In this section, we invite you to discover portraits of women through their career paths and experiences. They will also share their advice and their vision of retail.
For our third "Femmes du retail" event, we interviewed Christelle Picq, CTO (Chief Technical Officer) at Fnac Darty.
Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Christelle Picq, I am 48 years old.
I immediately gravitated towards the IT world when I was a student, and during my assignments with ESN, my focus quickly turned to e-commerce sites, a field in which I'm still working today.
Can you describe your current position at Fnac Darty?
I'm currently CTO (Chief Technical Officer) at Fnac Darty.
This means leading development teams and ensuring the innovation and implementation of new technological solutions within a company.
In fact, I'm in charge of the e-commerce sites for our 2 brands: Fnac and Darty, including the catalogs and the BO Marketplace.
What was your background before joining Fnac Darty?
My career began in ESN, where I took part in several projects in a variety of business areas. During one of them, I had the opportunity to join the VoyageSNCF.com adventure. Their e-commerce site had been up and running for 1 year. The context was very motivating, and I stayed for 10 years.
I was in close contact with the SNCF business teams, but also with the highly operational teams in the field. It was an exciting adventure.
Then I joined a new adventure, that of Cloudwatt. This was a new company, created 1 month before my arrival. Its business was to offer a Sovereign Cloud solution (at the instigation of the government).
We started with a blank sheet of paper, and that's what I liked about it, and we imagined everything: the creation of the storage and VM offers, the architecture of the datacenters, the site for subscribing to the offers and managing them. I stayed for 3 years.
Then I had the opportunity to return to the world of transport, working for Ile-de-France Mobilités, on the implementation of the RATP/SNCF Pass Liberté+, an alternative pass to the future abolition of metro tickets. There were several challenges in this project: micro-services architecture, high availability/reliability for seamless day-to-day use by customers.
Finally, I joined Fnac Darty to discover a new sector, that of Retail. It was a new challenge for me to discover the challenges of omnichannel and logistics. I've been with the group for 3 years.
When I arrived, the e-commerce teams were undergoing a transformation. The aim was to bring agility to the execution of projects of all sizes.
My position as CTO at Fnac Darty gives me the opportunity to work for two different IS, each with its own system. The challenge is to find possible synergies.
We share the same concerns and ambitions, so we're looking to improve efficiency and robustness. We are constantly seeking to improve our working methods and transform our information systems.
Since Covid, we've gained market share in e-commerce, and our aim is to keep up this momentum. Of course, we are also challenged by our competitors, but this also feeds our desire to innovate and keep a constant watch.
We are also constantly working to introduce new services for our customers and in-store sales staff. Our aim is to satisfy the end consumer.
What challenges or difficulties have you encountered, as a woman, in the Retail / IT world?
Right from the start of my studies, there were very few women in the company, and that's always been the norm for me. After that, I didn't experience any particular difficulties.
I think the challenge is always to position ourselves as equals. There's no need to talk about inferiority, as long as the skills are there, there's nothing else to look at.
What advice would you give to women wishing to work in this sector?
You have to be daring, take the plunge, don't put the brakes on yourself, develop your skills and try new things.
I do a lot of recruiting, and I've noticed that there are generally fewer applications from women than men, and that's a shame. Don't hesitate!
What do you see as the next trends in retail?
There's a real need to consume better and more sensibly.
We want to guide our customers in the choices they make when purchasing their product. We are committed to ensuring that the repairability index of the products we sell is as high as we want it to be.
We focus on buying new products, but we also offer "second life" products from Fnac and "second-hand" products from Darty.
We've set up a live chat service with in-store sales staff to give customers an even better product presentation.
Click & collect is still present. This service worked extremely well during the Covid crisis, and helps reduce CO2 emissions.
The Fnac Darty Group is actively involved in all these areas.
Thank you to Christelle Picq for this interview. See you soon for a new portrait of the "women of retail".