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Maria Lundberg took on a sizeable operation when she started as ICA Gruppen’s CIO in January 2018. In addition to its core business of about 1,577 grocery stores across Sweden and the Baltics, ICA runs banking, real estate and pharmacy companies. It’s a complex operation Lundberg set out to digitise. Her goal is to tap into ICA’s 100 years of experience in building synergies. Historically, this meant common branding, loyalty programmes, the benefits of economies of scale and shared IT. Lundberg is now expanding the approach to digital services. “When I joined I said we need to have a completely different direction for group-wide IT strategy because we have completely new synergies to explore here,” she says. “The digital journey at ICA is about launching an omni-channel experience, launching services in our ecosystem and creating new ecosystems with partners.” One of these partners is British online supermarket pioneer Ocado. As part of a SEK600m (£53m) investment in e-commerce automation, ICA will roll out Ocado’s e-commerce ...