Morrisons CEO Rami Baitiéh insisted that to turn around a business then keeping things simple and focusing on clear priorities are essential in order to move at pace.

“Simplification, modernisation and mobilisation are the three things that you need to keep doing permanently, transformation is constant, like cycling up a mountain, you can’t stop,” he said

Speaking at World Retail Congress on the afternoon of day two, he said that number one priority is customer satisfaction; the second is a greater relationship with the suppliers to achieve better pricing and ranges; plus a zero base budget to stop unnecessary costs were the core pillars of his plan to turn the UK supermarket chain around.

“That means the focus is on these rather than setting out 120 changes,” he said. “It’s an approach that brings immediate and quick wins and the CEO is here to make it happen from a vision perspective.”

Baitiéh said that over the past 18 months Morrisons had listened to 500,000 customers to gain knowledge on what they wanted as he also insisted that immersing himself in the new business was more important than to try and take cultures from previous employers.

“You need to unlearn in order to learn, to immerse in the current market,” he said. “Morrisons is 125 years old and vertically integrated and we needed to reshape the business but respect the DNA. To take the company where it is supposed to be.”

Baitiéh also turned to the advent of AI and said that he felt it was a great support to get things done faster and at lower cost.

“I urge everyone to embrace AI,” he insisted.