Changing technologies
OPPORTUNITIES IN THE CONSUMER AND RETAIL BUSINESS

IT is essential in the consumer & retail business

"A career in consumer products presents its own kind of challenges. You always have to size up the competition to keep ahead." Janice Madrid, Nikon

"It's an ever-changing career. There's always something different." Joyce Higgins, Acushnet

By Laurel McKee Ranger
Contributing Editor

Marie Quintana Cummiskey: consumer, mother of three and a PepsiCo VP of global IT.

Harriet Edelman is CIO of Avon. "The company's mission is a dream," she says.

Information technology is an integral and crucial component of consumer products and the retail trade. With information at the heart of critical manufacturing and marketing decisions, companies with the best IT and the best technologists have a big head start on their competitors.

While turnover stays relatively low and there's currently no huge stockpiling of IT pros, most companies we spoke to have a fairly steady need for some good people.

RFID for a tighter supply chain
A variety of electronic devices are helping make the supply chain more efficient and keep costs down. Nearly all such devices require the intervention of IT pros.

A new and promising development is radio frequency identification (RFID). RFID is an immediate and flexible addition to the now virtually universal printed product code. It can be used to streamline inventory and pinpoint expiration dates on products. Other possible uses are only beginning to be explored.

The obvious immediate benefits of RFID include a tighter supply chain and better control of inventory, leading to lower warehousing and distribution costs.

There are also some important consumer benefits. Because each product has its unique code, counterfeits are easily identifiable, as are outdated products. This could be especially important in the drug industry. RFID would also speed and simplify product recalls.

The cost of the necessary ID tags is the major hurdle to more widespread use. Right now it's pegged around fifteen to thirty cents a tag, seemingly prohibitively expensive in low-ticket areas like the grocery business.

But RFID has a powerful champion in Wal-Mart (Bentonville, AR), arguably the world's largest retailer. As Wal-Mart persuades more suppliers to adopt the technology, costs are expected to come down. The company will begin implementation of the technology early in 2005 and expects to fully adopt it by the end of 2006. More than twenty of its major suppliers have asked to be part of the initial test group.

Technology is a driver at PepsiCo
"PepsiCo is always looking for ways to provide service and information with quality and efficiency," says Marie Quintana Cummiskey, VP of global IT capabilities for PepsiCo Business Solutions Group. "As a consumer and a mother of three kids, as well as a PepsiCo VP, I'm always looking for anything that can reduce the cost of delivering our products to the consumer and improve service at the same time."

The scope of IT employed at PepsiCo (Purchase, NY) is enormous and growing, she says. The company was among the first to equip its field salespeople with handheld computers, and is now exploring technologies like RFID.

Efficiency and effectiveness are the goals of PepsiCo's IT, whether deploying an emerging technology or using one that's been tried and tested. The focus is on ensuring that retailers are well supported so they can help drive consumer sales, Quintana Cummiskey says. "Our goal is to create in-depth supply-chain information and keep the right products on the shelf at the right time."

PepsiCo makes a lot more than the soft drink that bears its name. The company also owns Frito-Lay, Quaker Oats and Tropicana brands, as well as other food and beverage labels.

PepsiCo's IT is consolidated, providing shared services to all its divisions. The IT group is headquartered in Plano, TX, with sites across the U.S.

"Because of our size, we can take our own best ideas and extend them where it makes sense; we can cross-pollinate. Or we take the best of industry standards, such as the Capability Maturity Model, and apply them across the business," Quintana Cummiskey explains.

Pepsico's Marie Quintana Cummiskey takes a strategic view
Maria Quintana Cummiskey has been with PepsiCo for six years. Her first mission there was to consolidate the IT infrastructure.

"My organization centralized the division IT functions. We moved everything together, including PCs, desktops, hardware, sales handhelds, and the data center in the Dallas area. The change involved about 700 employees in all."

Last year she moved into her current role. "Now I'm working to optimize operational processes, to become more formal with metrics, to scrutinize how we roll out new tools and to stay ahead of the business. My role is no longer operational, it's strategic. My team is taking a three-year strategic view to stay in front of what our business will need tomorrow," she says.

Quintana Cummiskey was born in Cuba. In 1961, "My mother, brother and I were on the last Delta flight out of Havana. We settled in Louisiana, in a tiny Cajun town where we were the only Hispanic family in the area. Sometimes I call myself a Cuban Cajun," she adds with a laugh.

She received a BA in psychology from Louisiana State University in 1978, following up with an MA in clinical social work from Tulane University (New Orleans, LA) in 1980. Her first job was at a mental health clinic, but after a year she moved on to IBM (Armonk, NY) as a systems engineer.

