THE KENNEL Anna Milnes

The Kennel

• Accessible across devices• Digital workplace solution• Transforming the way we

work• ‘Pet Pads’

Pets at Home

We have: 400 retail stores338 Vets Practices179 Groomers

Our VIP loyalty scheme has more than 3.2 million members

Pets at Home

We live our values day in, day out!

95% of colleagues are also pet owners

In 2006 we established Support Adoption For Pets with a single, passionate aim to help give abandoned and homeless pets a second chance of happiness. In addition to its 372 pet rehoming centres in Pets at Home stores, Support Adoption For Pets is also the UK’s number one grant giving animal charity, and has supported more than 1,000 animal charities across the UK and Northern Ireland.

Pets at Home

Background: The Retail Operations team identified a need for a more sophisticated tool to manage communications with Stores.

Before the Kennel, stores received email communications twice a week;• Every Tuesday the Retail Ops team sent the ‘weekly communications’; an email with a word attachment listing all the

activities for the week plus a combination of attachments or links to folders where related information could be accessed.

• Every Thursday ‘Catch up Comms’ would be issued outlining any new activities that needed to be completed before the weekend

• The Store Manager had to complete and return a ‘checklist’ to confirm that all the actions had been completed, and the Retail Ops team spent a lot of time chasing the status of actions with Stores.

• In general all paperwork had to be printed out, and all emails had to be stored for reference by each store.

Before the Kennel, operational documents were stored on a system called ‘Store Back Office’ and only Managers had a log-in. This meant frequently colleagues could not print off the new forms or paperwork required to complete a job (e.g. Isolation Room Care Sheet), but had to wait for a Manager to be available to access the system and print off the document.

The Kennel: The vision

All policies and procedure documentation accessible by all colleagues

The capability to track completion of actions by stores and generate reports to see who is out of compliance

A communications tool for stores to replace the weekly communications via email

All colleagues can access information from anywhere Develop new capabilities:

Publish news to all colleagues and create regional communities.I-pad-friendly format for use on the shop floor

The Kennel: the vision

And it definitely needs the ‘WOW’ factor!

The constraints:• Colleagues to use their existing till IDs to log-in, so they don’t have to remember yet

another log-in & password• Only Managers can confirm that actions have been completed• Only Retail Operations can upload new content to the Kennel• Launch in September• Project has a defined budget before it was fully scoped out

The Kennel

April May June July August Sept Oct

Sept Launch of Kennel announced at Retail Conference

SharePoint selected as solution

Requirements definition started

Mando invited to PAH to discuss the project

SoW finalised, PO issued

Dev & Demo SharePoint environments built

Document & policy review started

Mando Wireframes and concepts reviewed and signed off

Mando Functional Spec published

Mando Build started

User Hierarchy defined and built

SQL Database built

Nintex installed and Weekly Comms and Store Task web part developments started

Document and Policy review completed

For delivery a hybrid approach was agreed – Mando developed the ‘Look & Feel’ to deliver the Wow factor and some of the web parts and PAH delivered some of the webparts, and the infrastructure.

Mando development and testing completed, CSS and web parts deployed to PAH demo

Weekly Comms & Task Manager webaparts deployed to Demo

Documents migrated to the demo Kennel

Review developments in demo, adjust per feedback and review again

Built test, production and Dr environments.

All functionality copied to test environment

UAT Testing completed

User instructions created

Support Centre Colleagues (contributors) trained.

Hierarchies/user permissions checked

Functionality deployed to production

Go/No Go to launch the Kennel

01 Oct The Kennel is launched

4 weeks warranty period

Failover to DR test completed

What have we learnt since launch?

• Resistance to change is much stronger than expected/ loyalty to ‘Store Back Office’ is high

• ‘Search functionality’ that was implemented was too complex for the requirement

• Spell check needed• Big bang launch put too much pressure on the IT

Service Desk

What benefits have been delivered?

• Less time spent formatting communications• Better visibility of compliance• Improved compliance because stores know they being actively monitored• Area Managers spend less time chasing outstanding actions• Retail Operations team can directly communicate with all store colleagues instead of

relying on the Store Management hierarchy to cascade information

E-forms/ Spell Check

Enhanced Calendar

DashboardsRota

Checker

What’s next?