John Puckett

Christmas 1999 was coming, and CIO John Puckett had a mere 16 weeks to build a more robust, second-generation e-commerce infrastructure for Toysmart.com Inc. in Waltham, Mass.

It had to offer the best customer experience on the Web, with order placement, fulfillment, shipment, billing, networks and customer care. And it had to securely handle a 20-fold increase in business over 1998.

“As 99% of the retail business is conducted in the last 70 days of the year, it was critical for the entire electronic infrastructure to be ready for the holiday season tsunami,” he says.

With limited resources, the pressure on the information technology staff was immense; late nights and double shifts were the norm, Puckett says. But there were no resources to hire additional staff.

Puckett’s solution was to have a clear plan, laser-sharp focus – and turn it over to his staff. The result was that the IT staff itself came up with major breakthroughs in design, process and methodology.

“I resisted directing activities and focused on being a coach in this time of pressure,” he says. “In the weeks that followed, I continued to motivate our team.”

How? Puckett says he motivated by “looking for ways to make new ideas work, taking pride in our victories, maintaining that positive attitude when the going got tough, supporting decisions made – right or wrong – (and) recognizing team and individual efforts.”

John Burke, Toysmart’s director of network services and operations, says he was struck by Puckett’s ability to create a team and act as its coach. “As a start-up, resources were tight,” Burke says. “And we were burning the candle at both ends.”

Puckett says the team’s progress was “nothing short of a miracle,” but there was still one stumbling block: The site load was greater than expected, and Toysmart.com needed more capacity at once.

Given this predicament, the IT staff suggested using a new, untested Web-based product from ArrowPoint Communications Inc. in Acton, Mass.

“To cut a long story short, the product was installed on time, it effectively doubled our capacity, eliminated some latency problems, and gave us instantaneous site configuration flexibility and incredible agility,” Puckett says.

“This was a situation where we had our back to the wall,” he adds. But teamwork, leadership and some calculated risks helped Toysmart.com earn a No. 1 rating among online toysellers for the holiday season, Puckett says proudly.