Our client, an Iconic British supermarket, convenience and petrol station chain with more than 800 locations across the United Kingdom, provides produce from a network of stores from Inverness to Newquay.
Customers expect a convenient, consistent and secure shopping experience when interacting with the retailer. With new technology providing efficient and personalised shopping experiences. We explore how one of the giants in this sector needed a maestro to coordinate the delivery of a point of sale (POS) system transformation to remove the reliance on legacy systems.
The Challenge: Upgrade and Update
Acquired from a parent company, the supermarket had been undertaking a series of transformation programmes to separate its core operational systems reliance on this larger corporation’s legacy system. One arm of this transformation was the delivery of a new POS system, a large-scale replacement of main bank tills.
With the end point of this programme of change affecting customers directly, expertise was required to coordinate the delivery and development needed to find a solution.
When reviewing the situation, it became clear that communication was limited across the programme and teams were working to their own milestones and outcomes. Cross-region and function teams were not aligned. This led to a further misalignment of key dependencies and milestones, increasing overall risk and resulting in spiralling costs on both sides.
Consequently, customer and stakeholder relationships were fractured and trust eroded, leading to further complications in this already complex programme of change.
Our Solution: Enterprise Level View
Lean Tree knew the answer to this challenge was an experienced maestro with knowledge of delivering complex transformation. A Lean Tree Programme Director was proposed, operating directly with the IT leadership and programme stakeholder group (on both partner and customer sides), as well as working with the contributing leadership team within the technology partner.
This Programme Director brought all sides together to one common goal, identifying enterprise level deadlines and distilling dependencies from top down. They assessed and adapted the programme governance, addressed the communication gaps and changed the delivery approach, implementing an Agile approach to the development process, adding a shorter sprint cycle, meaning that development was produced incrementally, feedback was more frequent, and trust could be restored quickly and effectively with the customer. Alongside this they worked within the partner leadership team to improve quality by driving process improvements through to teams and bringing them closer to the customer, so requirements were better understood from the outset.
Outcomes: Transparency and Transformation
Lean Tree provided a highly experienced Programme Director to operate with both the technology partner and client programme leadership teams.
This enabled the programme to drive improvement in:
Programme delivery and leadership.
Customer and stakeholder management.
Proactive risk and issues management.
Appropriate levels of governance.
Improved transparency of financial spend and forward forecast.
Improved cross Team alignment and ways of working.
The culmination of the work was 16,000 + new checkouts deployed across the over 800 store locations. Bringing the organisation onto the latest hardware and software variants allowing for a more supportable application and achieving the primary goal of moving them away from a reliance on their prior parent company, saving millions. The end customer and users benefitted from a seamless transition to the new solution, a massively improved user experience and the benefit of have a solid foundation to continue to build from.
Get In Touch:
Identifying the need for a transformation is the first step, but implementing this effectively can prove challenging to many organisations. If you are looking to embark on a digital transformation but are not sure if you need support, get in touch with a member of our experienced team today.
We are here to ensure that your digital transformation sets you apart and helps you achieve your goals.
