Robert Fort Email & Phone Number

Nashville, Tennessee, United States

Leading the top-to-bottom Digital Transformation of this highly successful emergency preparedness organization.

Greater Los Angeles Area

Digital Transformation, E-commerce/Omni-channel Strategy, Ecommerce Platform Selection, and E-commerce implementation consultant. Clients included a young women's fashion retailer, a legendary guitar manufacturer/retailer, an industry leading plumbing and infrastructure giant, a rapidly growing life-sciences organization, and a 100+ year-old furniture manufacturer/retailer.

Greater Los Angeles Area

Responsible for US, Canadian, and European technoligies, applications and infrastructure.

Greater Los Angeles Area

Independent consultant helping retail vendors improve their marketing and sales cycles with retailers, and helping retailers with their e-commerce and omni-channel strategies. - Performed interim CIO duties for a young woman’s fashion retailer. Strategized and co-sponsored the re-platforming of their e-commerce environment, re-platformed and expanded their use of in-store tablets, and implemented a cloud-based HR system.- Assisted an internationally expanding fast fashion retailer with their e-commerce and order fulfillment strategies, budgets, and platform evaluation.- Consulted with a multi-billion dollar home goods retailer on improvements to their project governance.- Collaborated with the industry leading cloud-based e-commerce provider to develop a briefing book that enhanced their understanding of the Retail CIO. Taught at their international sales kick-off and new-hire boot camp. Consulted on future product strategies.- Worked with an industry leading marketing automation vendor to increase their understanding of omni-channel marketing challenges, and how to market and sell their product/services to retailers.

Responsible for all e-commerce/multi-channel, stores systems, contact center, supply chain and back office application development and support activities for the Guitar Center, Musician’s Friend, Woodwind & Brasswind, and Music 123 brands, encompassing 2 e-commerce platforms, 2 contact centers, 3 distribution centers, and over 230 stores in 43 states. - Integrated Guitar Center's e-commerce and retail channels into an industry leading multi-channel solution that facilitates purchase of all inventories across all channels and also allows customers to buy/return on-line, pick-up in store.- Transitioned Musician’s Friend from an outdated e-commerce platform to the enterprises’ new go-forward standard, ATG. Augmented with Endeca’s search and Experience Manager to give business users control over nearly all aspects of the user experience and presentation, reducing development support hours and facilitating greater marketing & merchandising flexibility and responsiveness. Further standardized on and implemented Certona personalization, BazzarVoice reviews, Adobe Omniture analytics, Test & Target A/B testing, and Scene7 dynamic content. - Integrated an enhanced Guitar Center on-line store locator (Microsites), which utilizes Facebook-like profiles of store associates/experts to encourage discourse between store associates and customers.- Replaced a custom customer card-file application with RedPrairie’s Clienteling, increasing store associate average daily utilization from 30% to nearly 70%, resulting in greater customer interaction, positive brand experience, and increased sales.- Synchronized master data management across multiple planning, replenishment, and merchandising systems via Heiler’s PIM and Portfolio’s digital asset management solutions.- Improved supply chain efficiency by establishing a new West Coast distribution center bypass operation, implementing KSA’s DC labor scheduling, and Lean Logistic’s transportation management.

Responsible for IT strategy and support for the Guitar Center division.- Co-executive sponsored and business architected the SmartStore project, a refresh of sales floor technologies and networks and a migration of the company’s store systems to a thin client/browser-based platform, establishing the foundation for all future multi-channel and cloud initiatives, and resulting in a near 100% increase in “endless aisle” sales.- Increased management oversight capabilities and contributed to store labor cost reductions by implementing DayForce’s store labor scheduling, task management, and time & attendance modules.- Added zone pricing, XYZ promotion capability, consignment inventory support, and Intactix Space & Floor planning to the company’s JDA merchandising platform. - Established a new cross-functional committee that coordinated activities related to Guitar Center store grand openings, successfully implementing over 20 new stores in 18 months.

Member of the Executive Board; responsible for all North American IT strategy, operations and applications in support of 25 large format entertainment/fashion stores.- Championed and architected the company’s cultural shift to real-time reporting via implementation of an enterprise data warehouse that contributed to an $8M sales lift in its first 18 weeks, and achieved a 15 week ROI based on 20% of the associated gross margin lift.- Architected the company’s award-winning digital preview stations; over 300 in-store kiosks--including the world’s largest single-store installation of 150--which significantly improved the customer’s preview-ing experience, lifted sales an estimated $3M annually, reduced store labor by 20 hours weekly, and es-tablished a platform for future digital signage initiatives.- Sponsored implementation of a new POS application which provided necessary pricing and returns func-tionality, reduced sales transaction times by 30%, recovered nearly $2M in annual lost net-margin, and reduced system support efforts by 75%.- Sponsored and directed the convergence of the company’s voice and data networks, and deployment of voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology to all U.S. locations, yielding an average 60% reduction in store commu-nication costs with no administrative FTE increment.- Launched virginmega.com (e-Commerce) and virginmegamashup.com (social) websites, designed to reach and interact with new customer base, emphasize company’s new lifestyle product lines, and ex-tend the in-store experience.- Championed an ERP solution (enterprise planning, merchandising, price/markdown optimization, and financials) to facilitate the company’s expansion into apparel and consumer electronics product lines.

