Friday, February 27, 1998

Mr. Douglas presented a very interesting presentation on the Proffitt’s, Inc. approach to handling the I/S aspects of their business. Proffit’s, Inc. is a combination of six department stores chains which include:

Proffit’s

McRaes

Yonker

Parisian

Herberger’s

Carson Person Scott

The merge of these 6 stores have made them the 4^th largest department store retail chain with a$3.5B in sales from 238 stores in 24 states. This makes the I/S organization, which appears to be the main driver in factor for survival, success, and growth of this organization. The I/S organization is currently divided into 3 data centers (Jackson, Milwaukee, and Herberger’s). Their hardware mainly consists of IBM mainframes and RISC systems. Most of their current operations are based on systems that utilize the IBM CISC Cobol based transaction database system, but there is a move to upgrade to a more open system. They are faced with the problems that most I/S organizations are facing: "the battle between Microsoft and the others", but are moving to an Oracle based operation using PL/SQL and COBRA technology for communications. The Jackson data center appears to be the headquarters for this operation. There is also a move to merge most of the data center operations, but the need to keep some unique local operations still exist.

Proffit’s has a three-phased plan for moving towards the future:

Phase I – Vendor Analysis

Phase II – Retail Integration

Phase III – Clientele

During phase I of their plan, Proffit’s plans to invest $7M in the implementation but expects to retrieve a $9M profit. Phase II will see the integration of their operations with the bulk of the work being moved to the RS/6000 platform. The tools and techniques used during this phase will allow them to build a "best practices" set of solutions, connected by a set of object-oriented middle ware called the Retail Integration Layer. Phase III will allow them to obtain and utilize detailed information about their clientele, which will allow them to serve them on a more personal basis.

The three-phased plan appears to be an impressive approach to moving them towards superior I/S management, which will prepare them for future growths and mergers.

The three-phased plan appears to be an impressive approach to moving them towards superior I/S management, which will prepare them for future growths and mergers.