really changing your
company and putting it
in place to go forward.
We told everybody who
was going to have to deal
with it, “You are going
to hate this thing, it’s
going to be difficult, it’s
going to be unforgiving,
it’s going to be more
disciplined, it’s going to
require a lot more data,
and it’s going to require
a lot more work on your
part. And there’s not
much in it for you, the
individual user. What’s
in it for you is that the
company is going to be
around in five to 10 years,
and you’ll still have a job.”
Continued from page 10
Security from
the point of
view of trying
to protect
intellectual property —
[it’s] less important when
you’re fast.
what are some of the
unique challenges
you have found in
the fashion or retail
industry, compared with
other companies you’ve
worked for? Time to
market. The product has
a shelf life of about 10
weeks. There’s close to a
dozen seasons in the year
now. You’re going from
the design or the product
idea to hanging it in the
stores in 10 to 12 weeks.
That’s a very short cycle
for any product.
how does that short
shelf life influence i T’s needs? Our systems have to
be up and available all the time. Everything we do has
to be directed to getting it out the door faster, quicker,
seeing where things are at all times in the supply
chain. That’s where it affects IT. Having a system
that’s reasonably fast, that’s the key to our business.
what effect does such agility have on your need for
network security? For us, with such a short shelf life,
if you broke in and hacked a pattern to make a girl’s
dress, you can’t make it cheaper or faster than us or
in the quantity we can make and get it in the stores.
Security is less important because of the speed of
doing business. You have security in place because
you don’t want someone to be malicious. But security
from the point of view of trying to protect intellectual property — [it’s] less important when you’re fast.
does Byer use predictive analytics to determine
what fashion trends are going to be popular? My
belief is that it doesn’t exist, and it will never exist,
because you cannot predict a woman’s buying
habits from one season to the next. It’s an emotional
buy. What they bought last spring doesn’t say what
they’re going to buy this spring. You can do it in
jeans. You can do it in polo shirts. You can do it in
those areas, yes. But in fashion, I don’t think you can
use BI to predict what is going to sell.
what emerging i T trends will impact Byer?
Definitely mobility. Mobility is going to be the key thing.
The issue with that is that [users will] want to [use
mobile devices to] get into the ERP system. There’s
not going to be a lot of people, maybe Samsung,
competing with Apple for the [tablet] for the consumer. I see people like Lenovo and people like Dell
creating [tablets] for the enterprise so that they can
transact data, so that they can VPN in easily. When
those [tablets] come out for the enterprise, I see
that’s a big push coming into IT that we’re going to
have to respond to.
how would you describe your leadership style and
how you interact with your co-workers? I know
I’m extremely collaborative. I always tell my staff to
keep your career No. 1 and your job No. 2, and you’ll
stay, because you’re marketable. I’m always trying to
make sure that we’re working with some good technologies, current technologies, that will make them
marketable. I also try and give them plenty of room
to fail. If you don’t let them fail, they’re not going to
make great strides. If you make it so tight that they
can’t fail, then they’re not going to grow; they’re just
going to play in the safe zone all the time.
what’s some of the best advice you’ve gotten in
your career? You can’t know everything, so try to
surround yourself with enough people so that, as a
group, you might know almost everything. Anybody
I hire, I always tell [them] I am going to be wrong.
If I make a stupid decision, come and tell me about
it, let’s discuss it. You can tell me in a nice way or a
not-so-nice way, and I’ll tell you why I made it, and
maybe you’ll see my point of view, and maybe I’m
just wrong. I don’t want somebody who’s going to
work for me who says, “He’s the boss, he said so, it
must be right.”
what advice would you give somebody who’s just
getting started in i T today? Never expect to be a
journeyman or a master; you’re always going to be an
apprentice. The technology changes too fast for you
to ever become a master. As long as you always want
to be an apprentice, it can be a great job, it can be a
lot of fun, because it’s always changing — always. u
