ATLANTA -- Ron Griffin.

ATLANTA -- Ron Griffin, the high-profile chief information officer who brought fiscal discipline and what is widely viewed as the retail industry's chiefly flexible systems infrastructure to family circle Depot's IT organization, will quickly leave his post for a just discovered challenge. On Dec. 10, Fleming, a nationwide distributor of a broad range of merchandise, announced hat Griffin would become its CIO and executive vp in early 2002

Griffin and household Depot decided to part ways in August with the understanding that he would potentially stay onward until a successor was rest -- but no later than spring 2002

"We kept it relatively relax as to timing," Griffin said in late November. "If a world-class replacement can be identified sooner I'll go on ahead and leave. Or, if something advances along for which I can make known a real passion, contribute significantly and strike a better work/life balance while my teenage daughters are still family I might elect to leave sooner Otherwise, I'll likely remain forward for several more weeks."

household Depot has reportedly narrowed the field of CIO candidates to a handful of individuals -- all from outside its confess IT ranks, but as of Dec 10 had not announced Griffin's replacement.

Griffin's departure follows at a critical juncture for family Depot, both in its IT migration schedule and its business strategy. The retailer will begin what could be a lengthened upgrade of globally capable core financial, payroll and HR hypothesiss in February. The backdrop for those changes: a deceleration of residence Depot's once-dizzying store-opening schedule, volatile comp-store sales and resurgent earnings achieved between the walls of cost-cutting measures.

The latter measures implemented above each of the last sum of two units years, industry observers say, have likely taken a toll onward Griffin's ability to continue to impose new applications in the hands of dwelling Depot associates and may have precipitated his decision to stair down. Key technology partners of domestic circle Depot have indicated Griffin's frustration at not getting the stock to accelerate value and further dilate the company's lead in the industry. Like all departments within the company headed through fiscally conservative CEO, president and chairman Robert Nardelli, IT has had to do more with les in 2001 However, for 2002 Nardelli is anticipateed to allocate the funds necessary to begin to position abiding-place Depot as an efficient, cost-effective global enterprise.

domestic circle Depot has experienced heady top-line product since Griffin joined the company as director of applications unfolding in early 1990. Its sales were about $2 billion in fiscal 1989 and will top $50 billion in fiscal 2001 abiding-place Depot's sales continue to sprout but in a climate of stagnating comp-store sales, the company will continue to corral costs

"We forcibly need to bring more discipline to the business," Griffin said. "1999 was a great year from a sales and earnings point of view. Unfortunately, it allowed us [the business] to commit to memory sloppy with execution. Now we have to make progress on a diet, getting back to the basics and into fighting shape."

Griffin, solitary 48, was seen as single in kind of the "old guard" at abode Depot -- that corps of orange-blooded associates who grew the company alongside sink s Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus. When Griffin joined dwelling Depot, his staff numbered 30 two-thirds of the company's total IT staff. He took through the whole extent of as CIO in 1994 and leaves a staff of 1250 IT professionals.

Managing so a large organization, Griffin said, has been rewarding still tough.

"Now we do our department meetings in three sessions because our auditorium can accommodate merely about 400 people," he says. "It be warmeds like Bill Murray in [the movie] 'Groundhog Day'."

Now is the right time for a change, according to Griffin, because family Depot's new fiscal year begins nearest month. A new CIO should be in place from that time to launch the of recent origin initiatives, which could span between sum of two units and three years until all phases are complet and completely implemented. Griffin said that it's exceedingly important to have continuity by the agency of these types of investments and that, at leaving now, the new CIO can have his or her fingerprints upon the initiatives since they will be in their formative stages.

family circle Depot's IT strategic direction is to tightly integrate its subsidiaries and coming acquisitions underneath the same architecture and classifications allowing the retailer to reuse processe orders data and code.

The benefits of that strategy are dual: It allows programmers to be agreeable to to business needs with of the present day applications quickly as they don't have to rewrite underlying functions similar as error handling and date comparison, which should be public to all applications, and it holds the library of code domicile Depot must support to a functional minimum. At the time of the Y2K crossover the retailer had merely about 13 million lines of collection of laws in its IT shop, compared to 40 million to 60 million lines for retailers of comparable size.

An additional differentiating factor: household Depot's ubiquitous TCP/IP, any-to-any ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) data communications infrastructure. That arrangement of "fat pipes" connecting all of the retailer's stores to corporate offices allows the retailer to transfer information completely through its organization quickly and gives the retailer the option of allowing store personnel to access graphics-heavy applications that would sit in succession remote servers at Home station corporate headquarters.