On May 15th 2017 Girish Lakshman will depart from his position as President, Fulfillment – Supply Chain and Sourcing of the Company
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To put some of it into context, Sears systems are so rigid, that when Kmart wanted to sell HA, they couldn't utilize the delivery schedule system with their registers. The only viable solution at the time was to "build" a Sears store inside the Kmart and specifically run a Sears register for HA purchases that wanted delivery.
I think they got around some of it with the IPads eventually but we all know how well that works.
It also applies to Sears which has been around forever and merged with Kmart. It is different if you are a younger company and started up with brand new systems. Just like the stores....would be easier for everyone if the stores were smaller to reflect the product we carry today, but they arent so we have to see the press post insulting pictures. It kind of is what it is.
@3wxl, shame our systems aren't the best ... applies to my local family owned supply shop where tech is being used for inventory & bookkeeping.
The world's greatest integrated retailer should do better than in house DOS programs, reports that can only print to one specific printer, a shopping website that has a number of issues every time I am on it, register software that freezes on the regular, the list is endless. But this is how SHC & SYW are going to take over the world? SYW doesn't even load the earned points correctly most of the time!
It just is what it is. Shame our systems aren't the best, but you just work with it and hope someone knows how to fix your issue if you have one.
ugh IDrP.
how much did we burn on it? a hundred million in the last 7 years?
we will use Oracle
no jda
no. let's use hadoop..
Oracle it is....
one consulting company s extremely happy...
IDRP couldn't even get launched correctly, aren't we in year 4 of a 2 year project. Of course that was originally a 10 year project.
"CORE is going away" was a common joke
The problem wasn't that we had legacy systems, its that Sears tried to save money and half a-- changes and patch in special cases for everything. Compounded by lack of documentation, and the merge, its an impossible situation.
I personally became a "system owner" of some smaller processes, going from barely knowing the process existed to a 30 minute crash course before the old system owner left the company (and of course that person had years of experience and was the only one who knew the system)
I knew we were truely screwed when I became the system owner of a much larger system, while I knew the system, I knew enough to know that I shouldn't be in the top 10% of knowledge, that said I was probably one of the top 4 people in the company who understood how the system worked, and I was the only one not looking at it from an IT side, and more of a user/operational side.
Regardless, I was laid off, shortly followed by the other 3 people who knew more.
You might be thinking, oh it must have been something small or unimportant.... nope, this system was 100% critical for the operation of every single one of our stores. Luckily the main functions are pretty stable, but all the edge cases and one off handling is impossible to realize until a change is made and you realize that someone had special rules for a division or cat which gets broken when you apply a larger change, resulting in everything from items not ringing, failed deliveries, inaccurate reports, failed orders and allocations and on and on and on.
No one knows all the "Gotchas" and the people that may be able to figure it out with past experiences, are no longer with the company.... so good luck Sears.
Good riddance.
I am personally happy to see Girish gone. His approach to replace all our legacy apps was just not realistic and ridiculous. Do some need replacing..., yes, but we have to be selective. Also writing everything from scratch is also a pipe dream. Bring in some packages- it takes too long to build your own code and to get the business units to agree. Our legacy home delivery code is unique and could take years to replace and re-write
i am out in two weeks. anyone who has seen the tech transformation plan would know where it was headed.
the rot started before Girish. the silicon valley pretender messed it up way last the point of no return.
scheet - anyone left in IT that hasn't been looking for a job is a fool
Girish also has IT under him. He is the author of the plan for IT to rewrite every single application at Sears. While most companies wouldn't take on such an undertaking, even if they were bringing in piles of revenue and profits, Girish sold it as the way to turn Sears around.
Obviously customers would walk by a Sears or Kmart and mumble to themselves "If only Sears had a newer Digital Asset Management system, I'd be much more inclined to stop in to make a purchase!"
Who do we look to NOW for more insightful leadership? Can we still pull off a complete rewrite of all systems in time??? I for one will work all weekend rewriting the Front Desk visitor badge system.