The future of high street beauty: Boots UK reveals ‘Store Centric’ IT strategy
Walgreens owned Boots UK has completed its first ever IT Stores Day.
On Thursday last week, the retailer’s IT team visited over 320 stores across the UK.
“By 17:30 on the 18th we will have created a ‘Store Centric' 12 month IT plan and by Monday morning we will be out there implementing IT,” Rich Corbridge, Chief Information Officer at Boots UK & Ireland, said in a LinkedIn post.
The move was, he added, “a chance for IT professionals throughout Walgreens Boots Alliance to reconnect with the engine of this amazing business and chance for our colleagues and friends scattered across the county to understand a little bit about what IT can do for every part of the retail estate.”
In a follow up LinkedIn post, Corbridge observed: “It was an amazing day, more than 130 IT colleagues out and about and getting into more than 300 stores to find out what is wrong, what is right and how can we help.”
“But perhaps most importantly hasn’t been the cold hard fix me conversations, what has been more amazing has been a new human connectivity that has been created.”
He added: “The last two years have seen us invest in where the customer wants to engage with us, on line and mobile and that’s got to have been right, but when we now talk to our colleagues in store they ask that we bring back that store centric view of the world. And today, 18th of March, we are trying to do that in one immediate and big way.”
Boots store colleagues were asked what they need from technology in 2022 to truly make every customer moment in-store amazing. Then work started on turning all this insight into a strategy that Boots can implement.
Corbridge wrote: “We were able to present the findings from yesterday’s miles and miles and in a one hour ‘breakfast show’ we showed our whole organisation what it means to be working at Boots in 2022.”
“It’s an organisation that values everyone's opinion and wants to use the knowledge of every colleague to drive us to the future of beauty on the high street, a vision of healthcare on the high street, a way of continuing to be the brand that people across the UK and Ireland rely on for so much.”
He concluded: “We have a ‘Store Centric’ IT strategy, thanks to every member of the team who gave us comments and thoughts, 6,000 data items driving what we should do next and what it will do for our customers.”
“IT knows how to work with our colleagues because it is part of our business not separate to the business.”
