What emerges, then, is not only a picture of the IT leader who's tasked to transform Starbucks' technology infrastructure and digital in-store offerings, but also a glimpse of the next generation of CIOs: a technologist with an MBA, a socially adept leader with loads of ambition, and a senior vice president of a multibillion-dollar company who uses the Web for LinkedIn as well as World of Warcraft.
The Right CIO for the Job
In January 2008, long-time leader Howard Schultz returned as CEO to rescue the ailing company. Former CIO Bryan Crynes left shortly thereafter. It would have been reasonable for Starbucks to reach into the retail or restaurant industries for a seasoned and well-known IT chief to help drive its transformation. "I was a bit surprised that they would call someone like me," Gillett concedes, given his lack of a traditional retail or supply chain background.
But Starbucks was "looking for a very different kind of CIO," Kuchinad says, one who could manage the traditional IT requirements and "bring innovation to some of the legacy systems." Most importantly, the leadership team wanted a CIO who understood Starbucks' new generation of customers and how they engaged with the brand in store and online.
Paula Rosenblum, managing partner at Retail Systems Research and a former retail CIO, says Gillett's hire was a signal of significant change. "Starbucks wanted to skew new and skew fresh," she says, "and get out of this old and stodgy, 'Well, if we do this in the supply chain, we'll save 15 cents and cost control our way to profitability.' That's not what they're about. They're about the customer experience."
Yet over the last few years, the company was so focused on the back end, "we were not devoting as much resources to the customer-facing side," says Kuchinad. "What fascinated the leadership team was Stephen's knowledge of where and how these consumers lived, and how he was technologically engaged with them. While he did not have the traditional retail IT experience, we wanted someone who was leading edge, who knew where the technology was evolving."
Starbucks wanted a fresher blend: someone who could manage a traditional IT environment and provide a creative take on how technology could better serve its customers using tools such as remote ordering and automated systems, loyalty cards and business intelligence.
"When you look at our customers and what's happening in our stores," Gillett says, "you see wireless devices, iPhones, converged networks, laptops. You see a generation of customers who are entering our stores and engaging [with us] in new ways."
Gillett believes that everything he learned at his previous employers is applicable to Starbucks' retail model. "There are a lot of things a traditional retailer can learn from big Internet and big software," he says, "as far as scale, analytics and really using those tools that drive the Web-type companies."