Yasir Anwar, Senior VP, Head of Digital Technology, Macy’s

Episode Overview

Among other topics, Yasir discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:

• • Working across internal departments and with external partners to reach customer-centric goals
  • Advantages Macy’s has as a long-standing brand vs. competition from digital native organizations
  • Digital development to create the “omni customer” experience
  • Restructuring of the organization based on the customer’s journey—the use of “domains”
  • Macy’s Labs and the focus on entrepreneurship within the larger organization
  • Talent attraction

Yasir Anwar’s Biography

Yasir is Senior Vice President, Head of Digital Technology at Macy’s, Inc., one of the nation’s premier omnichannel retailers, with fiscal 2015 sales of $27.1 billion. As the The company currently operates about 728 stores in 49 of the top 50 US markets under the names of Macy’s, Macy’s Backstage, Bloomingdale’s, Bloomingdale’s Outlet and Bluemercury, as well as the macys.com, bloomingdales.com and bluemercury.com websites. Yasir is also the founder of Macy’s Labs, which Yasir describes as a “crucible for idea generation, feasibility analysis and experimentation.” Prior to Macy’s Yasir served as the Director of Engineering with WalMartlabs.
I recently caught up with Yasir in his office in San Francisco, and our conversation covered World Class iT Principle 1, People, as we discussed attracting top talent in the Bay Area; Principle 2: Infrastructure, as we discussed building a technology architecture of domain services focused on outcome; and Principle 3, Project and Portfolio Management, as we discussed the creation of the ‘omni customer’ experience and shaping products based on customer feedback. We also covered how a long-standing brand like Macy’s can be leveraged in competition with digital native organizations, among a variety of other topics.

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