How Net-A-Porter CIO Hugh Fahy drives innovation with a start-up mentality

Fahy tells Computing how innovations around data, mobile, software development and more are benefiting the global luxury fashion retailer and its customers

"Look outside the window and you know you're in something different," Net-A-Porter Group CIO Hugh Fahy replies when asked why he joined the luxury online fashion retailer in April 2014.

"Nobody does luxury fashion like Net-A-Porter does so I found it irresistible," he says, sitting down with Computing in his office at the firm's headquarters in West London's Westfield shopping centre.

But for Fahy, who before replacing previous CIO Richard Lloyd-Williams had held positions at Betfair, Vodafone and a range of start-ups, it was more than just the prestige of the brand that attracted him to the role; there was the potential to work with a "really interesting technology stack" and an IT team of more than 300 people.

"The exciting thing for me was a lot of the technology stack is home grown, so a lot of the people I manage are software developers and my passion is software development," Fahy explains, adding that the firm's propensity for agile software deployment is in tune with his own vision.

"There was an ongoing process of business alignment which excited me because I thought it was the best way of crowning some of the achievements Net-A-Porter have made in development agility," he says.

To accelerate this process of aligning IT with the business, Fahy made changes to the way the IT department was structured.

"We were organised functionally, with heads of development, testing and operations. We changed that 180 degrees and now have heads of Net-A-Porter technology, Mr Porter technology and The Outnet technology, with each of our three brands now having a dedicated technology team," he says.

The reshuffle also saw mobile developers mixed in with web developers, to provide "end-to-end accountability for the delivery of the software".

"We felt that level of alignment means they're more in tune with the customer, so have a higher chance of doing the right thing, delivering the right software," Fahy explains.

Mobile is an increasingly important part of the company's business, with 50 per cent of traffic and 20 per cent of revenue coming from tablets and smartphones.

"It's luxury fashion and those who can afford it would typically be able to afford an iPad and an iPhone," says Fahy. "We want them to be able to shop when they want to shop, on the device they want to shop with, and we want our customers to have a seamless experience in doing so.

"People should trust their tablet and phone as much as they trust their PC," he adds.

However, Fahy admits there's still work to do to make the experience easier for mobile shoppers, not least because Net-A-Porter's three brands require different login credentials.

"It makes sense if your login works across the group. So a login and consistency across devices are definitely things we're working on, as well as personalisation; we want to save you clicks and get you to the product more seamlessly," he says.

Giving customers a more personalised experience is a key goal for Fahy this year.

"We obviously know a customer's shopping and browsing history and we can use that information to suggest what they may like, and when they buy something suggest other things by that designer," he says. "But we'd like to do more."

Fahy believes Net-A-Porter can build an emotional bond with its customers.

"The interesting thing about luxury fashion retail is the customer's relationship with the thing they're buying is not to be messed with, so it's different to buying a Star Wars DVD on Amazon where you want to get the cheapest one you can get," Fahy explains.

"There are a lot of things around personalisation we can do and our ultimate ambition is to have the handbag find the customer, but in doing so, we don't want to break the emotional link."

Net-A-Porter uses a number of business insight tools to build up a picture of its customers, including Google, Flurry and Adobe, but Fahy is keen to do more, which is why he is exploring tools like Hadoop for in-depth big data analysis.

"We've got good data internally, we watch the technology trends and we see that there's definitely something [in big data] - perhaps some of it more hyped than it need be - but there's quite clearly something there," Fahy says.

"If we understand everything about a product - both in the sphere we control and out there on the internet - the more we know, the more likely we are to attract a customer to it," he says. "But we don't underestimate how complex that will be."

To help the company harness big data, Fahy is looking to recruit a "head of data engineering".

"We want to understand as much as we can about customers and their wants and needs and as much about our products. We want to put all of that together to create a really rich environment where we can guide and inform the customer," he says.

So what is he looking for in a "data engineer"?

"We're very interested in people who've had extensive experience in this space, especially around marketing data platforms, CRM and big data, and generating value from social media."

To get such a person, Net-A-Porter will have to fight off a lot of competition from Silicon Roundabout, Fahy says.

"We're competing against the start-up scene, because they're the sorts of people who have the way of doing tech that we like. A typical tech employee here would probably have some Silicon Roundabout experience, maybe some media experience or some retail experience," he says.

"Specific skillsets are in uber demand; mobile would be quite a difficult hire in London today as many mobile developers are now contracting. We respect that, we'll hire contractors, but we also like to hire internally and build those skills with a large intake of graduates," Fahy says.

Fahy believes maintaining a "start-up culture" at Net-A-Porter helps it to attract the kind of talent he's after.

"In a start-up, you don't have a meeting because you're sat with all the other guys and know exactly what you're trying to achieve. We have our tech teams alongside their business counterparts to achieve that same spirit."

Fahy believes this approach frees up staff to be more innovative and experimental.

"When they're trying for business outcome X, they won't have a meeting, they try things out as you would in the start-up. The best way of capturing an idea is to knock something up," Fahy says.

This agile approach to development is being enhanced by moves into the cloud.

"We want to improve our ability to monitor and manage our technology estate and the speed in which we can build and rollout," says Fahy. "So we are adopting a lot of cloud technology, we're moving a lot of our front-end aggregation and web tier into Amazon Web Services. It certainly allows us to move quickly."

That flexibility also extends to mobile devices, with Fahy keen to allow his team to use whichever device and collaboration tools they deem suitable for the job at hand.

"Our internal customers' expectations are always growing, they'll find some productivity tool they find really great and want to use."

Such freedom is only possible because Net-A-Porter uses the AirWatch mobile content management tool to secure company data.

"We don't want to restrict their ambition, but we don't want to create administration and security issues, we don't want sensitive corporate data on the web, we want to be in control. So for BYOD, Airwatch provided us with that solution, we've got control of our data and our perimeter," Fahy says.

Net-A-Porter also has a "dedicated information security team".

"We apply all the best practice you can apply around internal corporate data and customer data, so we have a significant investment in tooling to monitor those perimeters," Fahy says.

The online retailer also has "a large and very effective fraud team" that uses analytics in order to protect customers from cyber criminals.

"They have models that allow them to very effectively identify when they think a cyber crime is being undertaken and can move to protect the customer," says Fahy.

As to the future, Fahy says his top priority is to improve "tech responsiveness to business needs".

"There are so many unknowns and the pace of change as it relates to customer behaviour, be it purchasing through Instagram or the latest social media platform, you just don't know what's coming," he says.

"What we want to make sure we do is have robust core services and then build your customer experience on those and we're busy reshaping our internal platforms to have those core services.

"We want to disrupt ourselves; there will be disruption and we want to be in a position to respond to that. To do so, you need a world-class flexible platform and that's what we'll have," he says.

The ultimate aim, says Fahy, is to deliver "fabulous customer service".

"What I want, when a customer walks through Arrivals at Heathrow because they've flown to London for a premier, is for the outfit they chose when speaking to our personal shopper to be waiting on the other side of immigration.

"We want to constantly improve our customer service, the way we present our product, that personal touch that should always be prevalent in retail. To do that you need to innovate."

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