How retail and logistics CIOs are tackling tech transformation

To say it’s been a chal­leng­ing cou­ple of years for retail and logis­tics CIOs would be an under­state­ment. Online sales in the UK jumped up by 15% between March 2020 and Feb­ru­ary 2021 as peo­ple turned to ecom­merce dur­ing coro­n­avirus lock­downs and both retail­ers and logis­tics firms leant heav­i­ly on their tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers to meet con­sumers’ demands for goods.

Com­ing out of the pan­dem­ic, there is now a skills short­age to grap­ple with. And as firms embrace emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and com­pete to hire tal­ent, salaries for some roles have rock­et­ed. These were all top­ics cov­ered at length in a recent round­table dis­cus­sion spon­sored by spe­cial­ist IT recruiter and project ser­vices provider Com­put­er Futures. 

As a result of this fast-mov­ing change, the CIO role has been seri­ous­ly ele­vat­ed. “We were leaned upon in a way that we could have only ever dreamed of … We have, at last, been trust­ed and believed as a trans­for­ma­tion agent rather than an IT direc­tor, which is a pos­i­tive thing,” says Rich Cor­bridge, CIO of Boots UK and Ire­land. 

The unre­lent­ing focus on tech­nol­o­gy has fos­tered new ways of work­ing and made CIOs and their teams more proac­tive with­in a busi­ness. Deliv­ery com­pa­ny Yodel now uses agile ways of work­ing, with CIO Helen Mar­shall cre­at­ing the rel­e­vant mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary teams – known as squads – and relent­less­ly pri­ori­tis­ing to deliv­er busi­ness val­ue at pace. “We’re able to move much faster,” Mar­shall says. 

For the round­table par­tic­i­pants, there has also been a shift towards a prod­uct-ori­en­tat­ed oper­at­ing mod­el, a way of work­ing that focus­es on a par­tic­u­lar busi­ness capa­bil­i­ty rather than an IT sys­tem, with teams work­ing togeth­er to deliv­er a solu­tion to an inter­nal or exter­nal client. At Yodel, this means its apps can inte­grate, so, for exam­ple, a dri­ver can use a tai­lored app to com­mu­ni­cate with a cus­tomer for direc­tions to their address, via that customer’s app.

Inte­gra­tion has also become more impor­tant at Boots. The pan­dem­ic helped to blur the line between brick-and-mor­tar stores and the retailer’s ecom­merce site, which had pre­vi­ous­ly been seen as a com­peti­tor to its phys­i­cal shops. “It’s fas­ci­nat­ing – the way that peo­ple in our stores see tech­nol­o­gy. It has become just anoth­er part of what they do, rather than it becom­ing this com­peti­tor, this thing that’s going to take their jobs in the future,” Cor­bridge states.

Keep­ing up with con­stant­ly evolv­ing con­sumer trends and your tech needs means care­ful­ly man­ag­ing your tal­ent sup­ply, says Faith Doher­ty, senior busi­ness man­ag­er at Com­put­er Futures. “A big chal­lenge in deliv­er­ing the kind of projects and pro­grammes of work … is being able to pre­pare your­selves and your teams to have the right peo­ple to deliv­er them at the right time,” she says. 

Remote work­ing has widened the tal­ent pool for logis­tics com­pa­ny Win­can­ton, which has its head office in Wilt­shire. As for many firms, the pan­dem­ic proved that large projects can be done by a dis­trib­uted work­force – Win­can­ton deliv­ered sig­nif­i­cant large scale sys­tems, includ­ing a trans­port man­age­ment sys­tem and a cloud enter­prise resource plan­ning (ERP) plat­form, remote­ly dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, says its CIO Richard Gif­ford. 

Hir­ing from more diverse tal­ent pools is also some­thing the firm is focus­ing on. “We actu­al­ly set our­selves KPIs from the board, the exec team and then down through the organ­i­sa­tion … when we’re look­ing at form­ing teams, at recruit­ment, all the way through, it’s a very pos­i­tive thing that we’re doing. So, it’s not just hap­pen­ing, we’re design­ing it, and we’re active­ly on it,” he states.

Hybrid and remote work­ing helps dif­fer­ent types of peo­ple to thrive, a trend Doher­ty has seen with­in Com­put­er Futures as well as with clients. The stereo­typ­i­cal view of a white male sit­ting at a board­room table is now on its way out, she says. “It’s actu­al­ly peo­ple sit­ting in their homes, jug­gling work and life, from dif­fer­ent types of back­grounds, from dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try.” 

But, while tal­ent has become more acces­si­ble in some ways, oth­er hir­ing chal­lenges remain, with the sup­ply of tech work­ers not meet­ing the demand. “One of the things we’ve tried to do dif­fer­ent­ly is to be more gener­ic in the roles we bring in and then allow them to devel­op into spe­cif­ic roles,” says Cor­bridge, adding that solu­tion archi­tects are par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to find. 

Anoth­er way to attract tal­ent is to show­case what’s on offer, says Mar­shall. “At Yodel, we focus our invest­ment on tech­nol­o­gy that deliv­ers val­ue to our clients, con­sumers, and col­leagues. Our IT col­leagues have fos­tered a great team, work­ing to deliv­er tech­nol­o­gy that pro­vides cut­ting edge solu­tions. It’s an excit­ing prospect for new tal­ent to be able to work so dynam­i­cal­ly.” 

Retain­ing staff is a key con­cern, espe­cial­ly with the so-called ‘great res­ig­na­tion’ under­way in most sec­tors. In IT, just 29% of work­ers have a “high intent” to stay in their roles, accord­ing to a Gart­ner sur­vey, and keep­ing peo­ple is a focus for all of the round­table par­tic­i­pants. “We’re very con­scious now of bring­ing peo­ple in and imme­di­ate­ly mak­ing sure that for those peo­ple, there is a career path that’s defined,” says Wincanton’s Gif­ford. 

Indeed, reten­tion at all lev­els is prov­ing tricky. “Devel­op­ing col­leagues has always been an impor­tant focus for us here at Yodel and it’s now more impor­tant than ever to ensure these oppor­tu­ni­ties are pro­vid­ed, allow­ing col­leagues to upskill and get pro­mot­ed in order to grow them in the busi­ness,” explains Mar­shall at Yodel. 

A com­mon theme across recruit­ment in the STEM indus­tries is how to keep hold of peo­ple, Doher­ty con­firms, and for­ward-look­ing busi­ness­es are look­ing proac­tive­ly at how to man­age demand, she adds. “They’re look­ing at those pro­grammes that are being bid for, or are being mapped out at an exec lev­el, and peo­ple are say­ing ‘where are my gaps over the next 12 to 24 months? And how can we part­ner with peo­ple that can help me get that work done?’” 

What’s next for CIOs? The pace of change is only going to increase, says Yodel’s Mar­shall. “We’ve seen dra­mat­ic changes in how we use tech­nol­o­gy in the last few years and this trend looks set to accel­er­ate even fur­ther into the future. The next step for us is to build on our util­i­sa­tion of pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics to sup­port the con­tin­ued devel­op­ment of the busi­ness, whilst at the same time evolv­ing our employ­ee propo­si­tion to attract and retain the best tal­ent,” she says. 

At Win­can­ton, the CIO role is “less about the tech,” says Gif­ford. “It’s much more about the busi­ness val­ue that that’s going to bring and ensur­ing we unlock busi­ness process and inno­v­a­tive areas of val­ue … that’s all about build­ing a great team.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it computerfutures.com