JCPenney Redesigning Its IT Capabilities To Help Bring Them Up To Speed
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Revamp efforts includes out-sourcing some positions while adding other domestic jobs.
JC Penney has allowed its IT capabilities to fall behind the times, but it is now determined to right that situation by revamping its IT jobs. As part of the initiative, the retailer has announced the opening of a new office in Bangalore, India that will help to bolster IT and e-commerce efforts. According to Penney spokesperson Joey Thomas, the new IT office will have an emphasis on analytics, innovation and reporting capabilities.
The redesign means that the retailer will be out-sourcing some of its IT jobs to its Bangalore site, cutting some existing contract positions at its Plan, Texas headquarters, and creating some new full-time positions in both Plano and India. According to the company, some 450 employees will be added in India by the end of the year, and that office may eventually reach 1,000 employees.
"We are looking at India predominantly as a talent play. And we are not looking at doing incremental stuff here. We are going to re-platform, redesign. We are going to do cutting edge work and there will be global roles for people here," explained Michael Amend, executive vice president of omni-channel in JCPenney.
According to Amend, the retailer is experiencing a huge transformation, focusing on private brands, omnichannel presence and improving revenue per customer, to guide the company to profitable growth. Although the company saw a drop in revenue earlier this decade under CEO Ron Johnson’s focus on physical stores, Amend asserted that it is now righting the ship across its 1,000 U.S. stores.
"We are working on different initiatives - mobile app , improving the desktop experience, personalization, new capabilities around analytics to understand customers better, marrying online experience and the store experience. Our redesigned mobile app will allow users to pull products up easily, it will integrate wallet features that allow people to pay easily, it will have capabilities to save coupons and offers natively inside the phone," Amend said.
And while JCPenney currently works with IT majors like Infosys , TCS and Accenture , the new technology center will focus on the more strategic IT solutions. "We have relationships with third parties. But we want to build a strong in-house talent of deep subject matter experts in retail and e-commerce," said Dhritiman Saha, vice president of digital technology, product in JCPenney.