Case studies
Huddle in the real world.
Boots
Boots Huddles up for efficient working practices.
Boots, the international, pharmacy-led health and beauty group which operates Boots highstreet stores, has transformed key aspects of its business to become more customer-led through the use of Huddle. The implementation, in August 2008, was Boots' first collaboration software installation and comprises 300 users within Boots' support offices. The tool was required by Boots to ensure the customer was at the heart of all decision-making processes, for example, those involving trading and ranging decisions, through to creation of store layouts and marketing activities.
"When material is uploaded and shared, there is no question about where the latest, most current version resides."
- Martin Duffy, Contracts Manager
"Huddle has radically changed the way our key business units operate," said Martin Duffy, Contracts Manager in Boots' Customer Insights team within the marketing department, "in that our Customer Insight material is now accessible by all teams all over the world via a simple web browser without having to download anything onto individual computers. Our business units consult with each other more efficiently through Huddle. The key benefit is that material now flows freely throughout the business to support critical business decisions."
Boots' Customer Insights team is the main engine behind the creation and delivery of all market and customer insights. The team's research supports decisions that impact Boots' entire retail operation. The end-result of the team's work therefore needs to be disseminated quickly across all support offices and commercial business units to support Boots' wider retail operation. Email was becoming an increasingly poor solution for distributing large attachments, to a lot of staff members, quickly.
Huddle's off-the-shelf collaboration solution supported Boots' vision of being truly customer-led by allowing business insights material, containing key information about servicing its customers, to be instantaneously accessed by all Boots staff. Access requires nothing more than a simple web browser without needing major IT support. At present, Huddle is primarily used for internal communication and collaboration, but with the workspaces being accessible across the firewall just as easily as they are within the business, Boots has made some of its tender process documents available on Huddle to be shared externally with potential business partners.
"Huddle has changed the way we work and reduced our reliance on email," said Duffy. "The main change in working practices, and a continual challenge, is to drive the team to continually upload documents and refer users onto Huddle rather than clog up email systems and shared networks. When material is uploaded and shared, there is no question about where the latest, most current version resides, so we don't waste time looking for it or waiting for our beleaguered email server to download it."
"Now, when people come to us with queries, nine times out of 10, they have already looked up background research on the Huddle workspace, so less of our time is wasted explaining things. The team at Huddle has been a joy to work with, offering flexible solutions with extremely credible account servicing. Huddle has the ability to revolutionise the way you work as an individual, a team and ultimately as a business, allowing effcient information transfer at very high speed. The main challenge for Boots has been driving people's working practices and engaging people, so that Huddle is at front of mind when access to information is required," said Duffy.
Huddle's flexibility and security was also paramount to Boots' success with the workspaces.
"We have hundreds of suppliers, and if they ever accessed the wrong data it could create a breach in security. Huddle worked closely with us to ensure all the data is internal-only and we locked all IP addresses. Data that needs to be protected includes customer data from Boots Advantage cards. So this was a critical part of the implementation.
"People take to Huddle like a duck to water. It's simple and intuitive. It even generates better ideas for how to do things, because of how simple it is."
- Martin Duffy, Contracts Manager
Alliance Boots references three reasons behind the Huddle implementation:
- Huddle was a credible off the shelf solution
- It was quick to implement
- It catered to Boots' need to share documents and collaborate with teams located all over
"People take to Huddle like a duck to water. It's simple and intuitive. It even generates better ideas for how to do things, because of how simple it is. People get creative with how they use it within different parts of Boots."
Duffy concluded: "The future of Huddle within Alliance Boots is very positive. There is a huge amount of potential still to be tapped into. For example, some of our key trading areas have a vision to develop increased ownership and usage of Huddle across the wider business, allowing more insights and document sharing across more facets of the business. Where do we stop? Huddle could potentially be rolled out to all our stores and operational units."
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