TJ Hughes

TJ Hughes is enjoying cost-savings, productivity gains, greater staff efficiency and improved customer service, following the roll out of Store Communicator from Vodat International.

Store Communicator has enabled TJ Hughes to boost sales in its stores through more efficient use of store labour, enabling staff to spend less time on administration and more time selling to customers.

Background

TJ Hughes is the UK's only discount department store and now has a turnover exceeding £250 million, employing over 4,000 staff across 60 stores, from Plymouth to Dundee.

Challenge

TJ Hughes confronted a problem facing many retailers - trying to distribute a lot of information from head office to stores, and keeping a track on whether each task has been actioned, or information received.

TJ Hughes' existing network could not support the company's desire to move to a more centralised model of store management. Messaging between head office and stores was handled using phone calls or fax, which proved inefficient, particularly as there was no way to enforce compliance - that tasks had actually been done. These tasks included pricing, ticketing, health and safety and staff scheduling.

Dave Golder, Store Manager at Watford elaborates, "There were hundreds of pieces of paper flying around and in such a hectic environment the propensity for losing these was very high - especially at a time like Christmas. This could have very serious implications, for instance if a product recall instruction has been lost, we would open the business up to potential litigious and legislative action".

Colin Rockliffe from TJ Hughes Central Operations outlined how this was a business pain for head office, "We were totally reliant on paper, to send out an instruction to all stores would take four hours. Furthermore without calling the stores individually we had no visibility as to whether a communication had been read, which is a real headache for emergencies."

Solution

TJ Hughes' response was to install a private managed broadband network with variable contention and bandwidth from Vodat International.

Firstly, analogue calls were routed via the new network, in order to cut telephony costs. This move gave immediate payback.

Vodat International installed Store Communicator to deploy intranet, instant messaging and workflow. The goal was to give TJ Hughes much greater control over the activities of the stores and to support them by providing the data, processes, workflow and network to manage pricing and ticketing, promotions, merchandising, starters and leavers and emergency procedures.

TJ Hughes also wanted to use other functions within the application including, messaging, using email for company alerts and bulletins; Task and Diary management, which date and time stamps tasks for central management of Store Task Diaries; and, Standard Forms, a library of company forms that can be used by store staff.

A spokesman for TJ Hughes said, "What was holding us back was our understanding of the capabilities of our own infrastructure and how we could stretch it further to gain maximum benefit. The Virtual Private Network is a critical piece of our business that enables us to support stores with an automated back office."

Vodat International worked in partnersh ip with TJ Hughes' IT department to introduce the ‘always-on' application - initially in a small number of stores, with roll out to follow.

Examples of this within day-to-day operations include: providing information about products and stock replenishment; sales results and league tables; newsletters; and merchandising information.

The application is specific to retail and is an alternative to standard email systems that can be time-consuming and difficult to use to track all messages to confirmed receipt, and all tasks to completion.

Sending out an email to multiple stores using a standard email function can be tedious - but Vodat International's application enables TJ Hughes's head office staff to be sure who has received and actioned the task at a glance using a ‘dashboard' information control.

Other advantages are that it requires minimum licensing, is very simple for shop staff to use and carries automatic lockouts to areas (such as internet abuse) not authorised by the company.

Store Communicator allows stores to become part of a ‘centralised system' in which staff have access to common information - from standard forms (eg. stock and stationery requests), to diary management and messaging.

The intranet area also includes a useful central bank of standard ‘self-serve' information that stores may require such as time sheets; new starter forms and merchandising tickets.

It also gives head office a clearer picture of the status of tasks - to ensure everyone is working together.

Ticketing

Having introduced the broadband WAN, the company was keen to make the most of its new fixed cost communication platform, investigating further ways of harnessing the high-speed broadband connection.

Because ticketing was produced at head office and then sent by courier to the stores, promotions would not always begin on time and could not be modified according to customer response. As a discounter, the company needed to respond much more quickly in the production and distribution of its weekly promotional fliers, to cash in on opportunities such as the sudden arrival of good weather, which would see a surge in demand for barbeques and garden furniture.

Now, fliers are designed at head office and the information is sent electronically and printed locally, a process that is much quicker and saves on waste because each flier is specific to each store. Additionally TJ Hughes has saved money by no longer renting the expensive fax machine system.

Benefits

The spokesman continued, "Deployment of the network, instant messaging and workflow will all contribute to the wider goal of making the TJ Hughes family of stores as efficient as possible."

Store Communicator has provided instant messaging amongst stores and head office, the central management of Store Task Diaries, and enables TJ Hughes to create and track electronic forms to and from stores and integrate them with their central operations. Dave Golder outlined what this means to a store manager "Previously I felt like I was fire fighting, running from one administrative task to the next. My Retail Back Office diary is probably the most helpful business tool I have at my fingertips. I receive head office instructions at a certain date that have to be completed at a certain time, this has let me get on with the business of selling rather than filling in forms. Productivity has certainly gone up.

The company has already experienced cost-savings, productivity gains, greater staff efficiency and improved customer service. There is also a considerably more robust system to deal with compliance issues which are far more visible to head office and the stores. Colin Rockliffe explained the benefits. "Now we can send out instant communications to all 50 stores simultaneously. We can then view who has read them and whether they have been actioned, all three of these functions are invaluable, especially for emergency and compliance issues."

To learn more about the cost savings and productivity gains that Vodat's Store Communicator will deliver for your UK retail operations, please call Vodat International on 0161 406 1820 or contact us by e-mail.