"Back then IBM was looking for people with masters degrees in liberal arts because they wanted their people to stress management and communication skills," she explains. "IBM gave me two years of training that were like getting a masters in computer science. You go to school for three weeks, then you're out in the field for three weeks. It was a great opportunity."

Quintana Cummiskey was an IBM account exec until 1994, when she struck out on her own as a consultant in the transportation industry. One of her favorite projects was program management and IT strategy for the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe Railroad merger. In 1996 she joined Perot Systems (Dallas, TX), leading global people programs and directing several outsourcing efforts. In 1998 she moved to PepsiCo.

She finds the environment at PepsiCo rewarding, personally as well as professionally. "PepsiCo makes a tremendous effort regarding diversity. We're very aware of our consumers and we try to mirror that in our employment efforts. A third of my peer team here are female, and I feel valued and important as both a woman and a Latina."

Hershey's Beth Klahre directs ops and infrastructure services

Hershey's Beth Klahre.

Hershey, PA, home of the Hershey Foods Corp, is a town that exudes the wonderful aroma of chocolate. Here the company makes Hershey's milk chocolate bars and Kisses, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, York Peppermint Patties, and non-chocolate favorites like Jolly Ranchers and Bubble Yum as well as a new line of low-carb products. In fact, Hershey has good claim to be the largest North American manufacturer of quality chocolate and non-chocolate confectionery.

IT is an important part of the business at Hershey. As director of ops and infrastructure services, Beth Klahre is responsible for managing, maintaining and upgrading both the hardware and software of the IT infrastructure at the company, 95 percent of which runs on SAP. That includes HQ, of course, and all company ops in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Canada and Mexico.

Klahre is supported by a team of more than eighty IT pros. "One of our biggest responsibilities is to deliver world-class computer availability 24/7. The team is responsible for monitoring all the computing devices connected to our network," Klahre says.

Klahre studied EE at the University of Pittsburgh, PA, and interned for a summer with Bethlehem Steel (Bethlehem, PA) as a process control programmer in the Johnstown, PA plant. When she received her BSEE magna cum laude in 1981 she was hired as a management trainee, working in different areas of the plant. "It was a lot of fun," she says.

It didn't take a crystal ball to see that the U.S. steel industry was on the way down, and candy was going up, up, up. In 1985 Klahre took an EE position with Hershey.

"I wanted something hands-on, because I'd liked that about the steel mill," she says. "I controlled pumps and valves at the mill and did it again at Hershey, only this time the pumps and valves were moving liquid chocolate." The major difference she noted was the extreme cleanliness of the food industry. "At worst, you might get a little chocolate on your hands," she says with a smile. "That's a long way from a steel mill."

At Hershey, Klahre progressed to senior engineer in 1989, the same year she received her MS in engineering science summa cum laude from Pennsylvania State University-Harrisburg. By 1995 she was a staff engineer.

"I was always in process control and worked with a lot of different Hershey products over the years," she says. "Part of our job was to ensure that product consistency was maintained."

One of her most exciting projects was producing Hershey's Hugs, a candy that combined milk chocolate and white chocolate. "I was the lead control engineer and worked closely with the process design engineers," she remembers.

In 1997 Klahre moved into management. "That's when I made the transition to IT," she says. "I became the manager for application consulting with responsibility for the program that prepared and handled approvals for capital expenditures for all of IT, including new computer infrastructure and new programs." In 2002 she achieved her ops director and infrastructure services position.

She's proud to be part of the spirit of teamwork in her department. Hershey's IT group recently received certification from Sun Microsystems for its people, process and technology. In 2003, the department was also honored by Computerworld magazine as number one on the magazine's "best places to work in IT" list.

"When I tell people I work for Hershey, they smile," Klahre says. "Hershey is an American icon." But despite the chocolate scent in the air and the "friendly, engaged workforce," the work is very serious. "We have over 400 IT projects on the books for potential implementation," she says.

In 2004 Klahre started a program for women leaders in her department. "We meet every other month to discuss how to deal with different leadership situations, and I've recruited more-senior women at Hershey to act as mentors. I've had great mentors throughout my career and now I mentor new employees because I want to give back," she adds.

Klahre is co-chair of fundraising for the Hershey Foods branch of the Children's Miracle Network. She's also a United Way volunteer for her department, a member of a company emergency first-aid squad, and one of a team that installed an IT network at a local elementary school.

Deep SAP skills needed at Coors
Ryan Baca, director of the company's office of inclusion, says that Coors Brewing Co (Golden, CO) is looking for information architects and IT pros with good experience and "deep SAP skills."

