This year, we had a tie for winner of our 2022 CIO of the Year in the Private Sector, and Rex Lee, CIO for Canadian Tire Corporation (CTC) is one of these well-deserving winners.
Rex led the team responsible for decomposing and rebuilding the Canadian Tire Retail ecommerce platform so that it could go from handling 5,000 orders a day pre-pandemic to a massive surge to 120,000 per day during the height of the pandemic lockdowns. Two years worth of work was done in just six weeks and resulted in CTC e-commerce growth of 30 per cent, reaching $2 billion in 2021.
Rex also plays a pivotal role ensuring technology plays a key role in the fulfilment of larger, organizational strategies. His leadership has helped shape Agile from an IT thing to an enterprise pursuit, has shifted cybersecurity from a technology problem to a business imperative, and rebuilt systems to be customer focussed enterprise platforms including advanced analytics, eCommerce, and Store Technologies. These platforms span all CTC banners (including Canadian Tire, SportChek, Marks), products, brands, and services and delivers customers a valuable and differentiated retail experience.
Additionally, Rex contributed to CTC’s 2021 operational cost savings of $200 million by instituting a program to remove ROT – redundant, outdated and trivial systems.
Greg Hicks, the President and CEO of CTC wrote in support of Rex’s nomination, “The last two years have been challenging for everyone, yet Rex met every single hurdle head-on, never losing sight of CTC’s Brand Purpose. An empowering and visionary leader, Rex is the CIO you not only want but need by your side – whether facing an unprecedented challenge or forging ahead with an ambitious strategy for growth. There’s no question that Rex deserves to be recognized as CIO of the Year.”
And recognized he is! Congratulations to Rex Lee for winning the 2022 CIO of the Year in the Private Sector category.