QA Fred Smith CEO of the FDX holding company that includes FedEx

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QA Fred Smith CEO of the FDX holding company that includes FedEx

Federal Express Corp. started tracking packages electronically well before the commercial Internet emerged. Now, that infrastructure has been firmly plugged into the Internet, letting customers track shipments in real time and even pull reams of shipping data into their internal systems.

Meantime, the shipping giant is taking those lessons into new territory. It has launched a consulting practice that helps manufacturers tighten their own supply chains and reduce inventory requirements by more closely tracking the movement of supplies and finished products.

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FedEx Delivers On CEO's IT Vision

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Colleagues and outsiders say it was all part of founder Fred Smith's vision, well before the commercial Internet, that "the information about the package would become as important as the package itself."

Smith, now CEO of the FDX holding company that includes FedEx, spoke with editor in chief Robert Preston and managing editor David Joachim at FDX headquarters in Memphis. Excerpts follow:

InternetWeek: How hands on are you when it comes to FDX's Internet strategy?

Smith: I'm very intimately involved with our strategies as they apply to information and telecommunications. I'm not an expert in them, but I think I have a very good understanding of what they can do and the respective trends under way in those fields.

InternetWeek: How vital is CEO involvement in the Internet strategy of a company?

Smith: I think it's vital in almost every industry I know of. I mean, I don't know many industries as well as I do my own, but I am constantly amazed at the profundity of IT and the Internet in almost every field and human endeavor, whether it's medicine, farming, the military, or any other thing that I brush up against. It's just all pervasive, it's changing the face of everything. And those that are not involved in it do so at their peril, in my opinion.

InternetWeek: What advice do you have to IT executives who recognize their own company as an Internet laggard but have trouble convincing upper management that there will be serious consequences to that?

Smith: I guess my advice to them would be to either convince them or get out. They're going to be toast if they don't.

Big businesses, particularly big businesses that are involved in lots of different activities, have a very difficult time dealing with qualitative issues and, I guess as Wayne Gretzky would say, skating to where the puck is going to be rather than where it is now.

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