One of the world’s largest supermarkets has shaken up its executive team with major changes as its Head of Property is set to leave at the end of the month.
Karen Hubbard, Asda’s Executive Director for Property and Multichannel, is to leave the business at the end of the month. She joined the supermarket five years ago and has played a major role in the formulation of strategy across formats, channels and property.
Hubbard had been exploring taking on an international role at Walmart but has decided not to pursue this for personal reasons.
In a memo to staff, CEO Andy Clarke outlined a string of changes to Asda's senior team designed to make accountabilities clearer and speed up decision making. All the changes came into effect on April 7th.
Asda's recently appointed CFO Alex Russo has taken on the property and market evaluation elements of Hubbard's role in a move aimed at improving the management of the property pipeline and future site selection / acquisition decisions.
Asda has promoted its Chief Marketing Officer Stephen Smith to the newly created role of Chief Customer Officer as part of a reorganisation of the retailer’s executive team.
In his new role, Smith will continue to be responsible for marketing but has also taken on responsibility for format development. He has taken over from Karen Hubbard, who’s role as executive property director will no longer exist, with her property responsibilities being folded into the finance division.
Asda believes this change will help it to become a more customer centric and omnichannel business, and means that all store "look and feel" decisions have a single owner.
Andy Clarke said: “The movement of ‘format development’ accountabilities across to ‘customer and marketing’ will enable us to move closer to being a truly customer centric omni-channel business, in which all growth strategy and proposition-related decisions will be made with the customer at heart.”
The changes, which took effect on 7 April, are aimed at ensuring Asda is “fit for future” and can make decisions faster in order to keep up with changes in the grocery market. Asda is also making around 200 staff at its head office and George HQ redundant.
An Asda spokesperson said the reorganisation is aimed at “simplifying processes” and making the business run more efficiently, making sure that ”marketers market and buyers buy”.
Clarke said the reorganisation is aimed at creating fewer, bigger roles across all levels of the business. The changes are expected to result in “multimillion pound savings” for the retailer.