The international brewer has more than 5,300 employees in the U.S. and another 3,000 in the U.K. The company has long supported diversity and makes an ongoing effort in this area, Baca notes. "In addition, we're committed to giving 2 percent of our pretax profits to purely philanthropic causes," he says.

Coors' Gil Gomez: "internal consultant" in beer

Gil Gomez

IT plays a key role in the brewing industry, says Gil Gomez, an information architect at Coors. "You have to know what consumers are doing, what the competition is doing and how the overall operation is performing. The company that can leverage this information the best will come out ahead."

Gomez has been with Coors for two years now. He's responsible for designing business intelligence systems and the overall information flow from one system to another.

This is an enterprise-wide responsibility, including sales, marketing, financials, ops and more. "We deal a lot with information design issues," says Gomez. "It's very dynamic, changing constantly." The group has three applications architects plus Gomez who, he says, has "more of an overall role."

Gomez received a BS in business administration with a concentration in finance and business economics from the University of Notre Dame (South Bend, IN) in 1992. He has since become an SAP-certified business intelligence consultant.

His first job was with Baxter Healthcare (Deerfield, IL). As a financial analyst on expat assignments, he worked in Mexico City, Mexico for a year and in Rome, Italy for two years.

Gomez grew up in a bilingual family in El Paso, TX, so he speaks fluent Spanish. He quickly learned Italian while posted in Rome, and this paid off handsomely when Barilla Pasta (Parma, Italy) offered him a job as manager of planning and analysis in its U.S. office (Lincolnshire, IL).

In 1998 he moved to SAP America (Newtown Square, PA), a German software company, to work in its Chicago office as an apps consultant. His new employer gave him specialized SAP training.

In 2000, Gomez began doing independent consulting in business intelligence implementation of SAP solutions. In 2002 he joined Coors.

Gomez feels his work in two of the great cities of the world, his upbringing and his experience in several fields have all been excellent career boosters. His experience in consulting is especially relevant to his current job.

"We're like internal consultants here," he says. "The beer industry is very competitive and runs on low margins, so information at a very detailed level is crucial. We have to track things right down to the store keeping-unit level."

After work, Gomez mentors high school students. True to his consumer products career, he also volunteers with Junior Achievement. "I've been teaching middle school kids about entrepreneurship," he says. "They're working on a startup right now."

At Acushnet, IT is an equal partner
Acushnet Co (Fairhaven, MA) manufactures and markets golf equipment under the Titleist, FootJoy and Cobra Golf brand names. The company's 3,200 U.S. employees work at East Coast plants that make golf balls and a West Coast golf- club factory. Another 1,500 employees are located outside the country.

Jim McKenna, director of human resources, notes that Acushnet IT is "a sophisticated operation, with a national ops center that monitors our global enterprise and works 24/7." Acushnet has about seventy IT employees in two groups. One group handles the system and apps development; the other group manages the network, telecom, desktop support and helpdesk, he says.

"Our CIO reports directly to the CEO," McKenna notes. "IT is a very important part of the organization and an equal partner in the business."

While turnover is fairly low at Acushnet, developers and programmers are needed periodically. "We're proud of our diversity, especially in IT," McKenna says. "Our CIO is a woman and one of her three direct reports is a woman. We have a number of minorities and women pros in the IT group, and several women managers."

Joyce Higgins directs apps development at Acushnet

Joyce Higgins

Joyce Higgins is director of apps development in Acushnet's Carlsbad, CA golf-club factory. She works closely with the ops management team to identify their needs for systems and implementation.

"We use the same software for the golf-club and golf-ball operations, but we use it very differently," she explains. "We adapt software and develop custom bolt-on solutions to meet the needs of the company."

Higgins leads a team of seven direct reports and two business analysts. So far the team is primarily focusing on manufacturing, planning and forecasting systems, but in the future they plan to review the order-to-cash system.

Acushnet deals with relatively short product lifecycles, and, as an additional complication for its IT folks, it offers both stock and custom products. "Finding an IT system that's efficient for both product lines is difficult," Higgins says. "When we have to customize our IT, we try to do it in a non-obtrusive way."

Higgins has a 1980 BA in business with a specialization in quantitative and information science from Western Illinois University. After graduation she started with Transaction Technology (Santa Monica, CA), developing systems for CitiBank.

In 1985 she moved to IVAC (San Diego, CA), a member of the Eli Lilly medical device division. She began by managing a team implementing materials requirements planning (MRP), went on to IT planning, then information engineering management.

In 1994 Lilly sold its medical device division to Guidant (Indianapolis, IN), and Higgins moved to Guidant's Temecula, CA facility as manager of the IT center. She was part of the evaluation and planning team, helping to integrate SAP into the system and managing the center's tech resources through the conversion. Then she worked on the architecture and initial implementation of a data warehouse.

