By Rob Meilen

Retail is an extremely fast-paced environment where we don’t always have time to go through an exhaustive or lengthy process for vendor selection. At Sports Authority, we have grown quickly from when I started as CIO 6 years ago. We operate over 460 stores in 45 states today. Our team supports more than 16,000 associates and more than 50 million store transactions annually. We have grown with the business and that growth has required that we continually invest in new technologies.  


 
The first step in finding technology solutions to business challenges is identifying potential solution providers. IT has to be closely aligned as a strategic partner with the business to ensure a clear understanding of the business need.  
 


At Sports Authority, my team performs research in three ways. First, we’ll talk to our established vendor partners to evaluate potential solutions. Second, we talk to research firms like Gartner to determine competitive solutions and the ratings. Third, we talk to companies who have done similar projects to learn about options they considered and the solutions they implemented. There often isn’t time to cast a wide net and so there could be solutions and vendors that don’t get considered—especially smaller, newer vendors. 
 


The evaluation phase involves references from a vendor—which has some value but can be biased. We often talk to our personal networks to gain additional insights about specific solutions, products and vendors. This can be less structured and so there are certain inconsistencies in the data gathered. Of course during selection, there are vendor meetings, presentations and demonstrations in order to gather the necessary data for a good selection decision. 
 


The fact is that there are potential providers that are either dismissed because no one on our team knows them or is able to get any data on them within the necessary time constraint. Small companies may be eliminated because of a higher risk profile. And, of course there are vendors that probably never make our list at all.  
 


Rob Meilen is CIO of Sports Authority.