Post Office COO moves on

The Post Office director of operations Ric Francis is leaving the organisation to embark on a career in independent consultancy.

A Post Office spokesman confirmed Francis is leaving but could not confirm his leaving date or who his replacement will be.

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He said: "Ric Francis has decided to leave the Post Office after two and a half years in the business. During that time Ric has made a great contribution to the development of the Post Office and we will be sorry to see him go. We wish him every success for the future."

It is believed Francis will wait until the next financial year, in spring 2008, to depart, although no specific date has been finalised.

Francis joined the Post Office in 2005 from Safeway, where he was CIO until it merged with Morrisons. In the intervening period he also started his own company, Virtual Email - a hosted messaging service, which merged with SaaS-specialist Nasstar in 2006.

When Francis arrived at the Post Office he instigated a five-year strategic plan to revamp the stores in 2006.

As to why he is leaving in the middle of this plan, Francis said: "We are already into our second year of the plan and the operational requirements are already embedded, it doesn't need me to see it through."

Francis told silicon.com his next move will be revisiting some of the plans he had developed in setting up his own consultancy business before he joined the Post Office.

He said: "It will be about playing in the venture capital space. It will be about how I can bring a wealth of operations experience to entrepreneurs who want to operationalise their businesses and significantly improve their value to the market. I also plan to support spheres of development for the next IT leaders of the future."

Francis' previous roles include CIO and member of the executive board at TI Group/Smiths Group, international CIO at PepsiCo in New York and business systems director at Mars.