Harvey Nichols enhances the customer experience and will make savings of £1 million with unified communications

Customer challenge

Harvey Nichols is synonymous with quality. To ensure an exceptional retail experience, the company's 2,500 employees need to be able to deal with customers' requests quickly. This often involves contacting other stores, the head office or warehouse – a process that was hampered by Harvey Nichols' disparate telephony systems. This decentralised approach was also adding unnecessary cost and complexity to day-to-day business operations.

Computacenter solution

Harvey Nichols partnered with Computacenter to implement a new unified communications infrastructure incorporating IP telephony and wireless connectivity. Based on Cisco technologies, the new solution has simplified collaboration across the company's 11 sites as well as IT support. Computacenter is also responsible for supporting the solution under a five-year contract.

Results

As well as significantly reducing Harvey Nichols' telephone bills, the new infrastructure is more cost-effective to support, which will result in savings of £1 million over 10 years. Employees can devote more time to customers and answer queries in a shorter timeframe, which helps improve the retail experience and maintain Harvey Nichols' reputation.

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Customer profile

Making life more luxurious
Harvey Nichols is an international luxury lifestyle store, offering the world's most prestigious brands in womenswear, menswear, accessories, beauty, food and home. The retailer has 12 stores in total, six of which are located in the UK. The London flagship store is situated in the heart of Knightsbridge, London's most fashionable and exclusive shopping district.

In addition to its retail stores, Harvey Nichols operates two stand-alone restaurants in London – Prism and the OXO Tower Restaurant, Bar and Brasserie.

Business challenge

Enhancing communications for better customer services
With Harvey Nichols' reputation for quality, customers expect exemplary service levels. "Maximising the time staff spend on the shop floor is key to providing good customer service and increasing sales," comments Martin Schofield, Retail Operations Manager at Harvey Nichols. "Staff also need to be able to respond rapidly to customer enquiries, which often requires them to contact other stores, the head office or our warehouse."

For example, if a customer requests an item that is not currently in stock, staff need to be able to contact other Harvey Nichols' sites to locate the item or suggest an alternative.

Due to Harvey Nichols' steady expansion, its stores, head office and warehouse had disparate telephone systems. As a result, calls between some sites had to be dialled externally, leading to high telephone bills.

The non-standardised telephone systems also impacted efficiency, both for store staff and the IT department. For example, the company's warehouse staff lacked direct dial capabilities, which meant all calls had to go through a centralised switchboard, and voicemail facilities were inconsistent.

Additionally, Harvey Nichols' IT department had to understand and manage these separate telephony systems. Matthew Suddock, Infrastructure Manager at Harvey Nichols, comments: "We had multiple suppliers and contracts to manage along with our telephony systems, which resulted in unnecessary cost and complexity."

Computacenter solution

A unified communications platform and IP telephony
To reduce costs and enhance efficiency, Harvey Nichols decided to replace its legacy telephone systems with a unified communications solution.

To assist with the project, the company opted to partner with IT services and solutions provider Computacenter. "We have worked successfully with Computacenter for a number of years and knew that it could provide an end-to-end solution tailored to our needs," comments Martin.

Computacenter designed a unified communications solution based on Cisco technologies that provides Harvey Nichols' head office, warehouse and six UK stores with Internet Protocol (IP) telephony and wireless connectivity.
Computacenter also provided the underlying foundations for the solution, which involved the implementation of structured cabling solutions at each location and upgrading the local area network to Power over Ethernet Cisco Catalyst switches to support IPT.

As well as designing the solution architecture, Computacenter project managed and implemented the solution. "Computacenter's project management and networking expertise ensured the implementation ran smoothly," comments Matthew. "Any minor technical issues were quickly resolved as a result of Computacenter's experience of Cisco technologies and vendor relationship."

Cisco Call Manager lies at the heart of Harvey Nichols' new IP telephony system. "The feature-rich system provides our 2,500 employees with an easy-to-use electronic telephone directory and includes wireless handsets that enable staff to contact other sites without leaving the shop floor," comments Matthew.

While improving efficiency for head office, store and warehouse staff, the new unified communications infrastructure also significantly simplifies management for the IT department. "We no longer have to worry about telephony," comments Martin. "The solution is straightforward to manage in-house, with additional support from Computacenter via a single contract."

Results

Financial savings of £1 million and an improved customer experience
As well as enhancing collaboration for Harvey Nichols' staff, the new unified communications platform has enabled the retailer to significantly reduce costs. "By consolidating our systems and support, we will be able to save at least £1 million over the next 10 years," comments Matthew. "We will also make additional savings on call charges."

A centralised approach has also enabled Harvey Nichols to:

Increase efficiency: Staff can contact colleagues much more easily using a four-digit internal telephone number that is available on a centralised electronic telephone directory. Simplified telephony services and wireless handsets mean that retail staff can spend more time on the shop floor.

Enhance business agility: The infrastructure can be easily expanded to support new sites and functionality. For example, when Harvey Nichols opened its new store in Bristol, the implementation of the communications systems came in massively under budget. The company has also been able to equip its OXO Tower restaurant with call centre capabilities to help staff manage customers' reservations.

Improve security: Although not one of the initial objectives of the project, the communications upgrade has enabled Harvey Nichols to enhance network security. This is crucial as the payment card industry places increasing responsibility on retailers to protect customer data.

These factors all contribute to the quality of service that Harvey Nichols is able to deliver to its customers. As Martin concludes: "The new unified communications infrastructure empowers our staff to safeguard the quality of the customer experience."