashion Community and iRunway, the concept has generated roughly 20% of the revenue at WetSeal.com and consumers have created over 1 million outfits. Online shoppers who view these outfits have a 20% higher average order size and 40% higher conversion.

Wet Seal is still seeing growing results from this effort as more and more people access the mobile app while in-store. Over 85% of all styles carried by Wet Seal are contained in user-generated outfits, and users view over 1 million outfits per week while in the store or on the go using the iRunway iPhone app.


INNOVATION

Planning the Store of the Future

Building out a suite of technologies and innovations that work together seamlessly

Carla Moradi, Divisional VP and CIO, Enterprise Shared Services, Walgreens

A massive, chainwide overhaul of Walgreens’ IT infrastructure is enabling the retailer to implement the latest technologies, including tablet devices that allow clinicians to roam the store providing guidance to customers about their medications and in-store wireless networks to enhance customer access to information. The infrastructure revamp will reduce power consumption and dramatically improve application performance.
Moradi and her team have been working on a strategy to become the Store of the Future, engendering significant changes in the consumer’s store, pharmacy and health care experience. The foundation for achieving this strategic vision begins with an IT infrastructure upgrade at each of the 7,500 stores in the chain currently under way.
The Walgreens team spent three years looking for a platform that would allow them to fundamentally change how application systems are implemented; mobilize clinicians and pharmacists with streaming technologies; and enable interactive health care kiosks – with future expansion into analytics – all to better serve the customer.

Combining a virtualization solution with a modular, integrated platform, Walgreens will be able to achieve power reductions through server consolidation while significantly improving the manageability and
serviceability of its stores. A key component of this solution is the adoption of solid state drive technology, which promises to reduce drive failures by 10 times and improve application performance by five times.
Patient records are now pulled up with little delay, allowing faster processing of prescriptions and reduced wait times. Using tablet devices, a mobile clinician can roam the store and provide guidance to customers about medications, with encrypted data being streamed to the tablet from the server.
The end result is twofold: a suite of technologies and innovations that work together seamlessly and move Walgreens closer to its goal of becoming the Store of the Future, and a well-deserved RIS CIO of the Year Award for Innovation for Moradi.

Strategic Impact

Revving Up the Demand Chain

Upgrading the demand chain from product lifecycle management to e-commerce to store-based systems

Mike Relich, EVP & CIO, Guess, Inc.

Mike Relich and his team have been extremely busy over the last several years implementing a vast array of IT projects designed to enable Guess, Inc. to maintain its strong growth trajectory. As a result, Relich netted multiple nominations during the awards process, spanning the demand chain from product lifecycle management (PLM) to e-commerce to store-based systems. 
As a manufacturer and retailer as well as a global brand operating in 26 countries, Guess, Inc. has experienced strong growth since 2006. During this time Relich realized that in order to meet the demands of its three brands, the supply chain needed to be faster and more efficient.

Relich led his team into implementing a new PLM system that enabled the sourcing team in Asia to collaborate with designers in the U.S. and Europe to create a single version of the truth and speed up the design process.

Once this system was in place, Relich implemented a sourcing solution that automated the purchase order and payment process to improve visibility across the supply chain. This part of the project alone helped Guess, Inc. yield an annual $1 million savings in cost of goods sold as well as reduced labor costs, and was a major factor in Relich winning the RIS CIO of the Year Award for Strategic Impact.

The team at Guess, Inc. also wanted to become a true cross-channel retailer to ensure growth. To move this strategy forward, Relich helped develop a three-year roadmap that included integration of data across channels to maximize sales opportunities. This initiative led to a flexible e-commerce platform that allowed store employees using in-store terminals to re-route out-of stock sale orders to improve the customer experience.
 
In addition, Relich has steered adoption of a BI infrastructure to aid decision-making across the enterprise, by delivering KPIs via tablet and mobile dashboards utilizing a SaaS delivery model.

