This document summarizes a presentation about how DSW is transforming their business and technology strategies to keep up with rapid changes in the retail industry. It discusses how DSW assessed their current state and needs, created a plan to drive their business strategy with technology, organized a team to lead the transformation, and is preparing stakeholders for change. The transformation involves moving to cloud technologies, adopting a "digital mesh" approach, reorganizing teams, and using design thinking to focus on customer and employee experiences when developing solutions.

1. The retail industry is moving with greater velocity than ever before. The retail model has
evolved from single channel to omni‐channel and now, digital. What is next? And do we
have the technology strategy, organizational structures and velocity to keep up, or even
win?
I’m honored to share how DSW is approaching our enterprise‐scale "Transformation to the
Digital Mesh”, which will position the company's capabilities for the future by combining
our business and technology strategy with their organizational structure and variety of
delivery models.
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2. Slide 2: Know Where You are Going and Why
• The first step in transforming to future state technology is to have a plan.
• Like all Retailers, DSW is at something of a cross roads. A cross roads that brings together our amazing
business, our culture, our customers love for our brand, and the exploration of technology in every aspect
of our life.
• In the last decade the world has changed. We have become connected, enabled, social and ever‐
engaged. Technology has infiltrated every aspect of society, business and culture.
Let’s hear from the DSW CIO, Ashlee Aldridge, about her first impression (within her first 6 months) about
how technology and business strategy align.
• Click for Ashlee Perspective Video!
• Play Ashlee Video ‐‐ 01:26.67
Key Points:
• Take stock of where you are
• Create a technology strategy that DRIVES your business strategy
• Where does your company want to be in 3‐5 years?
• What problems are you trying to solve?
• What is our current state technology and what do we need to evolve to?
• Create a plan to cover the gaps!
• Ensure that people understand and are aligned to the strategy, are immersed in the business and able to
connect the dots
• Look at it from a user perspective
• Design matters
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3. Slide 3: Where We Are
• Now speaking of design matters, feel free to laugh. When you see this you want to say – what is that?
People are using this? So keeping in mind where you are/where you came from is extremely important as
a part of your journey
• Here is a picture of our current in‐store technology that our poor store associates have to use on a daily
basis
• How often do you notice the hardware and software that the associates are using to help you? Rarely,
right? They’re invisible to you… just helping the associate to do the job that they’re doing on your
behalf…except for when they don’t work
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4. Slide 4: What our Customer Expects
And now this; talk about Design Matters! This is what our customer (and when I say customer I also mean
our associates) EXPECT! Our associates are used to using a SINGLE device to perform their day‐to‐day tasks
outside of work, such as paying bills, checking weather, and even getting transportation to and from work if
they use Uber/Lyft, you name it. Then they walk into our stores and they have to use multiple tools and
applications to do their jobs all while someone is waiting on them to do it!
This idea of technology being the connected tissue that links previously disparate parts of our lives and our
business into one ecosystem and act as a value multiplier for our investment, our IP and our brand; we refer
to this concept as the Digital Mesh, and make no mistake that the this Digital Mesh is changing the world in
profound and fundamental ways. We acknowledge that this Digital Mesh is infiltrating our associates’ lives.
Many of our associates live have an incredibly fulfilling Digital‐enabled life, but as we all know in Retail we
tend to be technology followers. We no longer want it to feel like 1995 when they go to work, we want it to
feel like 2016 (or 2020!).
First, the customer is at the center. As we all know, technology plays a critical role in society today;
however, it’s not just about the technology, it’s about the experience delivered with that technology.
Consumers are the ones in control, and they choose how they want to interact with you.
…How we travel [ Uber + Lyft ]
…how we consumer entertainment and information [ Netflix and spotify ]
...how we think about and manage our home and car [ Nest and Tesla ]
…and of course how we shop and engage with the brands we love [ Ralph Laurens new interactive
store in New Yorks meat‐packing district ].
Second, technology is an enabler to enhancing interaction with the customer and taking it to the next level.
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5. Transition: So how did we (DSW) set out to close the gap? Well, it’s simple really…We have
a plan, but in order to make that plan come to life, you first need to organize for success.
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6. Slide 5: Organize for Success
We realized that in order to complete an initiative/transformation of this magnitude we needed to do two major things:
1. From a technology perspective one significant change to meet our ever‐changing customer needs is to build a delivery model that
can simplify and scale. We have made a commitment to the cloud to enable technology expansion and support business growth.
Why?
