Interview: Julian Burnett, Sainsbury's CTO

Julian Burnett sees himself as being in the third stage of his career

Sainsbury’s chief technology officer (CTO) Julian Burnett sees himself as being in the third stage of his career. The first saw him working as a computer modeller for BT, after he won a place on its graduate trainee scheme, before moving into similar roles in the banking sector. The second stage saw him working for IT services providers Capgemini and CSC, focusing on business technology consulting and IT strategy advisory services. Now he is back working for a major IT user, and they do not come much bigger than the UK’s second-largest supermarket chain.

Burnett was drafted in by the company IT director Rob Fraser four months ago, and the pair are now both heavily involved in the company’s IT transform­ation project, called Accelerate, which has seen the retailer’s IT budget increase by 30 per cent year on year.

In November 2009, the 550-strong IT department was divided into four teams: business change, tech planning, delivery and operations.

Burnett’s primary responsibility is to manage the tech planning team. Like his C-level colleagues in the department, he works with two “heads of change”. One oversees strategy for Sainsbury’s front-end systems, including point-of-sale, e-commerce and logistics operations, while the other takes care of the back end, such as trading, HR, finance, procurement and property.

The IT department is organised according to a straightforward supply/demand model, designed to bring IT closer to the business.

The Accelerate programme has just entered its third and most crucial phase, which will see the IT department move to a services model of provision.

The overarching goal is to leverage the company’s IT capacity to support expansion. “We are an extremely ambitious company with 20 store openings planned over the coming months,” says Burnett.

But while the firm seeks to grow, its list of IT suppliers is go­ing to be shortened by at least 50 per cent, according to Burnett.

Oiling the supply chain
Sainsbury’s has just begun deploying a new supply chain system that it says will reduce food waste by 15 per cent by more accurately predicting consumer buying patterns based on such factors as the weather. The firm also expects the technology to help it reduce CO2 emissions by about 1,400 tonnes a year.

The system comprises a number of components, with the heart developed in Java. It will run on Linux and have a high-performance Oracle back end.

“We haven’t concluded discussions on which underpinning infrastructure we will use, but it will be proprietary and give us a huge competitive advantage. It will be our crown jewels,” Burnett says. The new system, provisionally named RTSC, will be implemented in phases over the next 12 months.

Meanwhile, the company has deployed new warehouse management technology from US firm RedPrairie, kitting out staff at its 23 depots with handheld devices that hold information on location storage for each case of goods, and delivery instructions.

In-store innovation
Last month, the company announced a multimillion-pound project to roll out self-checkout technology to a further 330 stores, following a successful implementation across 240 stores last year. The systems include new bi-optic scanners that should help to speed up transactions by 12 per cent, according to the company. The technology can also print double-sided receipts, which Sainsbury’s claims cuts the amount of paper used by more than 350 tonnes a year.

Capitalising on loyalty
Sainsbury’s is also working more closely with Loyalty Management Group, the firm that runs the Nectar scheme, on new customer loyalty initiatives. One of the most successful to date has been the Coupon at Till offer where customers are issued with a number of personalised coupons at point of sale based on insights into customer buying patterns gained from Nectar information.

“The information we have, and share with Nectar, is not individual customer information; it’s the aggregation of information,” explains Burnett. However, customers do not even need a Nectar card to benefit from this service – technology in the till will analyse an individual basket and produce coupons based on this.

Customer information gathered through the Nectar scheme is used by Sainsbury’s in its never-ending quest to build greater intelligence into its business operations. Burnett cites consumer products giant Proctor & Gamble as a constant source of inspiration in the way it exploits information. “They have gone from managing their information to using it to provide advanced intelligence and insight into their business operations,” he says.