In 2007, House of Fraser made what was seen by some as a surprising decision to scrap its IT director role.

When incumbent Frank Berridge retired, head of computer services Duncan Gray and director of systems development Mike Hiscock took joint responsibility for technology department.

But now, two years later, Gray has been chosen to head a newly consolidated IT function, back in the IT director role.

“The business at that time made an informed decision not to replace Frank immediately as we had some crucial projects on which to concentrate,” he told Computing.

“The department under Mike’s responsibility was given the task of elevating our multichannel offering to a level considered appropriate for a brand of our importance there were few big retailers that lacked a transactional web site two and a half years ago,” he said.

“My team was instructed to support a head office move as well as the opening of four stores, which was an important strategic event as we went through the re-energising of the brand.”

The majority of the retailer’s systems are bespoke and that is expected to continue. But House of Fraser is increasing the use of virtualisation, using VMware software to allow more flexibility for development.

“We have made such a big investment in our core platforms, so I cannot see us moving away from them,” said Gray.

“Nowadays it is not about wholesale replacement anymore, but about maximising and consolidating what you have. We have spent a lot of time and money on our systems over the past couple of years and it is now time to sweat the assets ­ and that is not a bad thing,” he said.

“You can understand why financial trading needs to be at the sharp end of technology, but retail is all about consistency of delivery, operability and cost of ownership.”

As well as continued improvements in its core retail systems, the department store’s focus over the next 12 months will see further multichannel e nhancements and the offering of concession products over the web.

The company also plans to improve internal reporting and project management methodologies and concentrate on settling the existing teams into the new structure, which is divided into first-line support and retail operations, datacentre and infrastructure, e-commerce and software development.

“An IT function cannot just sit and do the same thing over and over again, it must have continuous service improvements. It must have the ability to do things differently and look at what the guy around the corner is doing, because it is not about reinventing the wheel any more,” said Gray.

Despite the downturn in high street retail, Gray said his IT budget has not been reduced.

“It is the role of any IT director to drive down costs as an agenda. If you are cost-focused while running a function, you should never have a budget cut forced upon you ­ you should already be tuning your budget to the needs of the business,” he said.

“There is less money around for new initiatives, but that is not an issue, because if it is a project that will deliver a business benefit, you should be able to get that on the agenda.”

Improving internal collaboration

Moving to a new head office building two years’ ago gave House of Fraser a chance to re-think aspects of its IT strategy.

“We never used to allow people to access the internet, but when we moved to the new building we provided everyone with web access, with some simple rules to protect us and the staff,” said Gray.

The rules mean that sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are banned and can only be used by the e-commerce team.

“If it’s business-related, I’m happy for it to happen,” said Gray.

“There are certain things that the IT leader needs to say that you can and cannot do – you have a compliance agenda including data protection and PCI DSS, as well as the business agenda on how to communicate differently,” he said.

“We have an employee forum and we are happy to hear what people have to say about ways of communicating, but at this stage I am not getting a huge amount of feedback in relation to [social media].”

Gray accepts that social networking can help customers interact differently with the business, but has adopted tools such as Microsoft’s Office Communications Server to cover internal needs.

“We are already engaging and collaborating with our teams differently since we moved into this building, so we have made great progress,” he said.

“Any opportunity to change the way people operate by using technology in a non-threatening way is great.”