In this podcast, Bruce Ash talks about Dollar General's leveraging of technology to fly under Wal-Mart's radar screen, the political challenges he faced as CIO for a rapidly growing retailer, and his takeaways CIOs can use to create business impact.
If you're a CIO for a rapidly growing retail chain, you had better make sure you can deliver the business impact of IT to the organization. Bruce Ash has done just that repeatedly. He spent about 20 years developing IT infrastructures to support two major retailers --Talbots and Dollar General. During Ash's 10-year stint as CIO with Talbots, the company grew from 175 stores to 900 stores in four countries. On the other hand, Dollar General's explosive growth was like nothing Ash had ever experienced before at Talbots. Ash's nine-year tenure as CIO coincided with the company's expansion from 4,000 stores to 8,000 stores in 35 states. He said, "One year we opened 700 stores and three distribution centers to support the additional stores. Some retailers don't even have 700 stores."
Some retail analysts say that Sam Walton's original vision for Wal-Mart resembled that of today's Dollar General. This modern version of the neighborhood general store sells everything from apparel to toys from electronics to household goods, all at prices most people can afford to pay. Each Dollar General stores carries more than 5,400 core products from America's most trust brands and manufacturers.
As CIO of Dollar General, Ash became the linchpin between the business community, the corporate leadership team, the company's strategy, and the deployment of IT. He says, "The business impact of IT came from building the infrastructure to support the company's fast-paced growth strategy. It included bringing in a point of sale system that improved both our customer experience and our supply chain. We could process a variety of alternative payment methods. As a result, customers could get through the checkout line faster. The merchandise information this system captured enabled us to have perpetual inventory in the stores, including automatic stock replenishment."
Bio
Before becoming CIO for Dollar General, Bruce Ash spent 10 with Talbots as senior vice president and CIO. He also was vice president of information systems at Filenes in Boston. He also has held senior IT at Foley's in Houston, Texas, and Federated (Macy's) Department Stores' corporate offices. He is currently doing retail IT consulting for 1010data, an emerging company that provides an analytics software as a service for business intelligence.
Resources
Discount Doesn't Skimp on Supply-Chain Investments - Supply Chain Brain
Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis
