Littlewoods Shop Direct Business Process Outsourcing
Case Study Synopsis

Introduction
Flexible Resources Associates led business optimisation, re-integration of businesses through absorption, impact mitigation and transitional change management of third parties’ risks and issues and cross dependencies for Littlewoods Shop Direct (LSD), which adopted the implementation of the Vanilla software solution from GUS / Shop Direct in the UK.

Shop Direct / Family Album were made up of three distinct brand service lines:

The client wanted an integrated solution that enabled the brands currently operating overseas to continue to trade.

This project was part of the Business Optimisation Program (BOP). A transformation program, which aimed to minimise disruption to customers, move to one business and technology operating model and integration before  optimisation to minimise change to existing systems and processes unless proven impossible to proceed.

Littlewoods Shop Direct utilised a combination of delivery models as they moved towards BPO. This was implemented as a cost-saving measure for tasks that Littlewoods Shop Direct required but did not depend upon to maintain their position in the marketplace.

The Approach
Business Process Outsourcing was divided into two categories:

1. Back office outsourcing, which includes internal business functions
such as:

2. Front office outsourcing, which includes customer-related services
such as:

A project team was established across both IT and business; the team included a business program transition manager and M&A specialist, IT project manager and business project manager.

The business impact of the project was also considered, in terms of:

The initial investigation found that the Eire Contact Centre, based in Dublin, operated to service customers belonging to the two Irish brands (Family Album Eire and Kays Eire). Approximately 665,000 calls per year were handled during normal opening hours and all call types were handled at the first point of contact, rather than transferring or queuing queries to specialist back office areas. Calls received outside of those hours were diverted to a Burnley Contact Centre. This Centre also handled calls on behalf of Eire on Irish public holidays and during the Christmas / New Year shut down period. Over a 12 month period approximately 90,000 calls were diverted to Burnley. The calls were a mixture of orders and enquires, so to avoid transferring calls, staff on the Burnley site had to be fully trained. However, it was not possible to resolve all Eire call types received at Burnley. An Intranet query form was therefore designed to allow Burnley advisors to capture the details of the caller and the nature of their query. These are referred back to Eire for action the next day. A M&A charter was produced, which provided an overview of how the project was structured and delivered from a management perspective. It helped provide the assurance that through following a structured approach, delivery of operational ability for the Eire business and Burnley post business transition and absorption would be effectively controlled.

Business Objectives & Deliverables

The high-level business objectives and deliverables are defined below:

Adoption of Optimum contact centre practises and procedures
within Eire

Working with the operations and Optimum HR team the project assisted with the introduction of standard operating procedures, e.g. adoption of framework for meetings, escalation procedure for operational issues, pro-active usage of management information to drive performance improvements.

BOP training for Eire and Burnley advisors (incorporating all
necessary FS training)
Defining the scope, planning for the delivery and managing the overall implementation of Connect and associated systems required Eire advisors to operate effectively on the Target Operating Environment post TS5.

‘Change Request’ form management
Raising a series of change requests to a number of Transition State projects as a result of the Eire project and successfully managing these through the change management process.

Project delivery plan
Designed and built an MS Project plan incorporating all tasks and activities necessary to deliver a fully functional Eire contact centre, which is fit for purpose for optimum contact solutions and everyday financial services.

Communications plan
Detailed plan of communications required throughout the lifecycle of the Eire project. “As is” and “To be” Process Maps documenting Eire contact centre processes. Liaised with the business process mapping unit (team IT) to ensure future state business operating model maps are correctly designed for Eire.

User acceptance test plan
Utilising the detailed process maps and a UAT strategy, a plan was developed to ensure the end-to-end processes were complete and fit for purpose for the Eire business integration.

Post implementation report
A report detailing key elements of adherence to project timescales and quality of deliverables were compiled along with conclusions and lessons learned to be carried forward into future projects.

Acceptance criteria
The project was signed off by the Eire executive sponsor and approved by the Optimum main Board and EFS.

Outcomes
The merger produced a series of outcomes including:

Cost benefits
The rationale for the project, as stated by the senior management team, was that Littlewoods Shop Direct required a “fit for purpose” contact centre platform within Eire with the capacity to expand to allow the achievement of future Optimum business requirements. Therefore, the development of the current Eire contact centre proceeded but was achieved via an integrated approach within Optimum to ensure any economies of scale were achieved.