Acting CIO for an international manufacturer of vitamins and dietary supplements. Member of the company's Executive Leadership Team responsible IT strategy and day-to-day management.- Participated in development of the company’s annual strategic plans, monthly reviews of fiscal and strategic performance, rollout of simplified performance review process, and introduction of high-performance team culture.- Collaborated with key business units to develop the company’s first ever IT strategic plan, and formed the teams responsible for its execution.- Lead development of company’s direct-to-consumer marketing web portal, which yielded 50,000K unique subscribers in its first 6 months and an estimated $6M first year sales lift.- Completed demand planning process improvements, which reduced forecast errors by more than 20%, equating to $10M annualized savings. - Established an Executive Information System (EIS) that provided consistent, accurate, and centralized daily sales and operating performance reporting and saved 16 man hours daily.- Initiated IT infrastructure audits and projects yielding $650K savings in FY02, and over $900K in on-going annualized savings.- Partnered with new full-time CIO to reorganize and expand IT department (10 new hires), develop and monitor budgets/forecasts, stabilize existing applications/infrastructure, and improve internal IT policies and procedures.

Head of IS department; tasked with improving infrastructure stability and applications effectiveness.- Led operational stability improvements, which resulted in a 60% improvement in finished goods distribution, 20% reduction in raw and WIP inventories, accurate daily sales and inventory reporting, and a rec-ord 4 straight profitable months.- Developed Essbase historical sales reporting model for sales administration staff and independent sales representatives, designed to improve sales by 15% over 6 months.- Migrated from Novell to Windows NT environment, increasing wide-area network and key application availability by 20%, and reducing IT administration costs by one FTE.- Migrated 300 domestic and international users from cc:Mail to Microsoft Exchange, standardized the desktop software environment and ensured enterprise-wide Y2K compliance.

Member of Executive Leadership team; responsible for IT strategy and daily operations of Koo Koo Roo’s domestic and international quick-service dining, Color Me Mine ceramics retail, and Hamburger Hamlet sit-down dining concepts.- Developed strategic plan that resulted in the establishment of a global communications network, stand-ardized Point Of Sale systems, and implementation of multiple critical back-office applications, all achieved in 18 months at 17% below budget. - Facilitated company’s explosive growth through just-in-time scaled expansion of the network infrastructure, growing 2 servers, 60 nodes and 17 store locations to 12 servers, 220+ nodes, 54 domestic and international store locations, and 3 wide-area networked corporate locations.- Corrected issues affecting POS system stability, resulting in an 80% reduction in store support calls over 7 months, and a 98% up-time ratio for FY97.- Reduced store system implementation costs by 40% per location through use of template designs, new vendor partnerships, and focus on individual component/service pricing. - Automated daily sales polling and reporting via Xcellenet remote communications software, resulting in reports being available 4-6 hours sooner each day, and a reduction of 40 hours a week of IT labor.- Implemented HRVantages Human Resource and ADPs Payroll systems for 3000+ employees; Platinums Purchase Order, Accounts Receivable and Fixed Assets modules; Siegler Mountains SiteSeer lease tracking application; and Equity Edges stock options package.- Led company’s fiscal 1998 strategic planning efforts.

Internal SAP applications expert; US member of Nestlé’s Center of Excellence team responsible for strategizing and overseeing the global standardization of SAP sales and finance applications.- Piloted the SAP R/3 financial modules for Nestle USA’s corporate company; one of the first SAP R/3 implementations in the US.- Led the business reengineering process for three of Nestlé USA’s operating companies with a combined $6 billion in sales, 300+ finance users, and 160,000 affected employees. Directed a 250 member project team that implemented the SAP R/3 (client-server) finance modules in 9 months, resulting in a 40% reduction of the monthly fiscal close cycle time.- Co-chaired a task force that identified Nestlé USA’s high-level SD, MM, and FI integration requirements. Delivered to senior management a gap analysis and recommendations which resulted in the formal creation of an integrated SAP development team.- Created the vision for Nestlé USA’s budget preparation and US consolidated financial reporting using a combination of SAP R/3 relational and Essbase multi-dimensional database technologies.- Championed Essbase throughout the enterprise, negotiated a highly favorable license agreement, and presided over the first year of the Essbase South-Western Regional Users Group.