How Does The Traditional Footwear Industry Develop In The Era Of Big Data?

< p > in the 2013 Global Directions meeting, TechTarget was honored to interview Red Wing a target= "_blank" href= "//www.sjfzxm.com/", "shoe less" executive vice president and chief financial officer, Mr. He, who shared the views on the breadth of technological innovation under the supervision of the company and the reasons why the use of fast data will continue to be the strategy of the company.

< /p >

< p > < strong > Q: you have put forward the viewpoint from the angle of CFO to fast < a href= > //www.sjfzxm.com/business/ > Data < /a >.

Can you tell us some of the key points you are going to share with the audience? < /strong > /p >

< p > Ralph Balestriere:Red Wing footwear industry, especially in the Midwest, is a landmark company.

It has a long history and tradition - it is a company with a history of 108 years.

This is a good aspect.

But the bad side is that a 108 year old company will have an old system and run many old processes and programs, which has caused many problems in the process of growing into an organization.

What I need to emphasize in my speech is that we have adopted the best method we believe to be of the same kind, rather than implementing a complete ERP system. It will be expensive and time-consuming, and will lead some of the best employees to leave the organization.

< /p >

< p > strong > Q: for your company, how important is the big data now? How do you plan to make more use of it in the future? < /strong > /p >

< p > Balestriere: OK, let's talk about big data, but it's also fast data.

It delivers information to our employees at a faster speed, to our sales organization, to employees in our infrastructure processes, such as demand planning departments and financial institutions, so that they can react quickly and make decisions on the basis of real-time rather than waiting for weeks or months or data provided by Excel spreadsheets.

This may be useful 20 years ago, but it is not feasible in today's rapidly changing environment.

Therefore, in order to promote our decision-making process, we need to get as much data as possible, in the fastest way, the more the better.

< /p >

< p > < strong > Q: another important theme of the conference is the unprecedented speed of technological change.

Look at mobile phones, cloud computing, social computing - what do you think of the changes that will take place in your company in the next 5 to 10 years? < /strong > /p >

< p > Balestriere: our solutions are all put on the cloud and can also be used on mobile devices.

This is a special case of our CRM [customer relationship management] solution. Sales staff can get clues on their mobile devices, get sales leads, go to that place and make quick pactions.

Therefore, we must make full use of our mobile devices and use cloud to drive our solutions.

< /p >

Q: P > < strong > Q: does the change of these new technologies and new ways of work between these IT and businesses make your company more or less dependent on the work of CIO? < /strong > /p >

< p > Balestriere: it is more dependent on CIO.

He is a key component of our organization.

He has received wide acclaim throughout the organization.

The organization was recognized as a success.

IT needs a big investment to become a IT organization, but it proved to be worth the money, and we got double the reward we had expected.

< /p >

< p > < strong > Q: can you give a few examples of how your company has become more dependent on the example of CIO? < /strong > /p >

< p > Balestriere: our CIO is a gentleman named Joe Topinka.

He is very famous in the IT world.

He is a very strategic individual, and his organization is structured around strategy, not just process and code.

Therefore, their project management team is very important to us in the process and program development of the whole organization.

We rely not only on their work achievements, but also on the strategies they offer to help us promote better business decisions.

We have increased IT spending, which is more than 50% over the past three years.

< /p >

< p > < strong > Q: what technologies do you think companies can do better than now? < /strong > /p >

< p > > a href= "//www.sjfzxm.com/business/" > Balestriere < /a >: Well, this is a very good question, because it involves all aspects.

One is our financial ability.

We are growing into a global organization.

We have completed the recent acquisition in Europe.

We have offices in Dubai as well as Singapore and Amsterdam.

We did not receive timely good financial information, whether monthly or analytical.

So this is an area that we really lack at the moment. We plan to improve this process in the near future.

< /p >