It seemed like a marvelous idea at the time: Grocery shoppers would use an ID card that, combined with the electronic scanners at the checkout line, would tell marketers exactly who bought what…. But six years later, the effort looks as if it could turn out to be one of Citicorp's biggest follies. The POS (for point-of-sale) Information Services unit has spent about $200 million, generated just $20 million in revenue at best and made a mess of relationships with many grocery chains and consumer goods producers.

Other direct marketers … saved millions of dollars in being able to see where Citicorp went wrong.

My biggest mistake was failing to get Data General into the PC business.