We partnered with them because they have a true end-to-end retail vision. They continue to prove to us that they are staying in front of what is required in future releases of products."- Kristen Blum, CIO, Abercrombie & Fitch
Store.org - Kristen Blum was presented with a specific set of goals – and challenges – when she joined Abercrombie & Fitch as CIO in the spring of 2006.
With the brand growing by leaps and bounds, and merchants in need of more precise data to support emerging strategies and long-term growth initiatives, Blum was charged with overhauling the IT systems of the New Albany, Ohio-based specialty retailer. That’s never a simple task, but the fact that A&F was operating on COBOL applications running on mainframes puts the enormity of the challenge in perspective.
Blum chose Oracle as A&F’s primary IT partner, then set her sights on addressing several key objectives: greater speed to market; maintaining and growing industry-leading margins; retiring legacy applications; reducing the labor and maintenance costs linked to existing systems; providing one version of the truth; and preparing the IT foundation for an accelerated international rollout scheduled for 2010 and 2011.
The first outward sign of A&F’s IT transformation became evident with the launch of a new data center in 2007. Since then, the retailer has deployed a virtualized, centralized POS application and – refusing to be deterred by the sputtering economy – spent the better part of 2009 immersed in a two-phase rollout of Oracle’s Retail Merchandising System. Click here to read the full article >>
