Confidential mandate

Adviser to Chief Information Officer — Omnichannel Retail

Planned Hiring / New

A national retailer needs a CIO adviser to challenge the technology sequence for unified inventory, customer identity and store fulfilment before a major omnichannel investment.

The mandate

The investment committee cannot agree whether unified inventory, customer identity or store execution should lead the omnichannel sequence. Each programme has dependencies on the others, yet the proposed transformation funds all three before operating readiness is demonstrated.

Two monthly days include an architecture-operating review and committee attendance. A vendor selection or release-gate pack receives acknowledgement within two business days and a response within five.

The nine-month appointment ends at target-roadmap approval and first release gate. A three-month renewal is available by joint CIO and committee-chair decision; the adviser has no line authority, programme-director duty, procurement vote or executive responsibility.

Three non-conflicting appointments may run alongside this role. Work for a competing national retailer, commerce-platform vendor, systems integrator or loyalty provider must be disclosed, and supplier referral fees are prohibited.

Why the board wants this voice

Digital teams optimise journeys while stores and merchandising confront the operational exceptions. The board wants a technology operator who has delivered unified commerce without treating it as a software installation. That experience is missing inside the committee.

What you will own

Test roadmap dependencies across inventory accuracy, promise logic, order orchestration and store execution.
Challenge identity designs that create service friction or weak consent evidence.
Press management to quantify store workload and exception handling for each journey.
Shape gates around inventory reliability, adoption, fulfilment quality and rollback.
Examine platform proposals for data ownership, extensibility and peak resilience.
Guide debate on where process standardisation must precede technology spend.
Advise the committee on a sequence that delivers provable customer and margin value.

Candidate qualifications

22–28 years in retail CIO, digital or enterprise-technology leadership.
Direct responsibility for a national omnichannel programme spanning stores and e-commerce.
Evidence of improving inventory availability and fulfilment economics through operating change.
Knowledge of order management, customer identity, commerce and retail integration architecture.
Board-investment experience on multi-year retail transformation.
Independence from vendors and integrators likely to bid.

Non-negotiables

Two Mumbai days monthly through roadmap and first release gate.
Five-business-day response on complete vendor or release packs.
Disclosure of retailer, platform, integrator and loyalty-provider relationships.
No supplier commission, executive authority or procurement vote.

49 words maximum. Which omnichannel sequence did you change, and what store or inventory evidence drove the revision?
49 words maximum. Which retailer, platform, integrator or loyalty relationships require committee disclosure?
49 words maximum. Can you reserve two monthly Mumbai days through roadmap approval and the first release gate?

This mandate is confidential. The client is named only under a mutual NDA, and your own record is never listed, sold or shown to a company under your name until you release it for this specific mandate.