The Warehouse Group creates new executive role to drive 'crucial' IT transformation

The Warehouse Group has created a chief transformation officer (CTO) position in its executive team as a part of its strategy to "fix the retail fundamentals" and invest in its digital future.

The company's CEO Nick Grayston says it's crucial that The Warehouse Group transforms its business to respond to the local and global retail industry's disruption and intense competition.

He says, "Our strategy is to fix the retail fundamentals and invest in our digital future to enable us to transform our business from that of legacy retailer to a data-driven, customer-focused organisation."

The company has appointed Scott Newton to the newly created role. Newton will oversee the group's transformation and will be responsible for helping reduce complexity, drive performance improvements and strengthen the organisation's health and capabilities.

Grayston adds, "Scott's experience will enable us to accelerate the pace of our transformation and focus on efficient execution.

Newton brings a wealth of general management, finance, and transformation expertise to The Warehouse Group with an extensive track record in driving sustained transformational change across a number of New Zealand and international businesses.

Prior to joining The Warehouse Group, Newton was at Chorus where he was the general manager of strategy and business operations and was responsible for establishing the case for change and aligning on a structure to drive a broader Transformation Programme.

Prior to Chorus, he spent time in transformation roles driving cost, capital, revenue growth and organisational improvement initiatives for both Fletcher Building and Spark.

Newton started in his new role at The Warehouse Group on 7 February this year.