US retail giant promotes Brits to CIO and COO roles

Retail experts cross the pond to expand Best Buy corporation

Best Buy, the American electronics retail giant that owns The Carphone Warehouse chain in Europe has promoted two leading British executives to the roles of CIO and chief operating officer (COO). Neville Roberts, a former Accenture consultant, will take over as CIO across the entire company and Scott Wheway, whose career includes chemists Boots, has become the COO.

Roberts joined Best Buy last January as CIO of the Best Buy International arm, whilst overall CIO responsibility was held by Robert Willett, who was CEO and CIO jointly. As CIO Roberts will report to Willett, who remains CEO.

Roberts, 41, was at Accenture for 18 years in its Global Retail Practice and was a leading expert on Oracle Retail. During his career with the consultancy he worked with Wal-Mart and its UK supermarket brand Asda, WHSmith, Argos and Tesco on projects such as supply chain, e-commerce, multi-channel delivery, CRM and outsourcing.

Scott Wheway joins Best Buy as COO from Alliance Boots where he was managing director. Prior to Boots Wheway was with supermarket chain Tesco for 20 years and he is also a non-executive director of insurance giants Aviva.
Minneapolis based Best Buy, which has 155,000 employees in stores across the US, Canada, Mexico and Europe, said the changes in its management structure would "strengthen its information technology team worldwide and enhance its expanding international operations."



Email Updates

CIO Newsletters: Expert insight, advice and tools for technology, business, leadership and the CIO career.


Email this article to a friend or colleague:


PLEASE NOTE: Your name is used only to let the recipient know who sent the story, and in case of transmission error. Both your name and the recipient's name and address will not be used for any other purpose.


CIO White Papers

5 steps to successful IT consolidation and virtualisation

There are many benefits associated with IT consolidation and virtualisation, but it can be a very challenging process. It is important to consider all components of an IT consolidation project before embarking on it.

Anatomy of insider risk

Learn the four steps to minimizing the risk from negligent insiders.

The foundation for wireless without compromise

In this white paper, we have discussed the three phases of WLAN architecture evolution i.e. WLAN for convenience (limited adoption), WLAN as the network of choice (instead of wires) and WLAN for business critical applications. We have also compared legacy microcell architectures to Meru’s Air Traffic Control™ architecture and provided guidance on selection of the right architecture.

Mobile and flexible working for efficiency and effectiveness

The technology of mobile and flexible working has much to offer, providing all that is needed for remote access, effective data sharing and the ability to work in a time efficient way from a variety of ‘desktop productivity’ endpoint devices.


CIO UK - Business - Technology - Leadership

Media Usage Survey - Win an iPad

How do you view and share technology related content and information. Tell us in our 2010 Media Usage Survey and you could win an iPad.

Complete the survey here

Enterprise Cloud Computing

Every week, we present new questions and issues for discussion and debate. Follow us and join in!

Join the community

Enterprise Intelligence

Exploring challenges, solutions and requirements for business intelligence and financial management. A new resource centre hosted on CIO UK, sponsored by SAP.

Visit

SAP



* *