Domino's Pizza UK&I hires Barry Wiech as CIO

Wiech had previously been CIO of Domino's Pizza in Australia

Domino's Pizza UK and Ireland has lured the former chief information officer of Domino's Pizza Australia, Barry Wiech, to the UK to become its new CIO.

Wiech was CIO of Domino's Pizza Enterprises in Australia where he led what he describes as an acceleration programme of change.

On his LinkedIn profile, he states that his work included eliminating support bottlenecks on escalated issues, by enabling staff at the front line to make quick and effective decisions, and presiding over an iPhone ordering system that generated an ROI vastly higher than original estimates.

His role at Domino's in Brisbane was sandwiched between stints as a CIO of financial services firm Firstmac and of dairy organisation Parmalat Australia.

At Domino's UK&I , he will be based in the headquarters in Milton Keynes and tasked with providing strategic and operational leadership in all areas of technology. He officially started the role in May 2017, just one month after his predecessor Colin Rees had left the organisation.

Rees had been CIO for over six years, building up the company's eCommerce capability, and rolling out a new EPOS system across over 800 stores. He also led the programme to create the company's data warehouse - improving the quality and speed of decision making. Rees left the organisation to join Franchise Brands, a group of international multi-brand franchisors, as CIO.

In a recent interview with Computing, while Rees was still CIO at Domino's Pizza, he suggested that while the CIO is becoming more accepted as a business leader, they can't afford to lose their grasp on technology.

"The CIO position is definitely becoming more accepted as being absolutely core to a number of businesses, a successful IT leader now needs to be accepted as a business leader but can't afford to lose his or her technical roots," said Rees.

"This means its a tough role which needs a broad range of skills and attributes including leadership, international experience, commerciality and a great IT leader need to be a good influencer of people, a coach or mentor and of course they need to understand technology," he added.