Chief Digital Officer

The organisation

Outdoor Life Group (OLG) is a European market leader in the production and distribution of garden timber and cabins. Their product categories range from decking and fences to play equipment and decoration. DIY-retailers, e-tailers, professionals and consumers from all over Europe call upon OLG for their wide range of products and associated services. OLG has generated sales in excess of €300M in 2021through its 900 committed employees.

The international company consists of several well-established European players, working together in a decentralized model. Activities are grouped into four business units: Retail, Consumer, Professional and Products. The business units are active in countries all over Europe: from Estonia, Poland, Hungary and Norway to Germany and the Netherlands. Each unit has their own management team and operational strategy, including category management, innovation agenda, product development, branding, digital application stack and organization design.

“Outdoor Life Group consists of business units with separate agendas for growth and digital innovation. There are countless synergies and there is a real need to harvest them.” Edwin van den Berg, CEO of Outdoor Life Group

The new Chief Digital Officer (CDO) will be part of their Senior Leadership Team and report to the CEO.

The position

Outdoor Life Group is a successful group of European players in garden timber and garden cabins. The group is on the brink of a digital transformation to increase customer satisfaction, generate efficiencies and harvest synergies between players. The Chief Digital Officer will integrate and monitor the decentralized digital activities to drive the transformation strategy forward.

Tasks & responsibilities

OLG sees ample opportunities to increase their degree of automation to become digital leaders in the market of outdoor products. They will increase customer satisfaction and topline growth as well as generating cost/capital reductions and synergies within the group. The Chief Digital Officer will be the central leader of the digital strategy, integrating initiatives over all separate business units to close any digital performance gaps. She/he will be the digital business partner to the CEO and to the managing directors of each business unit.

The CDO is expected to, where meaningful, integrate the digital initiatives of these business units, and to support and launch group initiatives that have collective group company value. She/he will collaborate with each unit, to overlook the execution of strategy, business plans and budgets. Given OLG’s growth ambitions, an important part of the responsibility will be to perform due diligence and define integration plans for M&A or greenfield initiatives.

“The CDO will be our cross-functional change agent. The intermediary between the business unit managers and the central management team, to fully integrate our business opportunities with technology.” Edwin van den Berg, CEO of Outdoor Life Group

The CDO drives and measures ROI on OLG’s portfolio of digital solutions for products, services, processes, customer experiences, marketing, and business models. Extensive investments will be made in a full stack e-commerce platform for each division. The business units will build a common ERP backbone. They will also work on a solid cross-group process for managing product-related data (PIM and DAM), applications to strengthen the interaction with customers (including CRM) and technologies to enable Industry 4.0 principles in manufacturing locations and groupwide supply chains.

The CDO integrates all of these (and other) digital initiatives into the strategic planning, ensuring leadership commitment, partnership selection and contracting, resource allocation and execution. For major transitions, the CDO will carry steerco or senior project management responsibilities to ensure on time project delivery within budget.

The CDO is responsible for also expanding the full digital ecosystem, tapping into competencies and innovations across and beyond the organization and its stakeholders. She/he will be in charge of developing digital talent, working closely with HR to attract and retain top employees to build digital capability across the company.

Candidate profile*

• Minimum of 15 years of working experience, with substantial involvement in digital transformations
• Knowledge of retail, production, logistics and/or supply chain
• Full stack e-commerce platforms and ERP
• Hands-on mentality
• Private Equity thinking

* Research shows that while male candidates feel confident enough to apply when they meet about 60% of the requirements, female candidates only apply when they tick every box. So if this role has your name on it, but you’re not sure about the criteria, we still want to hear from you.

Interested?

You can apply to this position by using the link below. Outdoor Life Group has appointed Top of Minds to fill this vacancy.