The John Lewis Partnership head of delivery and operations Tom Palmer has left to join rival M&S.
Palmer, who has played a leading role in overhauling John Lewis’s and Waitrose’s websites and upgrading their digital store infrastructure as part of the partnership’s ongoing transformation plan, has been appointed technology delivery director by M&S.
He will be responsible for leading all elements of the digital change at the London-based retailer.
JLP has promoted his replacement from within, promoting Simon Fulford to head of change delivery and technology.
“We’re grateful for Tom’s contribution as part of our technology leadership team, and wish him every success in the future,” said David Hunn, JLP’s chief information officer, confirming Palmer’s departure to The Grocer.
“He created a strong succession of talent so there’s no slowing down of our technology transformation, and I’m delighted to say that Simon Fulford has stepped into the role of head of change delivery & technology.”
During his seven-year spell with the partnership, including one year as head of delivery at Waitrose, Palmer has overseen the scaling of several key technology projects, including the onboarding of AWS and Google Cloud services across stores.
The John Lewis Partnership has made significant progress upgrading its core IT systems in order to improve availability, service and general operations as part of its transformation plan over the past couple of years.
Waitrose retail director Tina Mitchell has referred to the work as akin to “open heart surgery”.
“We have some quite old heritage systems which we are slowly but surely removing and modernising. It’s given us a huge boost in terms of availability, consistency and showing up,” Mitchell told The Grocer in March.
JLP has also been working to better integrate the previously separate John Lewis and Waitrose infrastructure.
M&S is in the middle of its own digital upgrade. It’s been hastened following the catastrophic cyberattack in April, which crippled its online deliveries and shut customers out of its Sparks loyalty programme.
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