Off the Cuff: Godiva Chocolatier Inc.

Mike Giresi

TITLE: VP, Global IT

AGE: 42

COMPANY: Godiva Chocolatier Inc., New York (a subsidiary of Campbell Soup Co.)

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 4,000 employees, 55 full-time IT employees

INDUSTRY SECTOR: Retail candy and confectionary

CORE BUSINESS CHALLENGE: Godiva used to be the only game in town, but now we're forced to really compete with companies like Ghirardelli on our wares.

TIME IN JOB: 18 months

CAREER PATH: I started in 1998 at Campbell's and moved to Godiva in 2005; I worked for Estée Lauder before that and at Carter-Wallace (maker of Arid and Nair).

WHAT BROUGHT YOU TO GODIVA: The company was going through a transformation, from separate silos to behaving as a global company. One of my strengths is building those cross-functional relationships, so Godiva was a perfect place for me to land.

HOW YOU SPEND YOUR TIME: My average workday includes working in three time zones: I'm on the phone with Europe, meanwhile working in North American locations, then on the phone to Asia at night.

WHAT ATTRACTS YOU TO GODIVA: I like to be associated with a great brand that has real equity with my friends and peers and an organization that has a reputation for being a socially responsible citizen in society. We dedicate a lot of time to the Easter Seals in Berks County, Pa., building houses, building infrastructure, painting houses.

ON WORKING FOR A GLOBAL COMPANY: I like the cultural challenges that go with it. But I spend at least half of my time traveling internationally, which can create a lot of other hardships in other parts of your life.

FAVORITE QUOTE: "Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do." -- John Wooden

WHAT GODIVA IS LIKE DURING THE PEAK SEASON: We do a high percentage of our sales between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day. It's just madness. It's all hands on deck. Sometimes we even bring corporate employees in to the retail stores to help.

BEST ADVICE EVER RECEIVED: Understand the criticality of relationships, and have a service orientation. You don't need to be super-technical to be in IT.

BEST TECHNOLOGY ADVICE EVER GIVEN: Look at the requirements. Don't get hung up on whether the technology will win an award, but ask if it's going to work.

BEST PERSONALITY TRAIT: I have practically no ego invested in doing things a certain way. I don't build fiefdoms, I don't care who gets the credit. What I care about is the business's ability to succeed.

WORST PERSONALITY TRAIT: I can be impatient if I think we can go faster. We were about two weeks off implementing our point-of-sale system in Hong Kong. And if I hadn't pushed, we might have been four or six weeks late instead of two.

ON THE EAST-WEST CULTURE GAP: It's understanding that certain things don't work everywhere. For example, 90% of our gold box works well in Asia, but truffles aren't as popular. In Asia they tend to like chocolate that is very small, that's neat, that doesn't smudge. They do a lot of eating on the go; so the product has to be hand-sized.

BEST TECHNOLOGY DECISION: To bring Fujitsu's GlobalStore point-of-sale system internationally to Godiva; it eliminates so much friction and stress from our system. At our store on Grand Central and 43rd, we increased our transactions by about 80% because we were able to execute transactions so much faster. There's almost no translation on the back end, and we can adopt very quickly. We have such a limited window in which to implement new technologies -- we're flat-out during the holidays -- so that learning curve has to be minimized.

UPCOMING TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVE: Deploying SAP's enterprise resource planning system throughout Godiva by 2010. SAP is going to help us get better consumer data in our systems, things like helping people order online and then pick up in the store and knowing that a particular customer just spent $2,000 on our chocolate.

BEST CIO DECISION EVER MADE: At Godiva, we chose to restructure IT as a global team. But we didn't just say, "You're a global team" and leave them alone. We went through a lot of pain to get there. We looked at our application portfolios, figured out where we should be investing and tied that back to our business strategy.

BEST VALENTINE'S DAY GIFT: Of course, now that I work here, I can't give Godiva as a gift; that's totally unacceptable.

FAVORITE GODIVA PRODUCT: Our G Collection is all handmade chocolate and comes in flavors of American pies (chocolate cream, apple crumb, pecan); it's absolutely irresistible and truly different.

Digg This!     StumbleUpon     Del.icio.us