The Bottom Line Per...Timothy M. Ferrarell Grainger's technology arbiter on why resource planning has his undivided attention

Timothy Ferrarell is as close to a chief information officer as W.W. Grainger has. As senior vice president of enterprise systems, Ferrarell oversees technology spending at the $5 billion industrial- supplies company, along with training (Grainger has more than 16,000 employees) and business process engineering. Those are the three things you need to have your hands around in order to drive effective change, he said recently. Here's a bit more of what he told Baseline.

Q: With the economic environment so tough, which technology projects are you cutting back on?

A: In the next year, we'll actually increase our investment in IT in general. But that largely relates …