Benchmark Awards: Domino's, McDonalds or RedBalloon?

Technology leaders from Domino's Pizza, McDonalds and RedBalloon have been chosen as finalists in the retail category for the CIO Benchmark Awards.

One will be chosen as Retail CIO of the Year in 2012 at the Benchmark Awards ceremony on February 26, and all three are in the running to be crowned Australia's 'CIO of the Year'.

Australian CIOs and senior IT managers are welcome to cast their vote on our CIO-only LinkedIn Group prior to close of business on February 1, 2013.

Today we take a look at the submissions in the retail sector.

Not surprisingly, most of the submissions in the retail category involved either data analytics or cloud computing.

The savings from retail use of public cloud were notable, as were several other benefits such as enhanced recovery.

The submissions we received were a marked contrast to the chronic technology underinvestment we’ve otherwise seen in the Australian retail landscape — it's good to see some challengers making a fist of it.

We have recorded our judges notes on video to aid the voting process:

RETAIL CIO OF THE YEAR: 



The finalists:

"Substantial, calculable savings from move to a hosted model."

"Domino's has demonstrated that it can now bring a new range of mobile and social offerings to market faster."

"A big and relatively risky bet on the cloud that appears to have paid off."

"A solid implementation of an employee and manager self-service portal."

"Known for robust training programs, it's fitting McDonald's took these processes to the digital world with some gusto."

"Given McDonalds' Gen Y workforce, I'm only surprised it didn't deploy more of a social networking component."