1 The business context

The retailer in question is a leading player in the fashion industry, with over 2,000 stores in 80 countries. It has a strong brand identity, a loyal customer base, and a reputation for fast and affordable fashion. However, it also faces intense competition from online and offline rivals, changing consumer preferences, and environmental and social pressures. To maintain its market position and grow its revenue, the retailer needed to transform its business model and offer a seamless and personalized customer experience across all channels.

2 The IT challenge

The retailer's IT function was tasked with supporting the business operations and enabling the digital transformation, yet it encountered a multitude of difficulties. Its legacy IT infrastructure was intricate, expensive, and rigid, while the lack of integration and standardization across different systems and platforms, as well as a siloed and reactive IT culture that was more focused on resolving issues than creating value, all contributed to a misalignment between the IT and business priorities, expectations, and communication. These issues hindered the retailer from utilizing its IT capabilities to reach its strategic objectives and provide an exceptional customer experience.

3 The IT strategy

The retailer decided to implement a new IT strategy that would help them to align their IT function with their business vision and objectives. This strategy was composed of four main components: simplifying and modernizing the IT infrastructure and architecture with the use of cloud, microservices, and APIs; implementing agile and DevOps practices and tools to improve the speed, quality, and collaboration of IT delivery; fostering a culture of innovation and value creation by empowering the IT teams, encouraging experimentation, and measuring outcomes; and strengthening the business-IT partnership by establishing clear roles, responsibilities, and governance, as well as enhancing the communication and feedback loops. This strategy was designed to help the retailer reach their business goals, such as enhancing the customer experience with omnichannel, personalized, and data-driven services and solutions, increasing the operational efficiency and agility by automating and optimizing the business processes and workflows, and driving the business growth and innovation by launching new products, markets, and business models.

4 The IT implementation

The retailer implemented its IT strategy in a phased and iterative manner, utilizing a portfolio of projects and initiatives that were in line with the business priorities and roadmap. Notable IT initiatives included migrating the core applications and data to the cloud to reduce IT costs and complexity, while increasing scalability and reliability; developing a unified and modular platform to integrate and standardize data and systems across channels and regions; constructing a customer data platform to collect, analyze, and leverage customer data and insights for personalization and segmentation; creating a digital innovation lab to experiment and prototype new ideas and solutions using emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, and AR; and establishing a cross-functional and co-located IT team to work closely with business stakeholders and customers, thus enabling faster and better value delivery.

5 The IT outcomes

The retailer experienced a range of positive results from their IT strategy and implementation, such as improved customer satisfaction and loyalty, increased revenue and market share, reduced IT costs and risks, enhanced IT performance and agility, and strengthened business-IT alignment and collaboration. These outcomes were achieved by offering a consistent and differentiated customer experience across channels and touchpoints, attracting and retaining more customers, launching new products and services, simplifying and modernizing the IT infrastructure and architecture, improving IT security and compliance, adopting agile and DevOps practices and tools, accelerating IT delivery and innovation, and establishing a common vision and objectives while enhancing communication and feedback loops.

6 The IT lessons

Organizations that wish to align their business and IT, and leverage IT as a strategic asset, can learn valuable lessons from the retailer's case study. To do this, they should define and communicate a shared vision and objectives for the business and IT, and ensure they are in line with the external and internal environment. Additionally, they should adopt a customer-centric and value-driven approach, and use data and analytics to understand and meet customer needs and expectations. Furthermore, they should simplify and standardize the IT infrastructure and architecture, and use cloud, microservices, and APIs to enable flexibility and integration. Moreover, they should implement agile and DevOps practices and tools, and foster a culture of innovation and value creation by empowering the IT teams, encouraging experimentation, and measuring outcomes. Finally, they should strengthen the business-IT partnership by establishing clear roles, responsibilities, and governance, and enhancing the communication and feedback loops.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?