The Retail CIO Agenda 2015: Secure And Innovate

In December 2014, Forrester partnered with the National Retail Federation (NRF) for its annual survey of retail CIOs to understand their most important challenges and opportunities for the upcoming year. Additionally, this study explores the efforts of retail CIOs to support an all-touchpoint, unified, and differentiated customer experience that delivers on their brand promise to highly empowered consumers while managing the increasingly sophisticated security threats of a digital world. This report outlines the results of the survey, together with the NRF CIO Council discussion at its January meeting and the retail CIO panel session at the 2015 NRF BIG Show, and compares these results with similar data from the 2013 and 2014 studies. The study also illuminates the development of a new style of retail CIO, one who successfully collaborates with other C-suite executives to drive growth and skillfully manages technology partnerships and costs while defending the organization from sophisticated cyberthreats.