Merged Channel Is Good, But Keep IT Units Channel-Centric
Written by Evan SchumanSeptember 25th, 2008
Merged channel is all the rage—as it should be—but one key analyst is arguing that retailers must merge their channels, not their IT groups.
The problem is that most IT functions in-store are behind-the-scenes. To put a finer point on it, argues Nikki Baird of Retail Systems Research, is that in-store IT is not usually creating things that are customer-facing. This matters because retailers like to prioritize IT projects based on traditional ROI spreadsheet metrics, which rarely apply to new ideas for customer interactions.
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One Comment | Read Merged Channel Is Good, But Keep IT Units Channel-Centric
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
-Christine
September 25th, 2008 at 8:21 am
It is matter of company culture and business philosophy. Where in the organization does the corporate CIO report– to the CFO, to the COO, to the CEO? Does the company senior management team make business decisions based on strategic parameters and metrics/targets tied to those parameters/objectives or does it run based primarily on “gut instinct” (i.e. I’ve been in this business 25 years and I anecdotely know what works). Will the head of this IT group within the channel be part of the leadership team of the team running the channel?
In general, the skill set of the IT team working on a behind-the-scenes technology vs. customer-facing technology is different, however, there are definitely business philosophies as to why you want to have a centralized IT– such as consistent architecture, purchasing power, and the like. Having separately run IT organizations only opens the company up to having a higher cost structure than what is warranted.
But then again- if the eCommerce channel is kickin’ butt and the other channels are lagging– then they would probably be able to afford to have a separate IT…..