Sunday, June 15, 2014

CIO Magazine Chico’s FAS

press release

June 3, 2014, 8:00 a.m. EDT

Chico's FAS, Inc. Recognized by CIO Magazine as One of the 2014 CIO 100 Award Winners

Honorees to Receive Award During CIO 100 Symposium & Awards Ceremony

NEW YORK, June 3, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- International Data Group's (IDG) CIO magazine announces Chico's FAS Inc. as a recipient of the 2014 CIO 100. The 27th annual award program recognizes organizations around the world that exemplify the highest level of operational and strategic excellence in information technology (IT).

"For 27 years now, the CIO 100 awards have honored the innovative use of technology to deliver genuine business value," said Maryfran Johnson, Editor in Chief of CIO Magazine & Events. "Our 2014 winners are an outstanding example of the transformative power of IT to drive everything from revenue growth to competitive advantage."

"We are delighted to be recognized in this way by the CIO 100, an organization that has been at the forefront of technology for so many years," said Eric Singleton, CIO of Chico's FAS, "Our entire IT team has rallied toward innovation and invention with die-hard commitment."

Chico's FAS has made a significant commitment to driving innovation in the retail industry. Their Chico's Digital Retail Theatre™ product suite is at the forefront of omni-channel and is one of the first end-to-end information ecosystems engineered to embrace the customer from dawn to dusk. The Chico's Digital Retail Theatre™ is already delivering a retail experience second to none. Engineered by Chico's in concert with a world-class team made up of Google, Apple, DISCO Systems, and more, business benefits are already being felt with their "tech tables" and "customer book" applications being deployed now.

"This team has really flourished with our current technology direction," said Alan Mariotti, Vice President of IT and Security for Chico's FAS, "our rapid creation of a developer focused environment and infrastructure links directly to the business strategy, and the results have been overwhelmingly positive."

Executives from the winning companies will be recognized at the CIO 100 Symposium & Awards Ceremony , to be held Tuesday evening, August 19th at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

Complete coverage of the 2014 CIO 100 award recipients will be online at http://www.cio100.com/ on August 1, 2014 and in the August 1st issue of CIO magazine.

About Chico's FAS, Inc. The Company, through its brands – Chico's, White House | Black Market, Soma and Boston Proper, is a leading women's omni-channel specialty retailer of private branded, sophisticated, casual-to-dressy clothing, intimates, complementary accessories, and other non-clothing items.

As of May 3, 2014 the Company operated 1,496 stores in the US and Canada. The Company's merchandise is also available at www.chicos.com , www.whbm.com , www.soma.com and www.bostonproper.com . For more information on Chico's FAS, Inc., please go to our corporate website at www.chicosfas.com .

About CIO Magazine CIO is the premier content and community resource for information technology executives and leaders thriving and prospering in this fast-paced era of IT transformation in the enterprise. The award-winning CIO portfolio—CIO.com, CIO magazine (launched in 1987), CIO executive programs, CIO custom solutions, CIO Forum on LinkedIn, CIO Executive Council and CIO primary research—provides business technology leaders with analysis and insight on information technology trends and a keen understanding of IT's role in achieving business goals. Additionally, CIO provides opportunities for IT solution providers to reach this executive IT audience. The CIO Executive Council is a professional organization of CIOs created to serve as an unbiased and trusted peer advisory group. CIO is published by IDG Enterprise, a subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading media, events, and research company. Company information is available at http://www.idgenterprise.com/ .

About the CIO 100 Awards
Recipients of this year's CIO 100 Award were selected through a three-step process. First, companies filled out an online application form detailing their innovative IT and business initiatives. Next, a team of external judges (many of them former CIOs) reviewed the applications in depth, looking for leading-edge IT practices and measurable results. Finally, CIO editors reviewed the judges' recommendations and selected the final 100.

Coverage of the 2014 CIO 100 Awards will be available online at CIO.com on August 1, 2014 and in the August 1st issue of CIO magazine.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Tales From The Cloud

By Todd R. Weiss

About |

Real-world stories of IT professionals and business leaders who embraced the future with mobile devices, cloud services, and other cutting-edge technologies from the world of consumerization ...

Why Chico's went Google and installed interactive "Technology Tables"

A Boston Proper sales associate explores one of the company's innovative new Technology Tables inside one of the chain's stores. Credit: Chico's

CITEworld |Dec 23, 2013 11:53 AM

With some 22,000 retail employees working for its four women's clothing store chains, Chico’s began looking in 2012 for ways to modernize, simplify, and update some of its key IT systems, including email and shared files and data.

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There was a traditional Microsoft Outlook and Exchange email system that badly needed to be upgraded or replaced, as well as additional needed changes to other internal systems that used Citrix to tie multiple IT systems together, Eric Singleton, the CIO for Chico's, told CITEworld.

"There was a sort of offbeat architecture in place using Citrix as a virtual desktop from inside the four walls of the company," said Singleton. "Then there were different configurations, nuances with Outlook, Citrix, and others. The overall architecture, when added up, created a lot of issues in terms of the availability of Outlook and the availability of shared files and data. It was a whole plethora of things that you'd expect."

That's when Singleton and Chico's vice president of IT and security, Alan Mariotti, began to explore innovative ways to resolve the 30-year-old company's core IT problems from the perspectives of both cost and performance. "We very quickly began to move in the cloud direction, and not long after began to look at Google Apps."

With that start, the project took off from there. In October 2012, Chico's researched the cloud offering in depth, followed by pilot testing of Google Apps in the first quarter of 2013. Following a successful pilot, Singleton and Mariotti adopted the use of the suite for their employees and set up a deployment strategy in one of the company's headquarters facilities in Fort Meyers, Florida, for its 1,470 stores.

