A conversation with Merv Tarde, VP Information Technology & Chief Information Officer, Interstate Batteries
Merv Tarde is Vice President of Interstate's Information Technology and Chief Information Officer. He sets the strategic direction for IT and oversees all IT based networks, systems and resources serving customers throughout the Interstate Batteries System. He is also responsible for Interstate's office facilities and real estate. Prior to joining Interstate in 1998, he spent over 20 years in Telecom starting with Bell Laboratories and ending up with AT&T Wireless where he held several executive-level positions.
THE ENTERPRISERS PROJECT: Where are you looking to get the most benefit from Big Data?
TARDE: Where we’re going to get a lot of data at Interstate is through sensors. We’re doing a lot of machine-to-machine type communication, and we store some of that data today in our warehouse. We’re looking at getting probably 10 to 20 times what we have today and getting it in real time. We’re preparing for that. We’re doing some R&D. We’re taking all the right steps from a corporate standpoint and it just depends on how our R&D goes. Assuming it goes well and we meet all our metrics from a validation standpoint, there will be a go situation. If not, we might just do it on a smaller scale.
THE ENTERPRISERS PROJECT: Location-specific analytics must be one priority application for a company like Interstate, which has 200,000 dealers. What are you doing there?
TARDE: We took on an analytics project three or four years ago to restructure what we had, and the only thing we kept was our data warehouse. We replaced everything above that. And yes, everything is indeed moving toward geospatial analysis for us. Using tools like MicroStrategy and Esri, we want Team Members to be able to go into our system and look at a map of a specific city and location to see what they need to know – sales, purchases, inventory, you name it. We also have salespeople on the street looking at where they might see a potential opportunity or lead, so that data is mapped into the system. Users can look at all this data in different colors in different ways on the map.
THE ENTERPRISERS PROJECT: You’ve just touched on two trends that continue to come up around big data and analytics: one is the critical importance of visualization tools so that people can note trends, and the other is self-service.
TARDE: That’s right. Visualization is critical because it’s sometimes hard to generate insights when we’re looking at a spreadsheet. We can look at everything visually. You can break data down into a pie chart, a GANTT chart, or whatever you want. And the self-service is definitely there. It makes it easy for the people in the field to use these products, rather than say, “I have to be an IT major or a statistician to know it.” You don’t. We want to make it easy to use. We’re also building in predictive analysis, so you don’t have to do heavy calculations. You can go in there and actually see what would it be if this happens or that happens?
THE ENTERPRISERS PROJECT: It almost sounds that by adding this top analytics layer to your data warehouse, you are drawing on a lot of data that you already have collected, even if you’re not calling it big data.
TARDE: Right. We know that when we start dealing with this volume of data, we need to change out our infrastructure in the business intelligence arena because what was fast a few years ago is just not fast enough anymore. We use more flash memory technology, for example, because it’s one thing to say “I’ll get back to you in 24 or 48 hours.” But what if I get a request at 6:45 and I have to have an analysis ready to go so that people know what they have to do at 7:00? So we’re doing a lot of the experimentation now. The nice thing is, almost all of our projects, unless they are IT infrastructure upgrade-related, are run by the business. They own it. It’s great to have the relationships we do.
Interested in hearing more from Merv Tarde, read his article about why CIOs should embed HR into their organizations.
