I-Manager profiles
Noah Garden
Noah Garden is in charge of helping Major League Baseball hit a home run on the Internet. The league manages a Web site, MLB.com, as well as e-commerce stores for each of the league's 30 baseball teams. The league sells more than 6,000 products from its sites, and has begun offering subscription-based audio broadcasts of games. Garden spoke with Section B Editor Mel Duvall.
What kind of revenue is your site bringing in?
It's big, but we haven't released any numbers. We certainly have a lot of fans who come to our site directly for news and updates, and we're looking for new ways to market to them.
You rose up through marketing and sales to assume your role. Why is that an appropriate route for a vice president of e-commerce?
I think that when you come out of the marketing and merchandising end of things, you're comfortable with growing businesses, watching and being responsible for sales. I think it's a natural fit. On many sites today, advertising is playing a smaller and smaller role in what everybody does, and so they have to look at traditional revenue streams to make businesses work. I think that's why [many I-managers have come out of marketing] and it has evolved as it has.
Whom do you report to?
I report directly to Bob Bowman, CEO of MLB Advanced Media [a unit created to drive the league's Internet initiatives]. But I oversee all of the e-commerce initiatives, and I control the spending.
Jeff Marshall
As chief information officer of The Men's Wearhouse, Jeff Marshall manages the IT operations for 600 brick-and-mortar stores in the US and Canada, and is also in charge of the company's Web initiatives. He spoke with Senior Writer Robert Bryce.
What is your biggest challenge these days?
Our challenge right now is trying to stay attuned with the business, trying to understand what's hot for the merchandise guys, the logistics guys. We are building 500,000 square feet of warehouse space in Houston. We are adding automation to that and trying to integrate the new system with the legacy systems and the systems under development. Everything is growing at a rapid rate, and that places a greater need on the [information technology (IT)] infrastructure to be closely integrated as opposed to being just interfaced.
As a retailer, our two greatest assets are people and inventory. Controlling that, understanding what it is, where it is and how much it costs us is critical. We have systems that know the answers to those questions. But integrating the systems and making the systems work is part of the responsibility of a good IT shop.
So how do you plan to do that?
We've spent tens of millions on hardware and software and getting our IT foundation put in place. Now, over the next couple years, we will try to extract greater value and efficiency out of these fairly complicated systems. Included in the challenge of our system integration is pushing the responsibility for the system out onto the users so they can understand the system, use it efficiently and know if it's working or not.
Anything else that's a concern?
One other thing that keeps me up at night is ensuring the business units are in control of, and know how to operate, this complex technology that keeps the ship afloat.
Robert DeRodes
In his role of chief information officer at Delta Air Lines, Robert DeRodes oversees a staff of 2,400, making sure the airline's computer systems function smoothly. He must also work with Senior Vice President for eBusiness Vincent Caminiti to implement Delta's electronic commerce initiatives. DeRodes spoke with Section B Editor Mel Duvall on how he works with Caminiti to achieve Delta's e-commerce goals.
What is the difference in your roles?
Vince provides Delta Technology with a great service. He helps us develop our Internet strategy; he brokers ideas and works to gain a consensus on our priorities. We pick it up from strategy development, turn the strategy into architecture and execute the projects.
I like to say Vince does a great job of catching the bear, and we do a great job of skinning it.
How would you resolve a conflict?
Clearly, the way we resolve it here at Delta is we get around a table and get the issues out so we can talk about them. Often it entails a series of compromises. It's not that we don't end up agreeing - we end up finding ways of agreeing to a compromise. I view part of my mission as not selecting, per se, the software or tools that are used [to implement e-commerce projects], but selecting the architecture or framework on which those tools or products have to sit.
I see my role as the enforcer of architecture and standards, more than a selector of packages.
What is the ideal relationship between a CIO and vice president of e-commerce?
One where the roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. An unhealthy relationship would be one where there is role ambiguity and it's not clear who has rights over what decisions. I would think also that you would have a congruence of goals - that you are both on the same page.
Back to Table of Contents