Ultimately, though, the move to Google Apps was seen as just a start. Soon the decision was made to change just about everything from the ways of the past for all four of Chico's brands -- Chico's, White House Black Market,Soma Intimates and Boston Proper.

"We decided we would change the IT strategy to a cloud mindset," said Singleton. "It's cultural as much as anything."

With that also came other planned changes, such as the coming deployment of mobile tablets for sales people so that they can better assist customers and ultimately drive the chain's financial bottom line, said Singleton.

The deployment of Google Apps has been completed so far for some 3,000 office workers in the company's dual headquarters buildings in Florida and Georgia, with the remaining deployment now under way to the rest of the company's sales staff across the nation. That effort is expected to be completed by the end of 2014. For some 20,000 sales associates, the introduction of Google Apps will for the first time give them a corporate email address, which will help them better connect with their customers.

"The foundation that we've been able to pursue, not only with Google Apps, but with cloud thinking, is that at the easy level you've got Google Maps and Gmail, which will touch all of them when it's over," said Singleton. "But it will also mean that documents can be shared among workers, and that training videos will also be leveraged better. This is one if the things that we want to give them."

At the same time, Chico's move to mobile is also under full swing, he said. "It's the second big chapter. Essentially the associates will be armed with an iPad Air and on it will be applications that support whole bunch of things, from inventory look-up to being able to take and process orders for store customers. They'll also have a wide range of CRM activities as well, including messaging and communications."

With four distinct brands in house, Chico's will use a phased approach to bring all four companies into the new IT scheme, said Singleton. "Strategically, the approach is for all four brands to do it eventually," starting with Chico's stores. "From an economy of scale point of view, part of the idea is that the system can be done in the same ways for all the stores, with nuances for each."

The iPads will be used first under the company's new mobile push, but future testing and experiments will also be done using Android devices, he said. "We're actually rolling out testing for iOS and Android. We're starting out with iOS, but we want to leave room to explore multiple platforms."

The tablets will first be deployed in Chico's stores in early 2014, and will be expanded to the chain's other brands over time. "You have to start somewhere," said Singleton. All retail employees will get the tablets over the next two years.

Technology Table

Another innovation now appearing in some of the company's Boston Proper stores is something Singleton calls the "Technology Table." It's a table about the size of a kitchen island, with a touchscreen that is a fully-interactive, gesture-driven environment. While the concept is similar to the Microsoft Pixelsense (originally called Surface) table, the glass surface and UI are custom, and the computer controlling it is an Apple Mac Pro.

The tables are strategically located toward the rear of the Boston Proper stores so that they become places where salespeople and their customers can congregate and explore all of the products offered by the company using the web-enabled touchscreen.

"It's an opportunity for customers to interact with the software and look at [catalogs] where they can go to the store's web site and buy things that are not in the store or browse the rich content," said Singleton. "It's a social point of the store as well as an opportunity for a really relaxed interaction between the customer and the sales associate. They can go to the screens and have a good time."

And so far, early reactions from customers in several Boston Proper stores that have the new tables show that they are "becoming incredibly effective," said Singleton. "The incremental sales in stores with the tables have succeeded our expectations considerably. It's quite amazing and much better than we expected."

The Boston Proper brand, which was acquired by Chico's in 2012, previously only sold merchandise online, but Chico's is moving the chain into a brick and mortar presence as well. So far, only five stores have opened in the U.S. "It's making a running start with the technology," said Singleton. Corporate leaders are also looking at having similar Technology Tables in the stores for the company's other three brands in the future, he added.

Yet despite these coming advances, the company's look into the cloud also opens up even more possibilities that are just beginning to be explored, such as finding ways to reach customers through their always-present mobile devices, said Singleton. "From a philosophical point of view, if we started off with let's say Wave One [of the modernization] and we improve productivity, collaboration and sales but were to simply stop there, we'd miss the real point. We'd be missing bigger opportunities if we don't take it farther."

To do that, Singleton and his colleagues want to look at all the mobile devices being used by their existing and potential customers and find new ways of addressing these amazing tools, he said. "Handing employees a tablet and letting them see that they can make a sale, yes that’s cool, but it's only the beginning," said.

That's where the new Boston Proper store tables show some of that promise for how it can all be brought together, he said. "The Technology Tables are one of the bridges. Let's look at these gaps and close them even further … between consumers and the sales associates. They create a conversation."

From the Google Apps deployment to the coming arrival of tablet computers to the development of the Technology Tables for its stores, Chico's is moving ahead at full speed to transform its old IT systems.

"This is a project that has its after-burners kicked in right now," said Singleton. "Technology waits for no one and consumers don't wait either. I think it's crucial that when you're doing a multi-platform shift that the faster it happens, the better."

PRESS RELEASE

June 3, 2014, 8:00 a.m. EDT

Chico's FAS, Inc. Recognized by CIO Magazine as One of the 2014 CIO 100 Award Winners

Honorees to Receive Award During CIO 100 Symposium & Awards Ceremony

NEW YORK, June 3, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- International Data Group's (IDG) CIO magazineannounces Chico's FAS Inc. as a recipient of the 2014 CIO 100. The 27th annual award program recognizes organizations around the world that exemplify the highest level of operational and strategic excellence in information technology (IT).

Complete coverage of the 2014 CIO 100 award recipients will be online athttp://www.cio100.com/ on August 1, 2014 and in the August 1st issue of CIO magazine.

As of May 3, 2014 the Company operated 1,496 stores in the US and Canada. The Company's merchandise is also available at www.chicos.com , www.whbm.com ,www.soma.com and www.bostonproper.com . For more information on Chico's FAS, Inc., please go to our corporate website at www.chicosfas.com .

SOURCE Chico's FAS, Inc.