Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Virginia Tech

Senior Director, Digital Technology at Lowe's Companies, Inc.

Mooresville, North Carolina, United States

Lowe's Companies, Inc.

Senior Director, Digital Technology

Recruited to lead JCPenney’s strategic ‘Path Forward’ Digital Initiatives and Digital Operations based on my proven track record of applying Technical solutions to solve Business problems. Responsible for optimizing the Customer Experience across Mobile and Desktop and driving daily Omni-Channel operations. Specifically, responsible for defining and executing strategies to heighten End to End Customer Digital Experience, grow eCommerce profitable sales, reduce Enterprise Fulfillment costs, and reduce ship times to Customers.

Selected Achievements:
-  Responsible for driving $2B eCommerce / Omni-Channel business via profitable sales through technical solutions.
-  Accountable for delivering incremental $130M eCommerce and $95M Enterprise Fulfillment revenue.
-  Launched Mobile First strategy and design thinking targeted to increase conversion by 50% within the Fiscal year.
-  Responsible for driving 9% lift in SEO paired with comp traffic to -12% SEM spend
-  Developed and launched strategic plan to expose incremental $370M in ‘hidden’ Omni-Channel inventory.
-  Direct oversight for SEO, Site & Category Experience, Content Management, and Taxonomy / Attribution.
-  Partnered with Product and Engineering teams in roadmap construction to meet fiscal revenue and margin goals.
-  Direct oversight of 110+ Associates and 60+ Contractors spread across Plano, TX and Bangalore, India.
-  Responsible for growing offshore capabilities by 30%.

JCPenney

Senior Director, Digital

Recruited to lead the definition, launch, and optimization of a Global Omni-Channel / Customer Experience portfolio encompassing 24 websites across 42 countries including North America, China, Europe, Latin America, and Emerging Markets. Quickly recognized as a leader amongst the Executive team based ability to define, gain alignment, and execute technology driven, business roadmaps that deliver extensive net new revenue with minimal capital investment.

Selected Achievements:
-  Responsible for planning, designing, implementing, and optimizing Products that will deliver $280M+ incremental revenue with $17M in capital investments.
-  Led integrated US / China Distributed Order Management implementation leveraging Manhattan’s cloud based architecture running on AWS.
-  Designed UA’s ‘Future Store’ Product ecosystem that drives revenue through digital and experiential integration.
-  Partnered with leading edge technical innovation ‘think tanks’ and Under Armour’s Innovation Center to create immersive customer experiences by integrating 190M+ UA Record users from SAP HANA into UA Retail Apps.
-  Spearheaded retail’s first ever Global Assortment initiative where all regional order and fulfillment channels will feed a single Global OMS, provide the customer any product, anywhere, anytime, and deliver $55M+ revenue.
-  Led Product Management, IT, and contractor teams in delivering custom Endless Aisle and configured Vendor Drop Ship applications on time / on budget; each of which delivered 34% and 16% above planned revenue.
-  Extensive experience creating and presenting Business Cases to Executive, President, and C-Level leadership.

Under Armour

Head of Global Omni-Channel, Strategy & Delivery

Hand chosen to lead Merchandising’s #1 priority of 2013 as defined by the President and CEO of The Home Depot. Goals of this project were to provide the Merchant and Assortment Planning teams with a suite of both packaged and custom developed analytic tools that enabled them to shift from being heavily weighted in tactical daily tasks to spending time on strategic analysis and decision making. Specifically, this suite of tools will enable more frequent Production Line Reviews and Business Reviews, consistent visibility to high margin SKUs with the ability to expand to more Stores, the ability to perform what-if scenarios and check impact on financials and space use, and the ability to quickly assess impact of store requests on financials and space use. Once complete, the suite of integrated Assortment Planning application tools and business processes will have the capability to provide a profit increase of up to $380M over 3 years.

