The replacement: The "Red Zone," Family Dollar's new portal, sends key data from corporate to store managers using a lean bandwidth arrangement. ("Red Zone," selected as a name by Family Dollar employees, refers to the last yards before you get a touchdown in football; red is also the company's corporate color.)

Store managers access that portal via the cash registers: "It's very important for the store manager to be at the front of the store," Jewett notes. A centralized Oracle database at corporate feeds the portal using BEA software in the middle. But since the stores only have a cost-minded 64Kbps frame relay line for data, Jewett's IT team and its consulting partner on the project, Ironworks, had to keep the flow of information in check. So they created operational data stores—lighter views of the data customized specifically to what district managers and store managers will need.

Daily Updates to Store Managers

Whereas managers previously received bulky reports via snail mail from corporate on matters like loss prevention rates and top sellers at other stores, they now get daily, tailored updates via the portal. After nightly batch processing, the system preloads data pertinent to the region and/or the store for the manager's review the next day. "The goal is to give daily, actionable BI to that store manager," Jewett says. The store manager can track factors like their store's sales performance against plan, and when the next delivery truck will arrive, he notes.

The portal system also helps maintain product ordering, track employee training and do employee screening and hiring. Kronos serves as a third-party partner to handle the hiring and employee onboarding process, which has now ditched the three-ring binder system to become nearly paperless, Jewett says.

Providing some early ROI, the changes to the hiring and screening process have helped the company reach a goal of getting store manager turnover below 40 percent, Jewett says. The company has also improved training while cutting costs, and improved compliance monitoring, he says.

What can other CIOs learn from this portal project? It certainly didn’t require cutting edge technology. The cash registers, in case you're wondering, run Microsoft Terminal Services software, which is thin-client software, and the store managers don't even use a full-blown e-mail client. The portal handles most of the managers' needs.

Overall, don’t be afraid of a direct approach when implementing a portal project like this one, Jewett recommends. A lot of companies choose to start a portal project with a "B" or "C" priority project, like distributing employee-newsletter-type information, Jewett notes. Family Dollar went right for the "A" priorities, the business processes of the store managers and their district managers, he says. The IT team now does a new release on the portal every 3 to 6 months, adding sales indicators and alerts, for example, to product recalls.