EXCLUSIVE: Q&A with JCPenney's CIO on company's digital reinvention
JCPenney is undergoing substantial technology evolution as part of a larger $1 billion reinvestment campaign.
Chain Store Age recently spoke with Sharmeelee Bala, CIO of JCPenney, about the department store retailer’s ongoing efforts to upgrade its enterprise technology infrastructure, as well as her views on artificial intelligence and the state of retail technology.
Why did JCPenney decide to transform your technology?
We wanted to be with the customer where they are whether it’s online or in the store, and technology is an enabler. That is what made JCPenney decide that we have to continue to invest while we maintain and manage the things that we already have in place to bring efficiency into play while we do them.
What are JCPenney’s most significant achievements in the ongoing process of upgrading its technology?
Digital experience has been a focus for some time, which has led us to build an ecosystem of technology to support digital, as well as supply chain, and now we are able to implement any technology.
In addition, most of the solutions we implement are artificial intelligence- or machine learning-enabled. A couple of specific areas where these solutions have been helpful include improving the speed of customer delivery, because AI incorporates and consolidates all of the inventory that we have across the organization.
[READ MORE: JCPenney investing $1 billion on store, digital, tech upgrades to revive business]
Supply chain success is about having the right product at the right time, at the right place and at the right price, for our customers. Speed matters. We've been able to bring the omnichannel experience for our customer in the last couple of years. Shoppers can buy a product online and pick it up in-store the same day or the next day, depending on what their need is at the time.
JCPenney has also added ship-from-store, so if an item is not available in the distribution center and it's available in a store that's closer to the customer, they can get it sooner.
Recently, we upgraded our sortation center in Reno, Nev. The upgrade was focused on improving the productivity of delivery to our customers and the productivity of our internal associates in the facility.
This includes automated induction, packing and sorting. The speed at which associates in the facility can be trained and perform manual tasks has also been greatly increased.
How do you see AI affecting the retail industry in the next six to 12 months?
Retailers are currently using AI in two key ways. One is improving customer experience in areas like personalized recommendations based on accurate forecasts of product availability.
The second area is engineering and development productivity. Retailers want to make it faster for engineers to perform tasks like code reviews, building on top of base code, and testing, as well as continue to improve developer productivity without having to compromise on the quality or the data.
The beauty of AI is that it some things can happen in a matter of days, and then you can implement them and see the results, with continued evolvution and learning.
AI is not for replacement of humans. It is an augmentation to help ensure that they are obtaining efficiency improvements and getting a step up to figure out how they can focus on analysis and details, instead of having to perform manual activities like number crunching.
AI will continue to help retailers think outside the box in most cases, but it's also going to help retailers integrate different pieces of the puzzle that we might not have ever thought about, from merchandising all the way to the customers. How can you connect the dots?
Are there any future digital transformation JCPenney can discuss?
We are currently piloting next-generation store technology. This includes implementing a new POS system in our stores, and we are also changing store technology internally in the stores. About 100 to 150 stores will have this next-generation technology by the end of this year, before peak, and then the remaining stores will have it installed in the next couple of years.
