Building a career: Simon Post, Carphone Warehouse

"You are the bloke that gets screamed at when things go wrong."

Simon Post’s career began at consultancy Arthur Andersen. As a qualified accountant, his 18-year spell at the firm culminated with running the advanced technology consultancy team.

There followed his first experience as group IT and strategy director. At broadcaster BSkyB, Post led a process transformation project as well as the revamp of the broadcaster’s main IT infrastructure. The rollout of a customer relationship management (CRM) system with billing at its heart is now the subject of an ongoing legal dispute between BSkyB and supplier EDS.

The move from consultancy to leading an IT team required significant adaptation.

“I needed a different leadership style and it took me a while to work that out when I moved from Andersen on to ‘the real world’. "It was quite a steep learning curve,” said Post.

“One thing I learned during my experience as a chief information officer is that you are the bloke that gets screamed at when things go wrong. It is fairly unusual for IT managers to be thanked.”

At Carphone Warehouse, Post’s current projects include the revamp of a CRM billing platform, increased virtualisation, and an update of the enterprise resource planning and electronic point of sale systems.