博柏利变身高科技时尚偶像

    艾伦茨常常说到的一句话是，公司的年轻员工就是向她解释当今数码世界的“翻译”。艾伦茨自己也非常乐意接受新事物，她经常从自己的三个孩子那里发现现代科技的最新进展。她也是公司里第一批用上苹果iPad的人之一，而且她还给各个办公室以及所有的主要商店都配备了这种设备。（因此博柏利开发了一个iPad皮套产品也就不足为奇了。）最近《财富》（Fortune）杂志来到博柏利的总部进行采访，在采访过程中，艾伦茨通过Skype与印第安那波尔州立大学（Indiana's Ball State University）的一些博柏利奖学金获得者通话——这座大学也是艾伦茨的母校。她让学生们阅读一篇关于社交游戏公司Zynga首席执行官马克•平卡斯的文章，还说如果他们搜索不到这篇文章的话，可以在她的Twitter上找到相关链接。

    科技在博柏利公司的员工沟通方面也扮演着重要角色。艾伦茨和首席创意官克里斯托弗•贝利会定期对员工进行网络广播，最近他们决定将频率从每季度一次提高到每月一次。博柏利的办公室里还播放着艾伦茨在亚特兰大的一次领导力会议上的讲话。企业资源高级副总裁雷格•辛达尔打趣道：“我们把自己拍自己的样子拍了下来。”

    博柏利已经从诺基亚（Nokia）和微软（Microsoft）的Xbox部门挖来了不少技术人才。但它在科技使用上真正的成功之处在于它几乎在从时装秀到员工沟通的每件事上都应用了有机的数字化方法。首席创意官贝利称：“‘我们记得做数字化了吗？’这种问题永远不该出现。”

    博柏利公司使用了Salesforce.com的“聊天”平台——你可以把这个平台当成一个企业版的Facebook。艾伦茨称，这个工具已经成功地加速了整个企业的沟通。比如有些体格较大的男性顾客觉得某款西装不大合身，博柏利商店里的销售团队是第一批注意到这个现象的人。博柏利总部通过“博柏利聊天”平台得知了这件事，然后设计团队在针对这个问题做出了相应的调整。

    与此同时，博柏利也在充实自身的企业软件系统，艾伦茨认为这最终能改善顾客的体验。SAP技术的全球集成已经快完成了。另外在五月中旬的SAP商业同略会上，艾伦茨和SAP的共同CEO孟鼎铭宣布，双方将合作开发一款应用程序，它能将博柏利的所有产品和顾客信息都集成在销售人员的手上，使他们只需查找一个顾客的姓名，就可以看见这个顾客的相关信息，包括他的全球交易史，以及与博柏利相关的社交媒体活动。

    企业软件可能没有奢侈品那么光鲜夺目，不过博柏利却铁定了心思要为这些看似平凡的“后勤”系统投资。艾伦茨表示，博柏利已经向科技伙伴开放，成为一个各种研发活动的实验室，以使公司的运营方面做到像公司的销售情况一样令人羡慕。执行副总裁兼首席财务官史黛丝•卡特莱特说：“由于这是奢侈品行业，过去人们往往觉得创意对这个行业才是最重要的，因而投资主要流向了那个方向，而不是流向后端。不过现在我们已经做得非常平衡了。”

    Ahrendts likes to say that the members of her young employee base act as her interpreters for today's digital world. But Ahrendts herself is an early adopter, often discovering the latest tech advancements through her three children. She was one of the first in the office to acquire an Apple (AAPL) iPad, and she has since outfitted staff across corporate offices and all mainline stores with the device. (Not surprisingly, Burberry makes a line of iPad cases.) During a recent visit by Fortune to Burberry's offices, Ahrendts Skyped with a group of Burberry scholarship winners at Indiana's Ball State University, her alma mater. She told the students to check out an article about Zynga (ZNGA) CEO Mark Pincus. If they had trouble tracking it down, they could find the link on her Twitter feed.

    Technology plays heavily into employee communications too. Ahrendts and chief creative officer Christopher Bailey do regular webcasts for her workforce, and recently decided to up the frequency from quarterly to monthly. Her talk at a leadership conference in Atlanta in May was streamed at Burberry's offices. Reg Sindall, executive vice president of corporate resources, jokes that at Burberry "we film ourselves filming ourselves filming ourselves."

    Burberry's real tech cred (it has attracted employees from Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox division) comes from its organically digital approach to virtually everything it now does, from fashion shows to employee communications. "It should never be on a list: 'Have we remembered to do the digital thing?'" says Bailey.

    The company uses Salesforce's Chatter platform -- think of it as a corporate version of Facebook -- a tool that Ahrendts says has accelerated communication throughout the entire operation. Sales teams in the stores, for example, were among the first to notice that larger male customers were unhappy with the fit of one style of suit. Headquarters heard about it via "Burberry Chat," and the design team made some alterations.

    The company is also beefing up its corporate software systems, which, Ahrendts says, will ultimately result in better customer experiences. A global integration of SAP technology is almost complete, and at SAP's Sapphire Now conference in mid- May, Ahrendts and SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott announced a new, jointly developed app that will put all of Burberry's product and customer information into sales associates' hands, allowing them to look up a customer's name to see a profile that includes global transaction history and social media activity as it relates to Burberry.

    Enterprise software may not be glamorous, but the luxury retailer is committed to investing in such seemingly mundane "back office" systems. Ahrendts says she's opened Burberry up to its tech partners as an R&D lab of sorts, in an effort to make the operations side of the business as admired as the front end. "Because this is luxury and where people have grown up, in the past people have thought that perhaps creative needs to lead the way, and therefore what investment there is needs to go there, rather than into the back end," says EVP and CFO Stacey Cartwright. "We're very balanced."