"While at Guidant I also did a proof of concept and initial pilot of a sales analysis solution that was used worldwide," she recalls. In 1998 she joined Acushnet.

When Higgins started college she was planning to be a teacher. Soon she switched to math and, on the advice of the dean of the business college, computer science. "I haven't looked back once," she says. "It's an ever-changing, challenging career. There's always something different."

Avon supports many families of technology
Avon Products (New York, NY) is a direct seller of beauty and related products, with $6.8 billion in revenue and 45,900 employees globally, 9,400 of them in the U.S. It also has 4.4 million independent salespeople serving the global market.

This huge operation relies on IT. Harriet Edelman, senior VP and CIO at Avon, notes that "We have a lot of families of technology that we look to support, so flexibility and a willingness to learn new technologies is crucial in anyone we hire into IT. We look for passionate people willing to do what it takes to keep the business thriving and our customers satisfied."

To support its corporate needs as well as its enormous sales force, Avon employs IT specialists of all types. "We run the gamut from DBAs and architects to mainframe developers, Web designers and global telecom network engineers," Edelman reports. Skills in supply chain and ERP are usually welcome.

In a company dedicated to fulfilling the beauty needs of women globally, there's a strong female presence in both IT and the company at large. Diversity is also essential as part of Avon's workforce strategy.

Fortune magazine has named Avon as one of the fifty best companies for minorities for the past five years. The company's group learning program, one of its career-building initiatives, accommodates both formal and informal mentoring options. The company balances its programs for gender and ethnicity and includes a male and a female on each mentoring team. A recently launched intern program had eighty-two interns, two-thirds of them female and a third minorities.

Harriet Edelman is Avon's SVP and CIO

Harriet Edelman

Harriet Edelman is senior VP of business transformation and CIO at Avon. As CIO, she's responsible for the company's overall IT strategy and global ops, including 1,400 IT associates located around the world. These associates deliver the solutions and provide the technical infrastructure to support the millions of sales reps located in 140 countries.

Recently, Edelman added management of Avon's business transformation initiatives to her duties. The task includes oversight and integration of current transformation initiatives enterprise-wide, and identification and development of the next generation of opportunities.

Edelman has a 1977 BA in music performance from Bucknell University (Lewisburg, PA) and a 1980 MBA from Fordham University (New York, NY). She started in Avon's marketing department while working on her MBA. She was drawn to both the company's culture and its products. "The company's mission is a dream," she says.

Over her career she's held positions in marketing, sales, supply chain and customer service. "In all those jobs I was a big customer of IT," she says. "I always had an affinity for it. In 1998 I ran Avon's IT function on an interim basis, and in 2000 I became CIO.

"I understood enough of the technology to get started, but I've learned a lot more in the past five years," she notes with a smile. "I found that from the standpoint of understanding the overall architecture, my background in classical music helps enormously. Ultimately, it's all about the architecture," Edelman says.

Avon has many apps that are deployed globally, including mainframe and server solutions, supply chain, and Web technology for the sales force. "We base most of it here at HQ," Edelman notes. "We host our own solutions and do our own infrastructure work."

Avon's independent salespeople, she says, "are ordering and looking for service all the time, and we need to provide information for them to run their businesses. We Web-enable the field force and provide online training for the sales force. The complexity of managing such an enterprise, plus the large number of transactions that go on daily, keeps life interesting for me.

"We invest in IT skill development and have a very flexible work environment in IT because of our 24/7 presence," Edelman adds. "Our IT staff is nearly half women and our climate feels very gender-neutral.

"There are more women in management at Avon than at any other Fortune 500 corporation," she declares.

In her spare time, this dedicated SVP and CIO takes her place in Avon's lighthearted IT band. The members, all from the IT department, include guitars, percussion, trumpet, trombone, singers and Edelman on the piano. "We mostly play folk, rock and popular music," she says.

Earle Austin directs workplace computing at Office Depot
Earle Austin is director of workplace computing and IT customer support at Office Depot Inc (Delray Beach, FL). He's responsible for four functional areas within the global technology shared services division.

The areas, he says, are workplace engineering and services, systems availability management and IT customer support. Laptops and desktops, remote access, PDA, file and print, service plans including cost and metrics, and helpdesk are all included.

Understandably, Austin's typical day is wrapped around meetings. He and other global technology directors roadmap a strategy of services, determining business requirements so computing solutions can be engineered to meet those needs.

Right now a major project for Austin's group is refreshing desktop and laptop hardware and operating system platforms. "We have to decide whether to replace our assets or upgrade them," he explains.

