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Beaverbrooks IT Retail Systems & Services Review

We were conscious that we wanted to have an independent view of our systems and services. The PMC team engaged really well with our team and quickly gained their confidence by demonstrating that they were here to help. The result of the exercise was an honest and thorough assessment of what was good and what needed improving along with some pragmatic advice on how to make the improvements. PMC has also helped us reach a decision regarding the replacement of some of our key systems.

Patrick Walker, IT Director, Beaverbrooks
Beaverbrooks

The company remains privately owned and is proud that, for 95 years, it has been involved its customers' memorable occasions such as engagements, weddings and anniversaries.

Today, Beaverbrooks operates from sixty-five stores in the UK and has a growing online presence. The company prides itself in the level of individual customer service it delivers as well as creating a great place to work for its valued employees.

The Business Challenge

Like many organisations that have built their systems over a period of time, Beaverbrooks was using a mix of in-house developed and commercial IT solutions. Whilst many of these systems had served the company well, some were showing signs of age, lacked functionality and scalability.

Beaverbrooks wanted to ensure that they were meeting the current needs of the business - as well as providing a solid platform for future growth. They selected PMC to carry out a full assessment of its systems and services in order to gain an expert, independent view.

The Solution

PMC deployed a small team of highly experienced consultants to work with the Beaverbrooks IT team in a series of interactive interviews and workshops. This gave them the 360° view of their systems and services needed to undertake a formal retail IT systems and support services review.

Employing methodology developed through many years of experience in the retail sector, PMCs consultants were able to adopt a multi-disciplined approach to the review, which covered all aspects of Beaverbrooks' retail IT landscape, including:

  • Technical architecture – was it supporting the business effectively?
  • Development Lifecycle – were robust processes in place to ensure quality and supportability?
  • Service Desk – were there ITIL based processes in place to ensure good service to stores and focus on incident reduction?

Results

Following this thorough assessment of the systems and services already in place, the PMC team were able to assess whether Beaverbrooks current systems and applications were fit for purpose. They also benchmarked them against other commercially available solutions.

They then walked Beaverbrooks' senior management through a number of proposed changes and improvements to the services team which were aimed at increasing reliability, reducing the impact of key dependencies and improving quality and efficiency.

In addition, PMC presented an objective view of Beaverbrooks' systems with recommendations on whether they should be retained, upgraded or completely replaced. Beaverbrooks accepted all of the recommended changes and embarked on a nine-month programme to implement them. During this period, PMC's consultants remained available to Beaverbrooks' IT Team for advice and guidance.