A year ago, if you were in your mid-30s, drove a domestic car, and made between $30,000 and $40,000 per year, chances are Mattress Giant was trying to get your attention. However, if you fit that profile, you probably weren’t interested in what Mattress Giant had to say. That’s because you weren’t a customer of the Addison, Texas-based specialty bedding retailer. But the company didn’t know that. For years, Mattress Giant annually poured more than $2 million (or 10 percent of its annual revenue) into advertising to a demographic that simply wasn’t listening. And what would you guess was the information source that drove this misguided strategy? Siebel? Oracle? SAP?

None of the above. It was...gut feel.

As the new CIO for Mattress Giant, I was in a jam. Just prior to my coming on board, the company’s CEO had halted the implementation of an integrated point-of-sale (POS) and ERP system 35 percent of the way through the project. The sales force had complained that the integrated POS and inventory/distribution system was too complicated to use. They also claimed it was costing the company sales volume. In the meantime, Mattress Giant was flying blind, without any real business metrics or customer information. And although the CEO’s concerns were well-placed, I felt that it was only a matter of time before the absence of such data would choke off the company’s growth.

Somehow, I had to convince the CEO to change his mind.

Learning the Language of Springs and Coils

So where do you start when you need the blessing and trust of the CEO? Particularly one who, early in the process, informed me that I was asking him to put his whole company at risk for the sake of a computer system. Earlier in my career I would have begun with a well-researched technology plan, accompanied by a strong ROI analysis, a thorough project plan and maybe even a colorful PowerPoint presentation. But this time I chose a different path.

I turned off my computer, cancelled my meetings and got elbow-deep in the business. With the blessing of the executive vice president for sales, I visited our retail stores, talked to the salespeople, watched the sales process on the floor and learned the Mattress Giant language of sales. I even tried my hand at selling mattresses. I heard people talk about the IT department and what they said wasn’t pretty. I also went to our distribution centers, studied the delivery procedures, loaded delivery trucks and participated in the existing physical inventory process. I added myself to the distribution list for customer service e-mail to learn what our customers had to say about us. I lived and breathed the company’s operation for more than a month.