Evan Schuman

About

Evan Schuman is the editor of CIOInsight.com's Retail industry center. He has covered retail technology issues since 1988 for Ziff-Davis, CMP Media, IDG, Penton, Lebhar-Friedman, VNU, BusinessWeek, Business 2.0 and United Press International, among others.

Contradictory Charges Rattle Data-Loss Case

During congressional testimony Thursday, executives from bank and credit card companies involved in the largest credit card data loss ever pointed fingers at a new culprit for gaps in security: the auditors who had certified the credit card processing systems as being up to snuff. But in an interview with Ziff Davis Internet News, those […]

Canadian Clothier Gets Personal

In the retail world, selling clothing is mostly about convincing customers what looks good on them. And it certainly helps if the salesperson already knows whats in that customers closet, what her favorite colors are, her price range and her size. Thats why Douglas Deruchie, the CIO of Canadas largest retail clothing chain, is spending […]

Health Care CIO Sees All CIO Roles Changing

As the CIO for a $4.1 billion health care products distribution company, Jim Harding knows only too well the changing face of medical technology today. He sees senior physicians hand-writing prescriptions, penciling notes in patient folders and resisting electronics while the younger physicians embrace PDAs and digital transcription units. But Harding sees the identical trend […]

E-Commerce Performance Often Checks Out During Checkout

In analyzing more than 6,500 data points from each of 22 top e-commerce sites, a new Keynote Systems report found that many sites were too slow, failed too often and often glitched during the crucial checkout period. The sites evaluated were Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Best Buy, Buy.com, Circuit City, Costco, Dell, Crate and Barrel, […]

CIOs Navigate a Restless Sea of Mergers

Jim Harding, CIO for the $4.1 billion health care company Henry Schein Inc., doesnt like taking risks with other peoples money. Especially not the money of the people who control his salary. Its certainly fair to say that Harding is risk-averse, but that doesnt prevent him from considering unproven, cutting-edge technologies such as voice over […]

Oracle Buys ProfitLogic

Trying to strengthen its retail technology position, Oracle Corp. Tuesday purchased ProfitLogic Inc., a small but well-positioned retail software company. The acquisition comes only a few months after Oracles takeover of Retek Inc. Both Retek and ProfitLogic counted some high-profile retail companies among their customers. ProfitLogics 30 customers included Bloomingdales, Macys, JC Penney, Nordstrom, Toys […]

Consumers to E-Commerce Sites: Simplify or We Walk

Corporate Web sites are becoming bloated bandwidth hogs, which should surprise absolutely no one in high tech. But a recent survey is proving that the reckless use of multimedia, animation, JavaScript and other impressive but non-informational offerings is starting to have a negative impact on site traffic. The site visitors pain from overdesigned or overprogrammed […]

eBay Pushes to Be Everything for Its Sellers

Trying to make eBay as attractive and comprehensive as possible for small businesses that represent a huge portion of eBays revenue, the auction company is offering to help customers create their own Web sites to complement their eBay presence. The move comes at a crucial time for eBay. The company this month is celebrating its […]

CVS Shuts Down Site After Security Leak

A major pharmacy chains program designed to let customers view a history of their purchases in e-mail had weak enough security to make it vulnerable to identity thieves, forcing the chain to temporarily shut down its Web site while it reconsidered security. The chain was CVS Corp., which has more than 5,400 stores in the […]

How Safe Are the New Contactless Payment Systems?

As the retail industry starts to embrace contactless payment in a big way—led by $41 billion retailer 7-Eleven and Chase, the nations largest issuer of credit cards—arguments are renewing about just how safe and fraud-proof these cards will be. One key argument is how easily the cards data could be read by a thief, who […]