Leveraging customer data

The boldest retailers are no longer targeting consumers with promotions based on what’s good for the company (for example, let’s give Joe Average, one of our best customers, a 25 percent discount on Christian rock CDs because we have to sell off overstock in that category), but instead on what the customer really wants and needs, based on past purchases and demographic and psychographic information.

The wow factor

Retailers are increasingly heeding the words of consultant-authors Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore, who advise companies in their 1999 book, The Experience Economy, that the way to gain a competitive advantage is by providing a unique and delightful experience to consumers. For example, REI, with rock climbing walls in some of its stores, has had success selling the outdoor adventure experience. Successful companies such as Best Buy and struggling outfits such as Saks Department Store Group are all looking to provide consumers with positive and memorable shopping experiences, either to sustain a competitive advantage or to bring traffic back to flagging shops.

Eschewing markdowns

While most retailers are aggressively discounting merchandise and promoting sales virtually every other week to drive traffic and increase overall revenue at the expense of profit margins, the boldest retailers are holding their own and not lowering their prices. Some successful retailers, such as Pottery Barn and Anthropologie, even seem to be raising prices.

What’s Bold in...Finance

Infrastructure modernization

Revamping a legacy IT infrastructure enables bold financial companies to increase efficiency and become more flexible, allowing them to adapt quickly to customer demand for new products and services and to more easily expand operations globally.

Retooled business processes

Insurers, banks, brokerages and the intermediaries that move money for consumers and investors are blowing apart old ways of doing business, from how they process customer transactions to how internal software applications are developed.

What’s Bold in...Government

Creative staffing

Managing people is one of the tougher aspects of public-sector IT. You can’t fire the deadwood and hire who you want. Bold public-sector CIOs are finding ways to rejigger their staffs, to reassign workers and to outsource the work that can’t be completed with the skill set they’ve got. Public-sector unions and rules make this a veritable minefield.

New technology

Deploying new technology is a bold move for public-sector CIOs, who tend to be a conservative lot. If the technology fails, the failure is public and sometimes can have catastrophic, even life-threatening, results. Typically, public-sector CIOs are behind the IT curve. The bold take managed risks to bring in the new technology they need.