By Karen J. Bannan

The Internet makes our big world a lot smaller. The Web, e-mail and other online connectivity tools make access to millions of potential customers as easy as clicking a mouse. But for CIOs, this ever-widening world creates new challenges that range from technological—how do you implement security measures around the world, for example —to organizational. To learn how CIOs are rising to these challenges, Smart Enterprise asked five top IT executives, "What are you doing to go global?' What is the most important IT project you're currently working on, and what benefits do you hope to gain from this project?" Here are their answers.

DAVID KAUFMAN | SENIOR VP AND CIO
ARAMARK Corp.

ARAMARK's global IT strategy comes under an umbrella program we call Single Platform. This program focuses on under-standing business best practices from around the world and then determining how they can be applied consistently.

Single Platform comprises several initiatives, including building, support-ing and refining a resilient infrastructure to centralize many of our key business applications.

Since food is our main business, sup-porting and refining our global network to support standards for operational excellence and consistency in food-production practices is paramount. That's why we're working on integrating our global supply chain systems to maximize our purchasing prowess and further enhance food safety best practices.We're also developing multi-dimensional data warehouses for more comprehensive views of revenue and profitability. Combined, these strategies will help us remain global without adding additional complexity or work for our IT team.