Silos And Point Solutions: The Perfect Storm By Eric Olafson, Tomax Corporation

Look to new technology to bridge the business.

In "Silo Busting," Ranjay Gulati notes that most businesses are unable to directly address the customer due to the presence of pervasive silos (Harvard Business Review, May 2007). To transcend silos, Gulati advises the build-out of structural mechanisms/processes to sync information and activities across business units.

Retail enterprise silos are profoundly entrenched. Across corporate, marketers market, merchants merchandise, loss preventers prevent, store managers manage stores, etc. In every chain, an insidious ‘us and them' mentality exists as a friction against efforts to connect strategy with in-store execution.

About Eric Olafson
Eric Olafson is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Tomax Corporation. Eric is focused on the ongoing development of the business and direction of the retail-in-realtime vision. Eric has an extensive background in systems development, marketing and sales organizations, the past fifteen years of which have focused on the retail market. He is a leading proponent of the thin-client revolution in retail and has been extensively quoted in industry and trade journals. In 2001 Eric was named the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year®.