Oracle Enterprise Performance Management - The CIO's Guide to Oracle Products and Solutions - page 94

information technology (IT) and business strategy, and actively embarks
on policies and projects that reflect this commitment. Understanding and
commitment are quite different.
Smith represents this most perfect combination. He's a businessman
with a keen interest in what technology can do for FedEx. In fact, his inter-
est is so pronounced that it is said he personally reads voluminous com-
puter trades to keep abreast of any new development that can be leveraged
by his company.
FedEx tech centers, which process millions of transactions on a daily
basis, are scattered across the globe. The main unit is located at FedEx's
headquarters in Memphis, with others in Los Angeles and London. The
most interesting unit is located in Colorado Springs. When FedEx began
their quest for the perfect system, they had trouble hiring the technical
people that they needed. Many balked at making a move to Memphis,
mostly famous as the home of Elvis Presley.
In the '70s, in an effort to attract the best talent, FedEx did a study to
identify the most ideal place to relocate. This turned out to be Colorado
Springs. To this day, FedEx senior management believe that this conces-
sion to staff morale was instrumental in their ultimate success.
Even in the early 1970s, Smith clearly understood the growing closeness
of the world, now called globalization but referred to by Smith then as
worldwide logistics . At the same time, FedEx's strategic planning sessions
were questioning where the business was going and what the competi-
tors were doing. They asked themselves what FedEx would have to do to
stay competitive over the next decade or two. You'll note some interest-
ing things about FedEx that set it apart from most of their contempo-
raries in the 1970s (and even today). First, it understood the coming push
toward globalization, even though this trend is one that they didn't begin
to pursue until at least 10 years later. Second, FedEx's planning horizon
stretched out over two decades, which was more Japanese-oriented than
its American counterparts, which usually worked in a window of two to
five years. Third, technology was considered the key part of their strat-
egy. Finally, and most importantly, it understood the concept of balanced
scorecard long before the term was invented by Kaplan and Norton in the
early 1990s. FedEx has certainly been a strategy-focused organization
since the day Smith conceived it three decades ago.
There are three key measurement indicators applied at FedEx. The goal of
the customer-value creation indicator is to define a customer value that is not