With growth comes new challenges and with Relich helping to direct the strategic direction of the IT department, Guess, Inc. is ready to meet those challenges.

Rookie of the Year

Laying the Cornerstone for Success

Preparing for a planned business expansion includes upgrading warehouse and e-commerce capabilities

Bill Wood, CIO, Brookstone

The 2011 RIS Retail CIO Rookie of the Year Award winner is Bill Wood, CIO of Brookstone.

Before geekiness became cool and ingenious gadgets took over the world, Brookstone was already selling innovative, hard-to-find products through catalogs. Brookstone was ideally positioned to serve those with the motto “He who has the most toys wins.” Today, the privately held retailer has products in the travel, entertainment, technology and wellness categories.

Although Wood has been at Brookstone for about a year, he has been leading several big projects, including one in the area of supply chain execution, DC/warehouse management and fulfillment. The retailer had been well equipped to serve its stores, wholesale customers and shoppers in the pre-omni-channel environment, but in an era of channel proliferation the warehouse management system installed in 2001 needed upgrading.

The upgrade had to accommodate the shift toward global business, creating joint value with partners, and directly touching customers through better service and reduction of stockouts. The new system is able to do this by achieving near real-time order management, improved competitive positioning, value creation, and task management.

In addition to this project Wood was tasked with upgrading the
existing e-commerce platform, which was critical to a planned Web business expansion. The new platform’s goals include avoiding site downtime, scalable state-of-the-art functionality, capabilities for social and mobile applications, and new forms of digital payment. This project is a cornerstone for Brookstone’s overall success.


Career Achievement

Leading Transformation and Growth

Taking a tier-five retailer up to tier-one requires a guiding hand to scale IT systems

Don Courtney, FINISH LINE

Don Courtney started at Finish Line in 1988 and began by heading up information systems and distribution before becoming CIO. He held a similar position with an automotive aftermarket retailer prior to joining Finish Line. Today, IT distribution and logistics are major areas of strength at the company and Courtney has moved on to a new set of responsibilities as president of e-commerce.

When Courtney started at Finish Line it was a privately held regional retailer doing $56 million in annual sales. Today, it is a publicly traded multi-channel retailer doing $1.2 billion in sales. Under Courtney’s direction the IT and logistics operations expanded and rose to the challenge of accommodating this massive growth.

However, one day in 2002 the situation was grim at one of the company’s major DCs, which had been hit by a tornado. The amount of damage at the DC was extensive and it had to be completely rebuilt under Courtney’s direction. Today, it has become a state-of-the-art facility that has won industry awards.
Two years ago, Finish Line needed someone to transform its digital business division, and Don switched gears to assume responsibility for the task. As president of e-commerce for the company, Courtney became responsible for e-commerce marketing as well as operations and technology. In fiscal 2011, e-commerce sales were up 30% and in the first quarter of fiscal 2012 sales were up 55%.

More than anything else, Courtney is a smart and fair leader, according to those who work for him. He has an open door for anyone to enter and talk about ideas or debate issues, and these hallmarks have been keys to his longevity and success.

Courtney is passionate about exercise, hiking and bicycling, and recently colleagues at Finish Line became involved with a group workout program. Courtney gets some kidding for being the “old guy” in the group, but he is the one who outpaces the others.

Courtney is a long-time member of the RIS Editorial Advisory Board who rarely misses a meeting. He embodies the sharing, interactive spirit of the Editorial Advisory Board, and everyone who attends these closed-door meetings values his opinions and comments.

The RIS CIO of the Year Career Achievement award is presented in the spirit of recognizing outstanding achievements accomplished over many years, and is not meant to signify the end of anything. But in this case, Courtney announced plans for his retirement just after accepting the RIS CIO Career Achievement Award and his last day at Finish Line was the end of July. Courtney plans to stay on the RIS Editorial Advisory Board and we look forward to his many contributions in the future.