MEIJER FITS IT INTO ITS BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

MICHAEL GARRY

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - At Meijer here, IT never operates in a vacuum.

Though not always the case in the past, the 171-store supercenter operator now takes great pains to ensure that its IT department operates in lockstep with all of the business-side departments in the company, such as merchandising, distribution or retail operations, said Tom Nakfoor, Meijer's vice president of merchandise planning and supply chain.

By fitting IT tightly to business objectives, Meijer insists that technology produces a clear business benefit, not just a technology advantage. "At Meijer, there is no technology project; it's a business project enabled by technology," explained Nakfoor, speaking at a session at the National Retail Federation's annual conference in New York last month.

Nakfoor said that Meijer establishes project teams with co-leads from the business and IT sides to facilitate communications. The team defines goals and expected business results, "which keeps you from being surprised at the end."

The key is for the IT department to be exposed to as much input as possible to the business objectives and requirements of a project. "We do a lot of work on developing the relationship between IT and the business side," Nakfoor said. "I'm often in the IT building, sharing my vision, talking about a problem they're solving. That's very important to them."

Nakfoor alluded to two projects with an IT component, each going in a different direction. In one case, a "distribution system" was developed with a broad range of user input "down to the order selectors," ensuring the IT department fully understood the business objectives. "We did the business input up front and we delivered a solid result," he said.

By contrast, in the development of an ad execution system, "we didn't have a broad enough group of business users participate in discussing the business requirements with IT," Nakfoor said. "And we delivered something that required too much manual input and never got used. We're still working on it."

When a new system is implemented, Meijer makes sure to shut down the former system, so that users don't resort to old methods. "It's never smooth at the start. And people will jump off the ship early if they have an option, so we don't give them that option," Nakfoor said.