Net-A-Porter CIO Richard Lloyd-Williams replaced by Betfair's Hugh Fahy

Lloyd-Williams steps down after more than six years and is replaced by Betfair's director of development Fahy

Online fashion retailer Net-a-Porter has hired a new group CIO to take over from Richard Lloyd-Williams.

Lloyd-Williams has stepped down after more than six years at the company, serving as group IT director since 2011.

Betfair's director of development, Hugh Fahy, will take over Lloyd-Williams' role and will oversee IT operations across e-commerce, mobile, deliveries and logistics.

At Betfair, he led a £25m, three-year programme to rebuild its 24/7 trading platform and customer system. He also deployed the service delivery platform behind Vodafone's global mobile web proposition.

Net-a-Porter said that Fahy would be "championing the wider use of agile throughout the business". This chimes with Lloyd-Williams' remarks in January that the firm was hoping to move to a time when it would have daily project updates.

"The agile ways of working fit very well with the fact that we want to be very close to our business users," he told Computing, adding that a six monthly release cycle is tantamount to "a risk to your business".

On his new role, Fahy said that he was excited to have joined a "fast-growing, vibrant organisation, with the mentality of a start-up and the fire power of a global market leader".

"From day one, innovation has been at the core of everything Net-a-Porter does, across technology, retail and publishing. My vision is to build on this approach, ‘doing' IT the 21st century way, by being unafraid to experiment and excel operationally," he stated.

Lloyd-Williams had told Computing that mobility was a key focus for the firm, and that it was just a matter of time before mobile accounted for half of the firm's overall traffic.

Lloyd-Williams also said that the company would be looking to recruit 40 more IT professionals at the firm throughout 2014, adding to the 274 it already had. The firm now has 300 people working within the IT and tech divison, a spokesperson confirmed.