Your F500 company in trouble? Here's what you do: Hire one of Jack Welch's disciples from General Electric. That's what supermarket chain Albertsons did and the move is paying off. Larry Johnston, CEO of Albertsons, understands the value of disciplined, intelligence-driven management.

According to a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, the Boise-based company precisely monitors stocking and shopping patterns in its stores. Johnston "is getting the answers through technology like the Shop 'n' Scan devices now being tested at more than 100 Albertsons stores in Chicago and the Dallas-Fort Worth region. The hand-helds, which will soon be available at stores in other cities, allow customers to tally and bag groceries as they shop, eliminating time on checkout lines. They also remind customers about items they may have forgotten. Shoppers who pick up a package of hot dogs, for example, are asked whether they also need pickles or rolls."

The executives from Albertsons can closely watch customer buying habits, which means "everything from how often shoppers buy a bottle of ketchup to what cookies or cosmetics they splurge on most. The information is used to target particular customers for promotions and to track store inventories."

Actionable intelligence, in other words, is providing new ways to drive profitable growth. "Stymied by slow growth in the economy and an inability to raise prices, Mr. Johnston and tech-savvy CEOs at other big companies are getting directly involved in figuring out ways to use technology to extract more profits from their businesses," the Journal states. "These days they are using computers as much to gather information as to improve efficiency. The data they get enable them to cement relationships with their best customers, which translates into higher revenue and profits."

Albertsons spent about $500 million on technology last year, which is expected to have important implications for the company's productivity. "We're now in a completely wireless environment," says Mr. Johnston. He explains that all store directors and department managers will soon have devices that "tell us such things as, 'in 10 minutes, the store will run out of double-AA eggs, so it's time to restock.' [W]e'll be able to replace these out-of-stock items without incurring customer dissatisfaction."

Albertsons is counting on driving greater growth and customer loyalty through such efforts. Indeed, customers who use the Shop 'n' Scan devices are purchasing twice as much on average during each store visit.