| Most retailers are quick to profess their loyalty to an integrated selling model that gives customers freedom to make purchases online, offline or over the phone.
Office Depot, which has two stores in Kitsap, is the $10 billion market share leader in the office supply retail space, is marshaling its IT resources in its most ambitious push to unify its channels: superstores, catalogs, toll-free numbers and Web site. Next month, it will launch Millennia, a project giving in-store employees real-time information about inventory, pricing, orders and customer accounts over the Web for the first time.
Then, in October, Office Depot will begin selling servers (dubbed “Business in a Box”) pre-configured with plug-and-play access over DSL links to Office Depot systems for purchasing computers and office supplies.
Office Depot CIO Bill Seltzer, who leads a 500-person-strong IT staff, spearheads the channel integration strategy built around Web connectivity.
“When my order entry system gets an order, it doesn’t care if it comes from the Web, an 800 number or a store owner,” Seltzer says. “We’re totally integrated; it treats everything the same.” He declined to divulge the company’s investment in e-business technology. |
