Carphone Warehouse rings in the changes

Post does not shy away from "big and scary projects"

Carphone Warehouse is preparing for integration with electronics group Best Buy ­ which acquired half the retailer’s mobile phone business for £1.1bn earlier this month.

Future large-scale projects are expected to link to the Best Buy deal, said Simon Post, chief technology officer (CTO) at the mobile retailer.

“Although we are still digesting what the acquisition means in terms of IT infrastructure, I expect some of it will be quite big and scary,” he said.

It is the latest challenge in Post‘s three-year tenure at Carphone Warehouse. He also led the group’s largest software development project to date. The firm’s customer relationship management (CRM) billing platform has just been completed. The system, developed in partnership with outsourcing supplier Patni, is “bigger than any other program developed before” and will go live in the summer.

Post has also set up a number of business change functions which entailed moving analysts, programme and project managers into the business.

“We did that to enable the business divisions to own their work portfolios and deal with the consequences of change, with IT acting as a catalyst or a delivery component. This has undoubtedly changed the nature of IT’s relationship with the business,” he said.

Other changes involved keeping the “crown jewels” in-house ­ such as strategy, architecture and analyst teams ­ and increasing the use of outsourced services for most of the remaining areas of IT, especially software development.

“Strategically, the world that we care about is what we deem to be the intellectual property of the business,” said Post.

“We might supplement teams such as strategy and architecture but will not outsource those because they are a part of the IT operation where we want to
retain control and direction.”

“Deadlines for project delivery and infrastructure deployment are very short and the industry requirements are constantly changing. The IT team should reflect that ­ the goal is to make it more nimble, with more ability to respond quickly,” he said.

“The cost benefit was not the driver to offshore a lot of software development work, but the flexibility and quality of systems delivered.

“As of June this year we will have very minimal internal development capabilities, apart from a small ‘skunkworks’ team playing with innovative ideas.”

Post says the Best Buy integration challenge holds no fears. “That’s fine by me,” he said. “I like big and scary projects.”

Read more about Post's career challenges here.