CIO50 2023 #3 Simon Kennedy, Foodstuffs North Island

Name: Simon Kennedy
Title: Chief Digital Officer
Company: Foodstuffs North Island
Commenced role: 2019
Reporting line: CEO
Member of the executive team: Yes
Technology function: 310 staff and eight direct reports

In the face of unprecedented challenges, Simon Kennedy, Chief Digital Officer at Foodstuffs North Island (FSNI), and his team showcased remarkable innovation and resilience in 2023.

“After three years dominated by a pandemic, global supply chain challenges and responding to an industry market study, 2023 was meant to be the year when we could focus on running our own race,” says Kennedy. “That included driving a broad strategic agenda that is continuing to build out FSNI’s digital customer footprint and deliver efficiencies that support Foodstuffs’ efforts to address cost-of-living pressure. It turned out that nature had other plans.”

Amidst three consecutive crises in the first quarter of the year – Cyclone Hale, the Auckland floods, and Cyclone Gabrielle – Kennedy’s team not only responded decisively but also transformed challenges into opportunities for the supermarket co-operative, whose owner operators are responsible for the 323 Four Square, New World, PAK’nSAVE and Gilmours stores in the North Island.

Cyclone Hale’s impact on the East Cape in January prompted the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to approach Foodstuffs North Island to coordinate efforts to support communities without road, power or cellular network connectivity.  The IT response included developing a configuration for connecting the payment and essential systems in three East Cape Four Squares using consumer-grade Starlink base stations.  NEMA provided support in the form of a light aircraft to deploy an engineer and Starlink kits to the remote stores.  This not only restored card payment capability in communities where cash was running out, but also doubled up as critical communication hubs.

Accepting that there could be a similar crisis event in the future, the store technology and architecture teams started work on a more robust, scalable and supportable solution using Starlinks.

Meanwhile only a few weeks after Hale, Auckland was hit by its worst flooding on record.  Thousands of homes and businesses were affected, and several people were killed or injured.

“The signature achievement in the recovery effort – both for Foodstuffs North Island in general and the technology team in particular – was the reopening of one of the country’s busiest supermarkets, PAK’nSAVE Wairau Road, just seven days after it had flood water running through the store at waist height in places,” says Kennedy. 

Technical activity included a full rebuild of the “front end” of the store – all of the cabling and componentry supporting the manned lanes, self-checkouts and customer service area.  Old units were stripped out, with new equipment sourced, configured, commissioned and tested in just a few days.

When Cyclone Gabrielle arrived two weeks after the flood events, teams were tired but also well-drilled with respect to crisis communications management and providing creative technical solutions to novel challenges, according to Kennedy.

At the peak of the impact, 74 Foodstuffs North Island stores were affected by Cyclone Gabrielle.  Work on the scaled-up Starlink solution had been progressing steadily, but it was not yet in a deployable state.  In response, a team of approximately 30 experts from across IT operations, security, architecture, enterprise systems and customer digital products convened in a virtual war-room to figure out a solution that could be immediately workable.  The goal was to enable full supermarket operations:  wired and wireless eftpos checkouts, back-end ordering, fuel sales, price and promotion management, and even customer loyalty functionality.  Within days this was deployed in stores.

Since Gabrielle, the team has worked to “harden” the contingency option and it is now a standard component in Foodstuffs North Island’s disaster recovery capability. 

“As such, not only did the response make a material difference to customers’ lives in the worst-affected regions during the run of events in early 2023, but it has also added to New Zealand’s general state of preparedness for any future disaster scenarios,” says Kennedy.

“Innovation in business continuity may not grab the attention and headlines in the way that things like PAK’nSAVE’s AI powered Savey Meal-Bot do, but they are nonetheless critical. Nor did the Foodstuffs team “get lucky” in their ability to deliver a technical crisis response,” adds Kennedy. “A consistent network pattern deployed over many years across all stores, well maintained and supported by a team with the skills and culture to act decisively, were the foundations for the success.”

An inclusive workplace

Foodstuffs’ Diversity & Inclusion programme aims to create an inclusive environment across all dimensions and Kennedy actively sponsors the Foodies Indian Networking Group.

“For me personally it draws on my enduring affection for Indian culture stemming from my years living and working in Mumbai, so I love being part of it,” he says.

Foodstuffs North Island’s technology team has also formed a partnership with Auticon, a for-profit technology consulting company whose team members are all diagnosed autistic. “They’re an award-winning social innovation company who help businesses become a destination for neurodivergent talent. Neurodiversity can be a big competitive advantage and by partnering with Auticon, we’re working to attract talented people from all ends of the spectrum, to join the Foodies team.”

In March 2023 Foodstuffs North Island became Auticon’s first New Zealand customer, placing an Auticon consultant into its strategic enterprise data platform programme.

The 2023 staff engagement survey revealed high scores in the IT team regarding inclusion, with 97% agreeing that the work environment is open and inclusive, and 95% feeling they can bring their whole selves to work.

Influencing at all levels

Foodstuffs North Island CEO Chris Quin said Kennedy is an exemplary leader in the organisation.

“Simon leads and inspires a team who care deeply about the stability and resilience of our technology platforms, who work with us to keep us safe from cyber threats, and who also manage the demands of an extensive strategic programme building digital capability. Simon is an influential leader in our co-op executive team too. Store owner satisfaction with technology (measured annually) has increased and the Board are kept well connected on key topics like cyber, AI and customer digital capability. He has also played a key role in developing our enterprise ways of working as we work towards greater business agility and collaborative governance models.”