Quality, affordability and a real passion for service – these are some of the core characteristics of High Street retailer, Wilkinson that extends to its point-of-sale systems

Quality, affordability and a real passion for service – these are some of the core characteristics of High Street retailer, Wilkinson that extends to its point-of-sale systems

Wilkinson is a £2 billion turnover, 22,000-employee organisation with almost 350 UK stores processing, on average, one million transactions per day. Not content with this, the organisation has aggressive growth targets and plans to open another 100 stores by 2014.

Clearly an organisation of this scale needs a robust, sophisticated retail management system. Wilkinson has that in Retail-J, the electronic point-of-sale (EPoS) solution supplied by Sanderson.

The two organisations have a long shared history, having worked together since the late 1990s – unusual in the highly competitive retail software sector. For much of that time, the relationship was a conventional one between software supplier and retailer, but over the past two years their relationship has developed significantly to a point where the join between Wilkinson’s own IT function and Sanderson has become virtually seamless.

New blood reinvigorates relationship

The catalyst for the strengthened relationship was the appointment of Ritin Patel as Wilkinson’s chief information officer (CIO). His experience at another major retailer had shown him that it was possible to build a strong relationship based on a managed service offering.

Wilkinson’s implementation of Retail-J had been successful and the business was benefiting from a modern solution with improved visibility, but Patel wanted to move the customer-supplier relationship to a new level, and get even greater performance and efficiency from the system.

“I wanted Sanderson to work with Wilkinson as a partner, rather than a supplier, so that any system performance issues could be identified before they impacted the business,” said the incoming Wilkinson CIO. “We sat down and discussed my goal, which was for them to be our partner in the truest sense.”

Partnership is often an over-used term, but here the objective was for Wilkinson and Sanderson to work hand in hand so that Sanderson would become an integral part of Wilkinson’s IT department. “If we feel the pain, they feel the pain – but the goal was that we’d have a system whereby they could see the pain coming and apply the right medicine before it affected us,” said Patel. “I wanted a proactive approach and I wanted the right people and the right monitoring. I wanted Sanderson to understand our business drivers, to know what we need and to act on that information.

“Together, we have achieved this,” he added. “I am a firm believer that this service will evolve and improve further over time; we have already made an excellent start.”

Moving to a managed service

There are a number of aspects to the managed service, including service level agreements (SLAs) for transaction speed, system performance and a commitment to provide a predictable dedicated resource. “There’s also governance around this regarding information sharing by both parties,” added Patel. “We provide updates in terms of our strategy and our roadmap, and we receive feedback from Sanderson about our system performance and advice on what we could improve. It’s a real two-way relationship: if something is likely to go wrong, or even if there’s just a trend in the marketplace that we could benefit from, then Sanderson shares that with us.”

Behind the scenes, the surveillance of Wilkinson’s Retail-J implementation is managed by Store Watch, which Sanderson uses to monitor the entire retail estate including central servers, back office and all tills. This enables Sanderson to spot potential issues, act accordingly and maintain maximum system uptime and transaction speed.

In addition to overseeing Wilkinson’s Retail-J network, a further dimension to the relationship is the support that Sanderson gives the retailer for its store rollout programme. Sanderson fully supports Wilkinson’s schedule of store openings and refurbishments, and Patel said this element of Sanderson’s service has been excellent.

As well as the managed service and the store opening programmes, there is another infrequent but nonetheless critical aspect of the partnership. “There’s a third element to this where we rely on Sanderson to be highly flexible and responsive to unplanned issues – if, for example, we have an urgent situation at a store and need two more tills, we may need them to install the hardware immediately and make the necessary system upgrades. We need a fast, reliable response and Sanderson delivers that every time,” highlighted Patel.

Mission-critical response and uptime

The proof of how much this relationship has improved Wilkinson’s entire retail management estate came at the end of last year: “We worked throughout the Christmas period without a single glitch,” confirmed Patel. “This is almost unheard of in retail and it is indicative of the relationship we’ve built with Sanderson. There was a lot of testing taking place, huge volumes going through, yet they picked up on every potential problem before it occurred, dealing with issues swiftly and effectively.”

For all retailers, even short periods of system downtime can quickly spiral out of control: one hour’s downtime could mean significant trading losses, dissatisfied customers, irreversible damage to reputation, and much more. “If I had to start shutting stores down because of system problems, that downtime also impacts on other systems relying on that information,” Patel pointed out. “We wouldn’t be able to replenish stock without accurate data.” Picking is done each evening from 5pm at two distribution centres: lists are generated from store data gathered that day and goods are picked throughout the night and delivered to stores before they reopen the next morning.

The implementation of Retail-J has given Wilkinson the control, visibility and absolute confidence in data that it sought. “There is trust and confidence within the organisation that everything is being looked after,” confirmed Patel. “One of our core values is service - and great customer service starts with efficient operation at the tills. When we open each morning, we can be confident that all the business information we need - including new product information, pricing or promotions - is rolled out to each till in each store and that the system speed will always meet its SLA. That’s a given for us and there can be no compromise.” There’s no question that Wilkinson’s target to open 400 stores by 2014 is made possible by the security of a knowledgeable and reliable retail software partner.

“We have the assurance of the expertise we need to develop our business into the future,” said Patel. “We see no value in bringing this part of the operation back in house. Sanderson are the experts; they do this day in, day out, not just for us but for other major retailers, and we benefit from that.”

The success of this relationship relies on commitment from both parties. Patel admitted he had some concerns at the outset about whether it was possible for a managed service on this scale to be delivered. “My concerns were unfounded and the reality is that we’ve had exceptional service from Sanderson; long may it continue,” he concluded.