AusLeisure

Big Red Group, has appointed Brent Rutherford to the newly created role of Chief Technology Officer, to lead Australia and New Zealand’s largest experience marketplace through its next phase of growth - powered by first-party-data and a technological transformation across the brands.

The appointment comes as Big Red Group is undergoing a transformation of its ecommerce experience for suppliers and consumers across its suite of brands. Rutherford’s role will be focused on creating a technology-first environment that supports business goals, and building a platform that delivers an end-to-end customer and supplier experience to match the incredible experiences the company offers.

With diverse experience in both technology and business roles, Rutherford’s background includes helping scale technology and business operations in large yet rapidly growing companies such as Dell and Apple, and has also held senior roles in technology solutions companies. With a customer-first approach, Rutherford is passionate about creating moments for customers that go beyond their expectations.

In line with the reopening of domestic and international travel, Rutherford is eager to modernise the technological requirements across every aspect of the Big Red Group business including internal business systems, security, compliance and particularly connecting the company’s five ecommerce platforms - RedBalloon, Adrenaline, Experience Oz, Local Agent and Lime&Tonic - into one cloud-native multi-brand ecommerce platform. Working closely across all teams in the business, Rutherford will ensure the growth and evolution of the company is not held back by technological limitations.

Big Red Group co-founder and Chief Executive, David Anderson notes “we’ve made exciting acquisitions over the last five years, and now as the leading experience marketplace across ANZ, we’re looking to modernise our infrastructure as we turn our attention to the next period of growth for us and our supplier community. With five ecommerce marketplaces that deliver an experience to a customer every 25 seconds and an existential crisis facing many of our suppliers post Covid, we’re eager to build world class infrastructure that will support a broader range of services for suppliers and help us reach our goals of delivering an experience every second by 2030.

Rutherford adds “a lifelong experience seeker, surrounded by friends and family who prioritise experiences over ‘things’, I have a strong connection with Big Red Group's product and purpose. As a values driven business, and with the recent appointment of a CSO in Jemma Fastnedge, we’re on the path to growth through doing good and great. In the projects on the roadmap for the technology team, there is a great opportunity to significantly contribute to the success of a company at such a pivotal moment in its history, in such an exciting industry.”

For information on careers at Big Red Group go to thebigredgroup.com.au/careers/

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