Grocery giant Asda makes senior retail technology appointments as it moves away from Walmart days

Asda has announced the appointments of Rob Barnes and Adrian Berry to its technology team to oversee the oversee the development of its new strategy and separation from Walmart.

Barnes is currently Chief Technology Officer at Marks and Spencer and will join Asda early next year as Delivery Director.

He will be responsible for the design, build and delivery of all colleague and customer facing technology and will also act as Deputy Chief Information Officer.

Prior to joining M&S, he was MD of Accenture’s Retail Tech Advisory business, where he managed technology delivery for a range of clients including Dyson, Clarks, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Best Buy.

When one of our customers couldn't come in for her shopping as she'd broken her foot Darren from Asda Belfast Shore Road took the groceries to her house himself after finishing his shift. Darren said: "I was just glad to be able to help in her time of need." pic.twitter.com/9UJKGHPNoG

— Asda (@asda) September 11, 2023

Berry also joins in the new year as Chief Technology Officer and will have responsibility for all core technology teams including service delivery, infrastructure, application engineering, platform teams and enterprise technology services.

He most recently served as CIO at Aston Barclay Vehicle Remarketing, and prior to that as UK CIO and Group CTO at Lowell Credit Management.

Carl Dawson, Asda’s CIO, says: “We are delighted to welcome Rob and Adrian to the Asda Technology team. With their combined experience,I am confident that we will now have the necessary expertise and experience to build best in class retail technology systems as we continue our separation journey from Walmart.” 

Attensi

Asda is currently testing out gamified learning for those employees getting to grips with its new checkout system.

This has been taking place at the grocery giant’s Goldthorpe store in Rotherham, in partnership with Attensi.

In a LinkedIn post, Bruce Gibb, Learning Design Manager at Asda, said: “Gamified learning in Asda is live! Delighted to have landed new checkout training in line with our new checkout system in the pilot store this weekend.”

He added: “This has been a project I have been lead on since taking my Learning Design role on and it’s fantastic to see it come to life.”

“The reaction from the Goldthorpe store leadership and colleagues has been fantastic, they transitioned from the games to the live environment effortlessly and the competitive nature of the solution engaged a desire to practice and repeat, driving confidence and capability.”

“A massive thank you to Owen Smith (Senior Manager Learning - Transformation at Asda) for his leadership, support and guidance while I’ve worked on this.”