If a retailer really wants to compete with Amazon and the changing realities of today's retail environment, it needs to kill the IT budget, disband the IT Steering Committee and throw away the IT project list, pens Retail Columnist Todd Michaud. It's time for IT to be moved out from under the CFO's reigns. It's time to let go of the past and start thinking about IT as a business enabler, unleashing its full potential to the organization.
It's time to stop trying to plan out IT needs for an entire year at budget time and let IT scale and shrink to meet changing business demands. Smart retail organizations will give the CIO the tools necessary to solve the problems at hand, rather than trying to make sure no one runs with scissors. Todd speaks for almost every CIO out there when he says that they want to be given the responsibility and accountability to fix things, without having the "we don't trust you" strings attached.