Wayfair.

Fiona Tan

Fiona Tan is the CTO at Wayfair, where she is responsible for creating market-leading experiences through its world-class e-commerce platform. 

Please tell our readers about your journey in the industry and your key role and responsibilities at the organization.

I have been fortunate enough to have spent my entire career in technology and have built generally available applications and platforms for enterprise customers as well as highly scaled consumer applications. My prior role at Walmart as Head of Walmart US Tech gave me an opportunity to build tech at the world's largest retailer, and I've been able to draw from those experiences to help refine an industry-leading shopping experience specifically for the home category at Wayfair. 

At Wayfair, we use technology to digitally transform our operations and keep up with a rapidly evolving business landscape. With recent advances in cloud technology and cloud computing, we are working on cloud-native and cloud-enabled architectures to transform the technology stack and make it modular and service-oriented.  

Due to the pandemic, many things have changed. Could you tell our readers how it has affected the digital transformation space?

The pandemic dramatically accelerated digital transformation. For example, we increased our commitment to AI and ML, which helped applications to be more autonomous and optimized. The pandemic also brought a marked increase in the number of new customers shopping on Wayfair for the first time, along with supply chain disruptions and availability issues. Our investments in AI and ML served us well during this time as we adapted and optimized our customer experience and marketing strategies. In our supply chain, we're integrating AI to help get products to our customers faster. In addition, we recently completed our migration from data center applications and services to the Google Cloud Platform in just 16 months, which will increase our agility and innovation. 

"At Wayfair, we use technology to digitally transform our operations, and keep up with a rapidly evolving business landscape. With recent advances in cloud technology and cloud computing, we are working on cloud-native and cloud-enabled architectures to transform the technology stack and make it modular and service-oriented." 

How do you envision the future here and down the line to live the next two to three years?

Building and introducing new technology is an iterative approach, as one of the only constants in business is change. We are constantly transforming, and the abrupt nature of COVID and its impacts on business and society made us more aware of how adaptive we need to be. From a technology transformation perspective, we must ensure that we are flexible and able to deal with future uncertainties while meeting the needs of the business today. 

Could you give some advice to your fellow peers and upcoming professionals in this field and how they should approach the industry?

Hone your craft and obtain profound knowledge of the domain you're in or the application areas you're building. At the same time, devote time and energy to people development, as building and nurturing teams is critical to driving business outcomes and success.