Job Title : 7

Organization : CTO

This is not the first time Simon Post of The Carphone Warehouse has been in the upper echelons of the silicon.com CIO50 – the CTO enjoyed a ninth place ranking in last year’s list. This year he’s done better still, being voted seventh.

Technology is ever more critical for The Carphone Warehouse which has been expanding its mobile phone retailing remit for some years now and bundles free laptops with its broadband offerings. It has also embarked on a partnership with US consumer electronics giant Best Buy.

Post, who joined The Carphone Warehouse in 2005, has been responsible for steering an IT transformation programme aimed at creating a more flexible and innovative tech department capable of supporting the business’ substantial growth plans. He is also responsible for delivering the IT and supply chain for the launch of Best Buy Europe – in Spring 2010.

Among his recent achievements, Post signed up IBM in a multi-year IT infrastructure services agreement to deliver services to The Carphone Warehouse, including service desk, servers, storage, desktop, network and datacentre environments. He also secured the signing of a $200m deal with Indian IT company Patni for application development and maintenance, delivering cost savings and boosting the flexibility of tech resources.

Prior to The Carphone Warehouse, Post worked as group IT and strategy director at BSkyB for four years, where he was responsible for an organisational and process transformation and a refresh of much of the core IT infrastructure. Before that he spent his early years as a partner at Arthur Andersen responsible for running its global e-business and advanced technology teams, followed by a stint at Stanford Research Institute spin-off AtomicTangerine.