As Senior Director/IT Leader of Information Technology at Dole Fresh Fruit North America, I am responsible for providing consistent and reliable distribution services for our division. Dole’s mission is to provide our customers with safe, healthy, high-quality products and services. To succeed, our business critical systems must be highly available and we need to quickly identify and resolve problems as they arise.
When I assumed this role in March 2008, IT credibility was at an all-time low. Our internal IT user community was very frustrated with the poor stability of the applications supporting our logistics functions including transportation, product tracking and traceability from Dole farms to our distribution centers. System stability was so poor it disrupted our ability to ship products effectively.