Marks & Spencer has announced that it has appointed Tesco's chief information officer, Carl Dawson, as IT director. Marks & Spencer's outgoing IT director, Darrell Stein, announced that he would be leaving next month to join Reckitt Benckiser.
Marks & Spencer has yet to confirm when Dawson will assume the role, and head of business solutions for its online business, Clifford Cohen, will act as IT director in the interim. Dawson will report to the chief financial officer, who has yet to be appointed, after Alan Stewart left to join Tesco shortly after a tough AGM.
One of the major jobs that Dawson will have to take on is winning customers over to the revamped website, on which M&S spent £150 million. At the AGM, M&S revealed that there had been an 8-per-cent fall in online sales. M&S homewares were hit particularly hard, as about a third of these sales are online.
Customers are finding it difficult to navigate the new-look website and also had to re-register to use it. Only about half of the 6 million shoppers who used M&S's old website have registered for the new site.
At the time, Stewart compared the problems to being "a bit like going to the supermarket for milk -- they've moved it, and you can't find it immediately," and added that the company expected early teething troubles and that the website would be back on track before the busy Christmas periods of November and December.
Dawson will certainly have his work cut out for him.
© 2014 European Supermarket Magazine by Nicole Gernon
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