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Alliance Data

Company: Alliance Data, Dallas, TX
Company Description: Alliance Data is the result of the 1996 merger of two entities: JC Penney's transaction services business (BSI Business Services, Inc.) and The Limited's credit card bank operation, World Financial Network National Bank. The company has more than 600 clients in industries including retail, petroleum, utility, financial services, insurance, hospitality and pharmaceutical markets.
Nomination Category: MIS & IT Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Best MIS & IT Organization/Department

Nomination Title: Innovation & Teamwork Result in Success


  1. Tell the story about what this nominated organization/department achieved since January 1 2007 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

       In 2007, the Alliance Data ITS Organization embarked upon an 
    objective to positively impact Customer Service. We wanted to provide
    better services at a lower cost and create a more time-effective process for
    completing transactions for our customers. The solution to that objective was
    to create, implement and share a Service Catalog with our clients, thus the
    Service Catalog project was born.
    The Service Catalog was/is more than the creation of a document. It was/is
    the teaming of talented and creative associates finding opportunities to save
    money, generating service improvements, developing stronger customer
    relationships, committing to the priority of customer service and communicating
    in a transparent manner with each other and with our customers.
    While these behaviors were not entirely absent prior to this project, the in-
    depth reviews of both our past service requests and last customer survey
    provided an insightful view into our opportunity to improve our services and
    revealed some specific discoveries; such as finding that 83% of service
    requests were repeatable requests in the end-user category, and could be
    streamlined to optimize service delivery. This standardization of services
    resulted in greater than 11% total cost reduction in each of our business units
    across a three year period.
    The successful implementation of the Service Catalog required the
    involvement of most, if not all, of our ITS associates, addressing the various
    challenges and executing the action plans.
    There was one team of ITS associates engaged in a significant savings
    opportunity with one of our vendors, working through a contract negotiation.
    The team worked diligently over a nine month period to collaborate with all key
    stakeholders and complete an extensive analysis evaluating functionality,
    pricing, and risk of several options for multiple vendors and products. These
    efforts resulted in a contract that delivered a 2.2MM savings in 2007 and an
    annualized savings of 4.5MM through 2011. This optimization generated a large
    savings for ITS, which would ultimately impact our overall rates and create
    savings for our customers, which were included in the service catalog offering.
    Meanwhile, our customer account managers were obtaining high-level training
    to increase their account management skills and improve our overall customer
    relationships. Those relationship improvements would prove very necessary once
    the service catalog was ready to present to the client base.
    Within internal IT departments, it is rare to see a comprehensive service
    catalog, so by industry norms, we were implementing something most of our
    clients had not seen, which was the visibility and understanding of exactly
    what ITS does and what it offers. This was an obstacle that we were able to
    overcome with the introduction of the catalog because the Service Catalog
    communicates the breadth of available services to customers including costs for
    services, Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and available configuration
    options.
    By introducing new technology and a new process into our environment, we
    were able to create and implement the Service Portfolio and Service Catalog to
    effectively address several opportunities in improving customer service with a
    single innovative solution.

  2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

    http://www.alliancedata.com

  3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated organization/department:

    Barry Carter, ITO for Alliance Data, since August 2004.  Responsible for shared 
    information technology needs of eight lines of business, including Corporate
    Applications Development, Systems Integration, Service Delivery and Support,
    with teams in Dallas and Columbus.

    Previous to joining Alliance, served as CIO of Capital One Auto Finance,
    managing capitaloneauto.com and instrumental in building relationships with 70
    business partners. Other experience: CIO of AirTran Airways, various
    applications development leadership positions at UnitedHealthcare,
    AmericanAirlines, Sabre, and EDS.

    Education: BA degree in Computer Science with a minor in Mathematics-East
    Carolina University and an MBA in Organizations and Management-Syracuse
    University.