For those who gripe that information technology doesn’t understand the business-side of things, try Ajit Patel for size. Patel began his roller-coaster career as a young high-school graduate who ran away from Idi Amin’s chaotic Uganda to study nuclear engineering at UCLA. For four years, he lived out of his car and revived one of the Greek fraternities at UCLA, while also managing to complete a degree in nuclear science in 1976.

Like the science he studied, where a neutron runs headlong into a mass of uranium atoms, it splits one of the atoms into two lighter ones, and another neutron. This in turn goes knocking into other atoms, and so on till the fuel is spent, and the vast amounts of energy released cause some sort of mark in the world, whether for the good or the ugly.

If Ajit Patel’s career can be said to to have followed a somewhat similar path, with each stage of life setting off a series of (sometimes startlingly unrelated) reactions, one thing is certain: like the uranium midway through a reaction, he is far from exhausted. Good, it might be remarked, for Chico’s, an apparel retail chain where Patel is CIO.

Follow the Neutron
Quite a while ago, it would have hardly looked like the sort of job he would end up in. Or maybe you couldn’t really have said. Consider the variety of things he has been upto in life.

He got himself a degree in nuclear engineering from UCLA in 1976, and started working at the Vandenberg air base in Santa Barbera. Then he became a system analyst, a chapter that was punctuated by a spot of missile testing.
He went on to become a senior scientific programmer at a company that developed and combined control systems. There followed a stint at data acquisition, and software programming.

Then a neutron went slightly astray. He took a sabbatical from work and bought a farm. He “nearly lost his shirt” there. The fact that its pockets were alarmingly lacking in greenbacks didn’t help matters. He headed back to LA with wife, one month old son, and dogs (two), all told. “That was the second time I was bankrupt,” he remarks drily. “The first was in college.”

He got a job, and then started a small company that made microprocessors that measured fuel levels in tanks “upto 10,000ths of an inch”. A foray into the M&A business saw some time as a CEO for a furniture company, and some more with a swimwear company.

When a friend suggested that he check out Chico’s, he thought at first that it was a restaurant of some kind. It wasn’t.

Full Marks at Chico’s
Chico’s—as he found—was a small time operation. Though it did some $300 million in business, it hardly had the infrastructure for communications, quality, procedures and so on. The key, he decided, was to upgrade all systems—financial, merchandise management, the human resource, planning and allocation. He also shifted not only the front line stores, but also the e-commerce platforms from Fort Myers to Georgia. The latter were also overhauled. “All this was done in about 18 months. And we did all this while registering 50% growth and opening 70-90 new stores,” he proclaims with justifiable pride.

The result has been that the $300 million business that he found has seen a growth into a $750 million one. “Understanding the competition, and evaluating the need of IT in differentiating ourselves was key to the product selection strategy,” says Patel. “It wasn’t so much about implementing sexy, enterprise-wide solutions and blowing a bunch of dollars on the exercise.” Growth on such a scale is quite unwieldy, so speedy implementation of the new systems was crucial. “At that time, it wasn’t a question of ROI; it was a question of survival, plain and simple.” Patel’s understanding of the business-side is evident—he focuses every dollar-spend on the bottomline results. “Changing wheels at 60mph are all good phrases, but I’ll take the bottomline numbers and see how IT can influence it,” says Patel.

In the retail arena, there isn’t one all-encompassing ERP solution, he says. So Chico’s opted for the best-of-breed solutions, on which they did a point-to-point integration. He has a team of business analysts to do the project management and implementation, and an IT team nearly 70 in strength.

Soon they acquired the White House Black Market chain, and by then they knew who to keep and who to let go. “We let go of the production, manufacturing and finance people and kept the merchandisers.” Despite the numerous acquisitions, the unfazed Patel has managed to keep his vision intact. “Every business is in it for three things—wealth creation for its people by selling more of its products, ensuring customer satisfaction, and creating benefits for the community. IT should be able to aid the first two issue. Everytime. There is no other view point to it.”

What is important too is that the customer experience has improved, he says. “We are able to create personal customer pages and remind the customer that we have accessories that go well with the purchases she made a couple of months ago.”

Keeping His Shirt On
To judge by how the company is doing, it is doubtful if Patel runs the risk of losing his shirt again. In fact, he is managing more shirts—and other apparel—than he can wear in a lifetime.

And all the footwear, necklaces, hats, bags, watches and pins that go along so well.