- Led the delivery and implementation of THD’s first integrated Assortment Planning and Execution software suite
- Continuously managed prioritization, scope, and delivery across cross-functional THD teams (Merchandising Transformation, Assortment Planning, Space Planning, Merch IT, and matrixed THD IT teams), Predictix (assortment planning packaged software vendor), and TCS (primary development and test partner for MED – Merchandising Execution Dashboard)
- Recruited and built THD Assortment Planning IT team to include Managers, Developers, and Business Analysts
- Negotiated long term strategy and contract with vendor to reduce project sunk costs by $3M
- Played lead integration role in coordinating teams, designs, and schedules across the Assortment Execution Integration scope,  existing Applications, and new and existing data models
- Led weekly financial reviews to ensure project health, refine short term and long term financial needs, and challenge contractor and THD staffing requirements to ensure streamlined execution

The Home Depot

Senior Manager, IT - Merchandising Systems

In order to optimize multichannel opportunities, Home Depot must have clear visibility to individual products through all interconnected retail channels. For most products this is not possible due to variations across SKU Number, OMS ID, GTIN, and UPC. Expanding the SKU Length was the first step to creating a unique identifier for each product. With THD’s focus on interconnected retail, expanding our SKU Length was now a critical business need. Marc was challenged to lead this Enterprise wide effort and deliver it quickly and for least cost.

Marc’s leadership  summary:
o	Completed 2 months ahead of schedule
o	$700k under budget
o	Remediated 4,700 programs across 260 Applications
o	Executed End to End regression testing across 330 Applications
o	163,000 hrs of Development
o	64,000 hrs of QA
o	19,000 hrs of End to End regression testing
o	Built THD’s first fully integrated Production replica QA environment
o	Overlapped code and unit test, QA and code deployment project phases
o	262 THD Associates
o	Offshore team of over 200 FTE’s

- Led cross functional team in determining optional SKU Length based on enterprise growth projections, multichannel strategies, and system capabilities
- Networked across all Portfolios to understand and work through individual challenges versus what was being asked of them for this Enterprise wide project
- Led discovery team in analyzing over 6,000 programs / applications to determine which were impacted by changing the SKU Length and how they were impacted
- Led fixed bid RFP negotiations, responsible for negotiating fixed fee development contract down from $7M to $4.5M
- Defined and implemented a Design to Deployment strategy whereby code groups were defined, pushed through the development lifecycle, and continuously deployed into Production up to 4 months prior to go-live
- Responsible for working with all Portfolio Directors / VP’s to build and deliver weekly report out to CIO

Senior Manager, IT - Enterprise Initiatives

Led a series of custom development projects focused on recouping lost revenue and enabling Merchants and Store Associates to focus on profitable customer interaction rather than tactical tasking.

- Store Level Clearance – Top 10 list of core capabilities delivered in 2012 out of over 290 projects. Provided integrated Merchant / Store capabilities that enabled Merchants to clearance SKUs at Store level as opposed to Market level. This enabled THD to clearance ~$170M in stranded inventory and recoup ~$100M in lost revenue.
- Reason Code Visibility – Provided the field clear communication as to why a SKU is in a particular status and what the go forward strategy is around the SKU (keep, replace, exit). This moved Associate hours from researching SKUs to customer facing opportunities.
- Install Prompt – Enhanced the special services application to provide a prompt for Store Associates to sell installation services with applicable SKUs. Previous to this project the Store Associate did not know and/or did not think to offer the installation service. Potential revenue gain of ~$30M.

MSR enabled Home Depot to optimize our distribution network by eliminating the market constraint for replenishment and distribution channels, simplifying vendor management, implementing distribution channel indicators, and increasing data accuracy and consistency. The changes implemented by Supply Chain, Merchandising, Store Systems, and Finance led to expansive savings to THD in distribution costs as well as increased revenue due to minimizing stock outs. With a project cost of more than $23M, teams estimated that the savings in a single large Market could recoup all project costs.

MSR, Conversion and Deployment Lead:  Apr ’10 – Dec ‘10
- Led cross functional teams from Merchandising, Store Systems, Supply Chain, and Finance through Conversion, Cutover and Deployment
- Largest deployment of code since Y2K (only SKU Length would surpass it to date)
- Designed process of Mock Cutover, Pilot, and Deployment that was recognized by THD Executive leadership as virtually flawless

MSR, Integration Lead:  Aug ’09 – Apr ‘10
- Spearheaded pulling cross functional teams together in prep for QA and Deployment; as teams came out of development it was clear a project of this scale was lacking cohesion
- Identified and mapped plan to resolution for integration concerns such as other project conflicts, QA environment scale and capability, code interdependencies
- Led IT engineering team in identifying and implementing process to quickly “snap” a Production data copy to support multiple QA phases with no impact to working times

