WHSmith

---

WHSmith

Fujitsu was challenged to come up with innovative IT solutions that WHSmith could utilise in its stores in order to address its evolving business requirements.

Challenge

WH Smith PLC has been trading for 216 years and is one of the UK’s leading and favourite retail groups. It has over 540 high street stores and over 320 travel outlets at airport, train station and motorway service area locations across the UK, which sell a wide range of newspapers, magazines, stationery, books, confectionery and entertainment products. In addition, WHSmith Direct serves customers on the internet 24 hours a day.

The company’s 17,000 staff serve over 1.2 million people a day and in a typical year around 70 per cent of the UK’s population visit WHSmith’s stores and travel outlets, buying over 40 million books and more than 75 million magazines.

However, competitive pressure in retail, especially from Internet retailers and supermarkets, has been constant and vigorous in recent years, and customers have become increasingly demanding in both the choice of products and level of service they expect. Simon Baker, Head of Development, WHSmith, continues, “WHSmith is constantly reviewing and evolving its retail offering to address its competitive challenges and meet the needs of our customers. In particular, we are always seeking new ways to make life easier for our stores, drive efficiency and deliver outstanding service.”

Fujitsu Solution

Fujitsu was challenged to come up with innovative IT solutions that WHSmith could utilise in its stores in order to address its evolving business requirements.

In particular, WHSmith wanted to find new ways to support its presence at prestige sites, such as the recently won trading units at Heathrow airport’s new Terminal 5, which is set to become one of Europe’s busiest retail environments. Such sites often intensify the challenges faced by all WHSmith stores. Floor space is usually more limited, forcing tough decisions about the ratio of shelf space, to offer the range customers want and service space, to ensure that they are served promptly and correctly. The demand at these sites can also vary more, both across the day, and by time of the year.

“We had already successfully introduced handheld scanners into our stores and progressively increased their functionality, because we found them to be very powerful in increasing staff efficiency,” comments Simon Baker. “So, when Fujitsu proposed the use of its handheld B-Pad computer we understood how effective it could be at queue busting and managing the peaks in demand and generally improving staff efficiency, especially where space is limited.”

The B-pad is a small, light and robust handheld computer, similar to a large PDA. It can operate as a till or a stock scanner, provide immediate access to online systems such as stock and price files and can run other customer service applications. It also contains the latest technologies, including wireless communications, to process payments, and update live financial and stock records.

At WHSmith the B-pad has been loaded with a version of the system used to operate the company’s fixed tills. On noticing queues getting long, store staff can take their B-pads out to customers and process cash and card transactions in real-time on the retail floor, even providing a receipt using a small printer attached to their belts. This reduces the length of queues and gives the company greater flexibility in how valuable floor space is used.

“We have all of the same functionality on the B-pads as we do on our tills, so any staff who know how to use the tills can use a B-pad,” says Simon Baker. “It is also a compatible technology with our infrastructure and till systems and the fact that it is a Windows-based platform ensures greater flexibility and ease of use. Our relationship with Fujitsu in terms of the B-pad is also very straight-forward. We just order what we need and they arrive, although there is technical support available if we need it.”

But the B-pad does more than offer a mobile point-of-sale as it can also be loaded with a variety of applications to do many different tasks. In particular, it can be used as a product scanner so that staff can print stock labels or carry out stock checks, using the B-pad’s wireless capability to update a central stock database or re-ordering system in real-time.

“We are currently trialling the use of the B-pad in three different types of stores and we can already see the benefits. The target is to implement it in Heathrow Terminal 5 at the end of March after which we will evaluate the key learning points before deciding on the full roll-out plan, so it’s looking very good with lots of positive feedback,” explains Simon Baker. “We’ve heard that our customers and staff like it and our store managers say that the B-pad is very easy to pick-up and enjoyable to use, because it’s light, robust and nice to hold and feel. It ticks every box in terms of usability and there’s nothing else quite like it.”

Benefits

The use of Fujitsu’s B-pad handheld terminals is enabling WHSmith to benefit from:

• Improved customer experience – customers are now served faster and more efficiently
• Greater efficiency – removes the need for paper-based systems to check and replenish shelves as data can transmitted directly to the store room, so there is no delay in walking often long distances to collect new stock
• Increased revenue – mobile tills mean more space is available for shelving, ensure a higher level of stock availability and can prevent customer walk aways
• Reduced costs – changes is prices can be quickly and accurately implemented by scanning a barcode to instantly print of shelf edge labels
• Greater staff productivity – staff can be deployed more flexibly and effectively to address peak periods and changes in workloads
• Enhanced company image – positions the company as innovative and customer-focused.

Simon Baker says, “Even excluding additional sales, the implementation of the B-pad handheld terminals and wireless network has a payback of just 18 months, based purely on the increased efficiency of store staff, especially where there is a remote stock room, like in many of our travel outlets. So the project has definitely achieved what we set out to do."

“But putting the technology in is just the beginning, as there are definite opportunities to develop the software to do even more. There are lots of ideas already floating around about how we can streamline more processes and continue increasing staff efficiency with the B-pad. In addition, when specifying a new store we could now put in fewer fixed tills, which would free up more store space and save several thousands of pounds per till.”

Approach

Fujitsu’s ongoing collaboration with WHSmith has opened new opportunities for both companies as Fujitsu is continually seeking to understand WHSmith’s customers’ changing needs, so that it can really understand its key business drivers. Discussions cover all business areas and every month a high level ‘Points of View’ document is sent to senior managers at WHSmith, which outlines new developments within and outside of IT that may impact on the retail sector. In addition, WHSmith’s staff have attended innovation days, where they assess relevant technologies and decide which to trial in their stores.

So, for example, another offering that has emerged from the new relationship is the Irisys system, which Fujitsu brought to WHSmith’s attention. This monitors queues, footfall and movement through stores in order to calculate throughput and wait times, so that staff can be placed where they can serve customers best, be it on a till, on the shop-floor with a B-pad or bringing in new stock from the back.

“Irisys is an innovative bit of technology,” adds Simon Baker. “Even when there are long queues they do move fast, so Irisys enables us to deploy staff and to communicate wait times to our customers in order to prevent them walking away.”

Expertise

With over 30 years experience of supporting the needs of customers, Fujitsu has a proven track record in providing innovative systems and management services that increase revenue, reduce costs, improve productivity and customer services and deliver a compelling return on investment.