Stewart

IT Director for Store Systems

BSc Chemistry, University of Exeter
Joined Tesco September 1995

I started in 1995 as a graduate on the Tesco graduate training scheme and I spent 18 months doing that. It covered a variety of technical training and placement in different jobs. There was a lot of learning on the job, as well as spending some time in shops.

Over the course of the last 10 years, I’ve moved around different places in IT from Marketing Systems through to Management Information systems, Supply Chain Systems and I’ve spent most of the last five years in Store Systems. As Director of IT for Retail, most of my days are divided into two or three things. I have to look after the development programmes – so all the new systems that we’re building and rolling out into our shops each year. The programme we run, we spend about £40m of capital building new systems that support savings in the business by taking a lot of the operational costs out of our business. In fact, this year we’re supporting about £30m cost savings throughout the business, through the technology we deliver into shops.

Stepping from what I do day-to-day, it’s about making the right projects land and dealing with the issues of the day around service. A big chunk of the job is looking at how we are going to get the right savings, and the best systems, for next year and the year after that and the year beyond. So really we’re always trying to innovate and move the business process forward.

Another part of the role is working with our suppliers, working with a number of people around the business and trying to create the right relationships - divert suppliers research and development spend for example. Make sure that we have the kind of shared understanding between the Chief Executives of quite a few of the big technology firms and people like myself and the people I work with, so that we can direct them to work on things we find of interest and that will really help our business over the next few years.

The other thing that is quite inspiring on a day-to-day basis is just how good the people are in our business – right through the ranks from the most junior roles in some of the stores right through to senior directors. There’s an attitude and a desire to work with each other to create great relationships and to try really hard actually in order to make things better. And that’s quite inspiring.