American Tire Distributors (ATD), one of the nation's largest suppliers of tires, wheels and parts to the replacement tire market, has experienced rapid growth over the past five years. The company has doubled its revenue through growing the network of independent tire dealers, creating new distribution centers, acquiring regional distribution companies and creating a franchise network of independent tire dealers. The company's evolution and aggressive goals put continuous pressure on the IT organization to support the growing internal staff and office locations as well as to create and align systems to meet the needs of the business. To create a best-in-class IT organization in a high-growth environment, Tony Vaden, ATD's CIO engaged with Gartner, the world's leading information technology research and advisory company, for research insight, problem-solving methodologies, and IT performance benchmarks. During one of Vaden's monthly meetings with his Gartner analyst, the decision was made to create a strategic plan for IT. "We were always reactive and didn't have visibility into what the business needed," says Vaden. "We needed to create and articulate a strategy for the future." In seeking to develop an IT strategy that would better support the organization, ATD turned to Intellinet, a trusted partner previously engaged to create a business intelligence solution and to transform their project management office. To begin, Vaden worked with Intellinet's management consulting team to interview executives from each of ATD's functional departments in order to better understand business needs and goals. Once the interviews were complete, Intellinet synthesized the findings into a written strategic plan. The document outlined ATD's current situation and challenges, distilled the interviews to seven key objectives for the business that involve or are dependent upon IT, and outlined five focus areas for IT over the next two years. The focus areas were designed to align to both day-to-day support needs and new capabilities to support business objectives. Based on the findings presented in the strategic plan, Intellinet created a visual two-year IT roadmap to demonstrate alignment and timing for IT initiatives. To ensure the project roadmap was well communicated, a copy was printed as a large graphic and was mounted in a prominent space in the IT department along with a large graphic of ATD's IT Model. To highlight alignment, roadmap projects were color coded to match the three categories of strategic goals listed on the IT Model - revenue enablement, business productivity, and technology innovation. Based on Intellinet's analysis and planning, ATD is better prepared for the continued growth over the next few years. By conducting executive interviews, Vaden demonstrated a genuine interest in understanding the objectives and challenges of the individual business units. He was able to confirm IT's support of critical business objectives and identify specific next steps. ATD's three-year business objectives are now documented and communicated to the management team in a formal and consistent manner. IT requirements are clearly associated with business objectives. The IT Strategy document articulates the current state of the business, the business objectives, the IT strategy and high priority IT initiatives to meet the objectives. Throughout the strategic plan development process, Intellinet and Gartner partnered to provide monthly executive coaching and feedback to Vaden. The cross-informational sharing has helped to make best practices relevant to day-to-day operations and the creation of the Steering Committee ensures IT initiatives will remain aligned to business objectives and priorities, project performance will be tracked, and business stakeholders will remain aware and involved in IT project planning.
"The impact Intellinet has had on our company has been very gratifying. The rapport between me and the other members of the executive team is much stronger and we are in a great position to deliver tremendous value to the organization."
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