‘Aus Aldi Süd’s IT wird Aldi DX, sonst ändert sich nix’, German speakers might say, referring to the old advertising slogan of brand manufacturer Mars. And indeed, the new brand Aldi DX for Aldi Süd’s IT, together with the slogan ‘Driving digital value’, primarily seeks to make the discounter giant more attractive to job applicants. But that’s not all: the rebranding is also intended to emphasise the retail company’s transformation to agile work processes – one of the most important initiatives of Wolfgang Frisch, who had been appointed CIO of the company at the beginning of the year.
Aldi Süd’s demand for IT specialists is enormous: the discounter currently has 170 vacancies. However, insiders report that the demand for IT specialists at Aldi Süd-IT goes far beyond these 170. And the competition with other retail companies, such as those of Schwarz Group, has long since been taking place on the recruiting front for IT departments.
Daniel Koch, Managing Director of Aldi DX and formerly of Aldi Süd IT, emphasises on LinkedIn that Aldi DX represents the retailers „united business and IT teams”. Behind the statement is a major transformation process that Aldi Süd is currently pursuing with considerable effort: The aim is to use agile collaboration methods, such as Scrum logic, to improve cooperation between business units and IT and to drive innovation more efficiently and with greater motivation. „In the end, our business and IT operations must fit seamlessly together,” explains Daniel Koch: “Driving digital value is a key part of our transformation journey and one that we will continue to pursue rigorously.”
High demand for SAP experts
Like all SAP Retail users, Aldi Süd is looking for a large number of SAP experts to manage the difficult migration of its merchandise management system to SAP S/4HANA, including the necessary addition of SAP CAR for managing sales data. Aldi Süd also has many vacancies in the area of agile transformation itself: In a central ‘Agile Center of Excellence’, Aldi Süd is currently preparing for the introduction of agile processes based, among other things, on Scrum methodology in the company and is looking for trained Scrum Masters and other agile coaches.
The company is also currently looking for a product owner in the area of POS software, which Aldi Süd is further developing together with Gebit. Aldi Süd is also looking for specialists in supplier management with SAP Ariba. Furthermore, the discount giant needs people who are familiar with Adobe, whose suite the retail company uses to control marketing measures, as well as those with experience with the products of Service Now, Signavio and Ivanti, which Aldi Süd uses to control project management, the digital mapping of its processes, IT support, hardware monitoring and software provision. Last but not least, Aldi Süd is looking for Microsoft experts, because the discounter now works almost exclusively with the Office solutions M365 including MS Teams.
