InformationWeek

Interview: The Web As "Icon Of Change"

Robert Rodin, president and CEO of Marshall Industries Inc., says the Web is transforming his company, industry, and information systems. An undisclosed but fast-growing portion of Marshall's $1.2 billion revenue in 1996 was Web related. In an interview with InformationWeek contributor Mark Mehler, Rodin contended that IS leadership is vital to the company's future.

Why is the Web important to your company?

The Internet, by extending people's reach and making communication so much easier, has the power to radically change our business in a nonli near way. We have 300,000 data sheets available on the Web, seminars, live audio training of customers and suppliers, total ordering functions, and tracking to third-party freight forwarders.

What impact will the Web have on your company's IS function?

IS was a department that did number crunching. The Web changes that value role completely. It's a thought stimulator, an icon of change that can provide seamless, point-to-point communication.

IS no longer can be defined as a separate department. You're not going to succeed anymore by throwing software code over the wall.

What should the IS manager's role be vis-à-vis the Web?

It's a business-partner role. We don't have a CIO. All our IS groups report to me, and I expect them to be businesspeople with IS backgrounds. I don't want them thinking of themselves as IS people. They're a pillar of the future, the kind of people who influence the direction of the company.

Who runs Marshall's Web sites?

From our pe rspective, this is an executive-level activity, not a subset of marketing. We run four sites in 17 languages, and we do everything in-house. The majority of the functions are strategic and encompass all our business units.

At most companies, marketing controls most sites. Is that the case at Marshall?

That makes sense, since the Web is, in effect, the message you're sending to the world, and marketing probably knows best who the customers are and what they need to hear. But there's a real danger in [weakening] your marketing efforts, since you're not just marketing product, but your brand and your essence as a company. And that occurs at my level.

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