Tessiant appoints Tesco and Morrisons tech champion

Business transformation consultant Tessiant has appointed former Tesco senior executive and Morrisons operations director Stuart Smith as a managing partner.

Smith brings more than 30 years of experience in the grocery and retail sectors, working with Tesco, Coles and Morrisons in senior roles that included managing stores, back-office operations, supply chains and logistics.

During his 25-year career with Tesco, Smith held a number of senior roles in the UK and internationally, including chief operating officer for its Malaysian business, retail director for Taiwan and director responsible for space, range and merchandising in the UK and Ireland.

Smith then spent two years as retail director for the Coles supermarket group, where he was responsible for more than 500 stores across Australia.

He went on to become operations director for Morrisons and introduced an AI- and machine learning-powered stock forecasting system, which matched supply to demand, improved product availability and reduced shelf gaps by 30 per cent.

Smith said: “I’m known for driving business profit and loss improvements, improving the capability of colleagues and large teams and delivering technology-enabled transformation. Success is built on using technology to supplement and improve the capability of your people.”

    Share Story:

Recent Stories


The Very Group
The Very Group transformed range and assortment planning using Board.

Watch the full video

Smarter merchandise planning across the retail value chain
In this webinar, Matt Hopkins, Head of Retail Solutions, Board, Catherine Tooke, SVP Product & Planning, Sweaty Betty, and Subir Gupta, Managing Principal, Thought Provoking Consulting join Retail Systems Editor Jonathan Easton to discuss the findings of the recent Retail Systems report The Merchandise Planning Challenge: How are retailers harnessing technology to optimise planning and retain customers? and examine the innovations that are improving retail planning.