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TECH PERSPECTIVE @ the EDGE

Customer Experience, Digital Presence &

Analytics Are Key IT Priorities at GGP

An interview with Annette Prater, CIO

Tina Danielsen
Realcomm Staff

echnology’s changing role in the retail arena affects RC: Tell us about your typical day—what is your daily focus?
every aspect of shopping culture. Executives in charge of Prater: A big part of my job is ensuring that my team has what they need
T our ‘malls of the future’ face daily challenges to increase to do their job successfully. I spend time coaching my team, talking
revenue streams and develop new marketing strategies to keep with them about roadblocks or issues, and helping to navigate in the
people engaged, all while conforming to right direction. A priority for me this year is
best environmental practices. Realcomm making sure we have the right teams with
reached out to Annette Prater, CIO at Annette Prater the right talent in the right places.
GGP for her perspective on this topic. CIO, GGP I also spend a lot of time collaborating
Annette has more than 20 years of with our business teams, discussing key pri-
experience in the real estate technol- orities and directions for the year, and ways
ogy industry and a unique point of my team can help enable those capabilities.
view on meeting and surpassing these I attend regular business group meetings
challenges. to understand their operations perspective
and current pain points. I try to walk in their
RC: How large is the IT organization at GGP and what are your shoes as I go through my day to make sure that we’re setting the
responsibilities? priorities right.
Prater: We have 90 employees on our IT team and are responsible for the
strategy and delivery of all technology capabilities across our com- RC: Operational technology (OT) demands versus traditional IT—do
pany. GGP owns over a hundred large shopping centers throughout you wear both hats or is there a separate entity at GGP?
the United States and various urban retail properties such as the Prater: I would say most of us are trying to figure out how that works.
Crown Building on 5th Avenue in New York City. Major centers You must define what’s truly operations and what’s truly IT. For
include our largest - Ala Moana Center in Hawaii, Glendale Galleria example, we have a strong security program at our properties be-
in California, Fashion Show in Las Vegas; and my local favorite, Oak cause these are public places; we have people who are highly skilled
Brook Center outside of Chicago, Illinois. in security with backgrounds in law enforcement. They’ve been
Historically, IT was all about the systems that run the enterprise; utilizing security cameras for surveillance for years and know how
our client-base consisted primarily of our internal customers, our their systems work and what to track. We’re now placing most of this
employees. Now, we also support technologies that enable our hardware on our network, but our security teams are not network
shoppers and many aspects of our company’s building operations. experts. This creates a partnership between us and we have to figure
Everything has now turned into a technology project. In the past, out where the divide is. We also must consider how other teams,
IT was not always directly involved in most real estate activities, such as our energy group, need to be expanding on the same
such as redevelopment, parking improvements, security enhance- network, or our public WiFi, and how all those things connect. These
ments and building operations. Now, we are involved in all of these, partnerships include coaching them on the best way to architect
from the planning phase, through design and build and also the and solution this from a technology perspective, but still allow them
ongoing support - as these capabilities are now connected to our to work with their providers. We need to be able to monitor and
infrastructure. support their systems, as well as the needs that arise from all our
Another major evolution is our focus on our shoppers’ experience. operations teams and our shoppers’ experience.
GGP has made significant investment to provide new amenities to How I align what was historically a traditional IT organization to
our shoppers (public WiFi and digital directories, for instance) and handle all the work that’s coming through on the operational side
launch more sophisticated digital channels and services. The ulti- and our development pipeline is one of my biggest priorities for
mate goal is to be able to better partner with our retailers to deliver this year. GGP has a large redevelopment pipeline; we’re constantly
a holistic shopping experience that blends the best of the physical refreshing and remerchandising our properties. Every development
and digital worlds. project, every major new security implementation, new parking

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