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Do You Suppose Wal-Mart's Rollback Concept was Derived by the Marketing Department meeting the IT Department at the Christmas Party?

Nov 13, 2006

The last thing most IT groups ever want to have to do is quickly do a rollback in a system to an older version after a newer version has crashed and burned.  With that in mind, I find it rather ironic that Wal-Mart a company known for its exceptionally competent IT systems, uses a marketing strategy that pitches the 'Rollback.'

How did the marketing team steal that from the IT guys?

Was there a big turf war in Bensonville?

Maybe a poor unpopular schmuck of a marketing guy got stuck with the IT guys during the annual Christmas party and had to listen to all the complaints about Wal-mart System Rollbacks and being the creative person he was decided to make the connection to Rolling back prices.

Maybe this is how it went

IT Guy1, "So we had to roll the entire system back, the prices were all out of wack and the data went haywire.  We had to take the entire system down and do a cold boot, Sam Walton probably was rolling in his grave."

IT Girl 2, "Yeah I couldn't believe how screwed up that implementation was.  We worked to get all those new prices integrated for weeks, tested, reviewed, and re-tested.  And then that fool head of Logistics Systems pushes in his pet project for RLS and doesn't bother to get it approved or alligned with the update."

IT Guy 1, "It was pretty bad that morning, when those prices went out, some customers over paid.  We figured out later that customers must have over paid to a total of $19 million, before we did the rollback."

Marketing Guy, "So you're saying you rollbacked the prices and the customers saved money?"

IT Girl2, "Who are you?"

Marketing Guy, "I'm Jim Sales from the creative department in advertising."

IT Girl2, "How come you got stuck in this side of the convention center for the Christmas party?"

Marketing Guy, "Something screwed up with my badge, someone in IT probably had their wires crossed again.  Those people are always screwing something up.  What do you do?"

IT Girl2, "I . , We both work in IT"

Marketing Guy, "Well, I need to go get a drink, this 'Working in a goldmine song their playing is giving me a headache" 

WooHoo ed by Unknown at 1:07 PM  


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