• Modern companies don’t build data centers/Stop paying for technology you don’t use/Enable the ability to adjust
quickly and easily in the case of changing consumer trends and market disruptions
2. Build a team to invest in the true practice of Transformation (not ankle biting Transformation).
• As a result, we moved people from the business who were practitioners to join the team and serve as subject matter
experts to ensure that the people actually running the business could remain in the business and FOCUS on running the
business as well as a full time OCM expert to help us navigate the change (and resistance were about to encounter)
• Team has knowledge of where we have been
• Understands where we need to go (and isn’t afraid to push some boundaries)
• Prepares the organization for change
• We realized that we needed to think outside of DSW and how we’ve always done projects, which has led us to look not
just to augment staff like we typically have done but people who want to be partners with us major initiatives, who:
• Shares the same core values as we do
• Are willing to have shared skin in the game
• Prepare for change
• We also needed to give the Transformation team the right tools to do their jobs
Transition: Let’s hear from the former VP Transformation, Brian Seewald, who is one of my biggest partners in crime. Brian is the
current VP, Digital and was also a key member of the omni‐channel team. He has experienced a lot of change over the past 3 years as
DSW.
Brian Video Clip – 00:46.38
As Brian mentioned, since he has the experience of the working with the Transformation team he has changed how we works. He is
much more focused on communication and strategic and tactical transparency as a priority and the biggest takeaway that that
Transformation itself has evolved within DSW from being a team to a partner!
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7. Slide 6: Transformation Is..
• Transformation is the act or process of changing completely
• At a leadership offsite last week our CIO actually created a brand new definition, something along the
lines of “genetic alteration of company processes”
• When you start to Transform you realize the following:
• No going back: Once a caterpillar turns into a butterfly it does not turn back into a caterpillar
• Takes time
• Moxie, humility, vulnerability
• Commitment
• Risky
• Great value
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8. Slide 7: Transform Your Thinking
One way we have introduced Transformation and change to the broader organization is to introduce a different way of
thinking about how we approach work (for DSW).
How many of you use or have heard of IDEO’s Design Thinking?
• Empathize: Observe (no filters) and engage from the user perspective, immerse yourself
• Define; What problem are you trying to solve
• Ideate: Use the How Might We Approach, assume there are no constraints
• Prototype: Create a visual representation and TELL a story
• Test: Test and learn (if I gave you $2,000 and 6 weeks, tell me how you would test this)
We are often so solution‐oriented that sometimes we are building solutions and have actually lost sight of the problem
we are trying to solve. One of my new favorite quotes is by Albert Einstein, who said “If I were given one hour to save the
planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and 1 minute resolving it”. WHAT?!?
We introduced the concept of “Design‐Led” Thinking to our leadership team back in January as part of a kick off for a new
major transformation initiative for our Stores. At the end of the 2 days our goal was focus on what problems we are
trying to solve and design an experience around a user versus building a tool and then figuring out how to make it work
for a user. Our user here was the associate.
Let’s hear what our leaders had to say after going through this workshop
Play Video – 2:10
So we started the change there and walked away with very specific problems we wanted to solve as well as
ways for how we might want to solve it and even some prototypes, which was super cool. All of these are fun
artifacts to look upon and we will one day reminisce about as we get to the end of the journey. BUT, I can’t
forget the other major components of our Transformation!
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9. Slide 8: Preparing for Change
• Just because we have created a team and are introducing a concept of Transformation
and doing work a little differently does NOT mean that people automatically embrace it!
• This is a major reason why we have brought on a full‐time organizational change
management resource onto the team and we also have been very explicit in calling
out/identifying – hey we want to change your world, can we talk about it? To every
impacted area
• Just like every change exercise we have a stakeholder analysis, influence strategies, OCM
strategy, and we are using the adoption of change as a measure of success for every
transformational project
Move to next slide
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10. Slide 9: Measure our Success
One of the toughest things our team has had to introduce is that in order to be successful we actually need to
measure our success!
Yes, this is extremely unpopular, but we all know that sometimes being a leader means being unpopular.
Talk about the different ways we measure: We do business cases and have to include financial measurements
like (ROI), Organizational (adoption and willingness to change), and ability to position DSW for long‐term
growth
Transition: Once you establish key success criteria for your roadmap our Transformation team will hold us
accountable.
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11. Slide 10: Accountability
Ahhh accountability. Everyone loves to use this word but rarely in the right context
Accountability is the obligation of an individual or organization to account for its activities, accept
responsibility for them, and to disclose the results in a transparent manner.
In Beth Rick terms, I call this “walking the talk.
Transformation is just like a journey, it never ends! You keep learning throughout the process of
Transformation until everything and everyone changes completely.
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12. Slide 11: Change is Inevitable
This is one of my favorite sayings and I truly believe it is the most applicable to retail today. As I have shared
today, we at DSW have committed to not just keep up with the speed of digital culture, but to lead it.
We have developed a strategy, roadmap and deployment plan that to help us get there. And that will deliver
value to every DSW associate, and in turn every DSW customer
We are bringing the Digital Mesh into every corner of our business. Into our stores, our offices, into our
operations. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to share our journey with you today.
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13. Slide 12: Questions?