Senior Manager, IT - Cross Functional

Implemented one of the largest SAP Retail initiatives to date; project included $145M budget, 2 year timeframe, and 370 team members. Marc was chosen to lead critical path roles that had been delayed due to complexity:  Conversion Data Validation and New Store Openings.
- Provided hands-on / onsite leadership for opening 7 new Stores on the SAP Retail platform from hardware installation to board cutting ceremony; this led to multi $M savings
- Leveraged knowledge gained in conversion to outline strategy for opening new Stores on SAP as opposed to opening on Legacy and then converting to SAP
- Quickly ramped up on scope of Conversion objects, defined data validation best practices and options, and partnered with the Business on validation strategies
- Executed and refined data validation strategies through mock cutover and Pilot

Senior Manager, IT - SAP Retail Implementation

- Led team in defining Home Depot’s SAP project implementation methodology
- Defined, estimated and executed SAP projects across all major phases including Project Prep, Blueprint, Realization, Final Prep and Go-Live
- Managed large client / consultant mixed teams across all project phases
- Led teams in defining overall testing strategy and execution
- Defined and authored Program Governance strategies to include team level, Steering Committee level and Executive Sponsor level issue escalation and resolution processes
- Experience with Executive level reporting opportunities such as Steering Committees, Executive Leadership Teams, MPR’s, etc.
- Experience in resource loading, contract negotiations, SOW’s, Project Financials and hardware forecasting

Manager, IT - SAP Center of Excellence

Manager in Retail and Consumer Goods – Atlanta, GA
Clients included Indigo Books and Music, TastyKake Bakery and Estee Lauder

- Spent a great deal of time in the field and on the manufacturing floor to understand each Businesses first hand and provided conduit from the field to project team
- Experience in all sales cycles including RFI, RFP, Orals and final selection
- Developed strategies to answer key client challenges
- Led teams through Global Blueprint Phase – Delivered SME Workshops, defined business requirements, assessed SAP Fit / Gap functionality and designed SAP / Legacy integration
- Consistently delivered on or under time / budget
- Designed SAP Supply Chain solution to support $150mm+ in Global Consignment Inventory
- Defined SAP Procurement solution to support $1.2b+ purchasing spend
- Defined and implementing all Procurement, Batch Management and Quality Management configuration and FRICE elements to support Global Blueprint business requirements
- Played key role on sales pursuit team to win first implementation of Deloitte’s SAP Mid-Market solution
- Led Forecast to Finished Goods team in the Design and Implementation of Production Planning and Execution, Inventory Management and Warehouse Management
- Led team through integrated testing solution to include full scope of SAP R/3 SD, FI, CO, MM, PP, WM, Loans and Direct-Store-Delivery
- Worked with client Supply Chain division to develop 12 week material specific demand forecasting process that enabled the client to realize their Forecast to Actual accuracies
- Developed in depth knowledge of key SAP Retail specific applications including Category Management, Layout Modules, Assortments and Merchandise Categories
- Coordinated communication and requirements between business owners and Custom Development team to ensure client business requirements were met in developing a custom SAP Retail GUI.

Deloitte Consulting

Manager

Manager in Consumer Good and Services – Atlanta, GA
Clients included Mrs. Smith’s Bakeries, Ocean Spray, Ericsson, Kraft Foods and Lorillard

- Led consultant / client cross functional team in defining, analyzing and resolving extremely complex product and data flows through each project stage from Blueprint to Go-Live
- Applied and executed SAP MM, PP and FI designs to track $50 million in raw and semi-finished inventory
- Incorporated SAP MM, PP and FI designs to track 3200 RFID written semi-finished goods containers
- Integrated SAP MM, PP and FI/CO with RFID Technology, BarCoding and Wireless Handhelds
- Guided SAP FI team in defining and executing strategies for realizing raw and semi-finished material profit/loss against $125 million in on-hand finished goods inventory
- Built SAP MM framework to support daily Supply Chain distribution of $30 million
- Designed and executed flawless conversion of over $125 million in Finished Goods inventory reconciled to the individual cigarette and $18 million in Accounts Receivable reconciled to the penny
- Enabled SAP Phase 2 win worth over $15 million
- Led National and Area procurement teams in identifying which spend categories and suppliers would deliver the greatest realized cost savings
- Rationalized client’s Supplier base to enable cost savings
- Identified value opportunities within the New Product Introduction chain
- Benchmarked client’s strategic sourcing processes against industry leading practices
- Implemented process improvement practices to identify and eliminate obsolete inventory

Marc Goracke

Marc Goracke