Halfords hails success of Yoobic powered iVisit app

Halfords has teamed with Yoobic to roll-out an app for use by area managers when visiting stores.

Speaking yesterday at RetailEXPO, Louise O’Keeffe, Head of Retail Support at Halfords, said that this was previously an inefficient process, with area managers predominantly utilising paper and email. “They had to manage a mass of paper-based information, using notepads and with the frustration of smartphones being available but only for sending emails and making calls,” she commented.

Digitalisation was the answer, enabling, for instance, photos and videos to be introduced into the process. Enter Yoobic. “A number of suppliers ticked all the boxes. But Yoobic showed us that they could embrace every part of our culture,” said O’Keeffe. A pilot kicked off in the summer of 2017. Over a period of 12 months, feedback was gathered and a series of questions was whittled down from 200 to 35, covering the “mission” of store visits. This formed the basis of the iVisit app.

In addition to store visits, it is now being used for the likes of health and safety, profit protection and trading feedback. More store visits are being completed, valuable data is being collected and the app also played a key role when Halfords implemented a new till system last September.

As for future opportunities, Halfords is working with Yoobic to digitalise its five point car health check. “This will help us with recording how many we do, identifying the biggest opportunities and capturing customer data,” O’Keeffe said.