He's also involved in analyzing Office Depot's service plans to be sure they meet industry benchmarks, and assessing use of the company's services. "We determine consumption patterns and make our internal customers aware of those patterns," he says.

Austin started life in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, where he had an unusual ambition. "My mother was on the local tourist board. I thought tourists were so cool, and I just knew that I wanted to be a tourist when I grew up," he says, laughing.

When he was ten the family moved to New York, NY where Austin attended local schools and received a 1978 BA in business admin from York College in the City University of New York. He began working in supply chain, first at Berkey Marketing (Woodside, NY), then at Isis Industries (Flushing, NY).

In 1980 he moved to Florida with his wife and baby daughter. "Driving south through Florida I got lost. I walked into Visual Graphics, a manufacturer of graphic art equipment in Tamarac, to ask for directions."

The looks of the company appealed to him. "Instead of asking for directions I decided to ask if they had any jobs. I ended up working for Rocco Lombardi, the director of supply chain operations."

Three years later his boss moved into IT. "He took me with him because he thought I would have an aptitude for the work. He turned out to be right," Austin recalls.

He stayed there nine years, learning about the IBM AS/400 and telecom and even doing programming. "Rocco was my mentor through all of this and we're still good friends," Austin says.

In 1992 Austin moved to Office Depot because of its phenomenal growth and promising opportunities. He started in the data center, responsible for a shift in an AS/400 and mainframe environment. In 1995 he was promoted to senior analyst in the IT business services group.

About then Office Depot acquired its contract stationers business, and Austin helped support its integration. In 1997 he was promoted to manager of ops and support in business services, and moved up to senior manager and, in 2000, director.

"We're still going through a tremendous amount of growth and still working out processes," he says. "Right now we're concentrating on cost containment, trying to make IT more efficient by having good processes in place."

Austin sees the role of IT continuing to grow in the future. Office Depot, he says, is now implementing a new merchandizing system that will improve planning and optimize inventory and replenishment cycles for all the company's business channels.

Janice Madrid: at Nikon, value-added systems solutions

Janice Madrid

Janice Madrid is an applications specialist at Nikon (Melville, NY), the well-known manufacturer of cameras, microscopes, binoculars and other optical equipment. In her job, she turns new business processes and reporting requirements into value-added systems solutions for end users in the company.

Madrid was brought in as part of the company's SAP implementation. Her responsibility was for the controlling and profit center accounting modules, so she works closely with accounting/finance and planning users.

"We might have a new process to automate or enhance, or a request for specific financial data from the system," she explains. "My job is to identify the best standard SAP solution to do that. If I can't use standard tools, I work with a programmer to design something specific for the business. Sometimes I write the specs for the programmer.

"In my career I've sometimes been considered part of accounting and sometimes IT," she says, "but basically I sit between the end user and the programmer. I understand both sides of the business."

Madrid began to develop her knowledge of finance and accounting as she worked on her 1982 BA in accounting at Pace University (Pleasantville/Briarcliff, NY). Her IT skills were honed on the job.

She started at CBS Inc (New York, NY), the media and publishing giant, doing financial analysis and preparing financial statements in the company's publishing division (Greenwich, CT). "My interest in computers started early. There was just one terminal in our department, connected to the mainframe. I found an online tutorial and learned to use it to make cosmetic changes to reports."

At that time the work was done on a paper spreadsheet. "It was tedious because of all the changes that had to be made before the financial statements were final," she remembers.

Then PCs came in, and Madrid's career path was clear. "I learned Lotus 123 and automated the department's manual spreadsheets. When CBS decided to implement a new general ledger system in 1985, I was a natural choice to work on the implementation team."

In 1987 Madrid joined Philip Morris International (New York, NY) as a financial systems analyst. She worked on SAP implementations, including five interesting years in Lausanne, Switzerland. She was one of the first women chosen by the company for an overseas assignment.

Her greatest challenge at Philip Morris was a tax recalculation project that captured ten years of financial data. In that time the company had used several different systems, some of them no longer supported. "It was very complicated, but in the end our team realized an $82 million tax benefit for the company, and I received the president's award for my efforts," she reports.

She joined Nikon in 2003, lured by the company's reputation and the promise of work with new areas of SAP.

A career in consumer products presents its own kind of challenges, Madrid reflects. "You have to slice and dice the information in different ways to get the most out of it. Often you have to turn information requests around quickly so management is prepared to make critical decisions. You always have to size up the competition to keep ahead," she says.

D/C  

Laurel McKee Ranger is a freelance business writer headquartered in Randolph, NJ.

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