Giant Eagle, EVP, and Chief Information Officer: We're a Customer-Obsessed Organization

(US and Canada) Kirk Ball, EVP and Chief Information Officer, Giant Eagle, speaks with David Hammond, Senior Account Executive, Parallel Technologies, about shifting to an insight-driven model and ways to identify the need for change.

Ball says that IT leaders need to listen to their team members and customers while paying attention to the effectiveness of the processes within the company. They need to find the right points to listen to and gather information to understand where the customers and team members are and where they want to go.

Next, they must keep all the data clean, ensuring they have a good handle on data gathering. They also need to use an analytics capability to allow business partners to get the data at speed relevant to the decisions and make it as self-serve as possible. It is a collaborative effort.

Ball describes Giant Eagle as a customer-obsessed organization. To identify the need for change and its technical and personnel aspects, he pays attention, reads, talks to consultants and technology companies to understand their roadmap, and then determines if something can significantly impact the business. He stresses that the tools have to be applied in real business scenarios.

The effort is to retool, upskill, and train people in new capabilities and technologies on the personnel front.

In conclusion, he says that the organization prefers to hire, attract and retain people with a deep curiosity, a desire to learn continually, and to figure out how to take technology and apply it to business challenges.