Weeks after suffering one of the most disruptive cyberattacks in UK history, UK retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) said it will respond by accelerating a planned two-year overhaul of its digital operations to bring it to completion in only six months.
Given that the company expects the aftereffects of the attack, including cessation of online shopping, to continue until July, compressing new IT and digital infrastructure spending into a matter of months might strike investors as ambitious. However, it allows M&S to put a positive spin on the revelation in the company’s latest financial update that the attack, which hit the company on April 19, will knock £300 million ($400 million) off its profits for the next year.
“We are seeking to make the most of the opportunity to accelerate the pace of improvement of our technology transformation and have found new and innovative ways of working,” said M&S CEO Stuart Machin, without going into detail about what the transformation would entail.
“We are focused on recovery, restoring our systems, operations, and customer proposition over the rest of the first half, with the aim of exiting this period a much stronger business,” he added.
No Responses