The efforts of UK businesses have been focused on recovery, whilst trying to respond to drastically changing consumer behaviour when the full impact of COVID-19 is yet to develop. With all the uncertainty starting to clear it's great to be discussing retail wins, a particular triumph, new store openings across the UK!

As discussed in our whitepaper 'Life After Lockdown: What's Next for Retail?', following the reopening of stores back in April, it was expected that there would be growth in retail parks, outlet centres and local high streets. After a flourishing first week, this growth was confirmed as high street footfall was up 87.8% week-on-week, with footfall across the high street, retail parks and shopping centres was up 330% from 11-17 April versus the same week a year ago, albeit the country was in complete lockdown.

How has this trend continued?

Here we are three months later with the positive news that in support of the UK's recovery, local high streets could see 17,000 new stores, whilst major brands are opening flagships in central London and outlets such as McArthur Glen and Bicester Village.

Despite a high number of vacancies on the high street, smart retailers are taking advantage using spaces differently and preserving locations to jump on post-pandemic potential. Driven by hybrid working habits, big brand retailers are also set on local high streets, striking a balance in location by positioning themselves closer to areas underpinned by more resilient stores such as grocery and discount.

Thinking of reviewing your location strategy?

Our Project Management Services are a valued part of Retail Assist’s business model. There are many ways in which we could help support the success of your business change projects, whilst taking the pressure off your internal teams to deliver.

As part of our Project Management Services, our dedicated Store Systems and Store Development specialists and Project Managers can deliver store openings, store closures and store refit programmes. All opening activities are scoped, coordinated and carried out, from hardware and software roll-outs, to providing communications infrastructure in-store through our trusted partners.

Our team have spent many years working in retail and hospitality operations and in-store IT, which means they have the experience necessary to ensure stores open on time and on budget.

If you'd like to speak to one of our team about your store plans, get in touch here.

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For our projects team, there’s no job too big or too small. Our PRINCE-2 qualified project managers have overseen everything from new software/hardware rollouts, consultancy or tender processes and technology upgrades.

We were very pleased to welcome Hawthorn to our projects team; Hawthorn is an ambitious community pub company with a portfolio that consists of over 700 leased, tenanted and operator managed community pubs run across England, Scotland and Wales. Hawthorn were utilising multiple EPOS systems across their 130 operator managed pubs, duplicating system changes across the multiple suppliers – which also duplicated the cost. Hawthorn needed to review and streamline the multiple EPOS systems across their operator managed estate and choose a single EPOS provider to support the future growth of the business.

Working alongside Hawthorn’s steering team, we were engaged to provide industry knowledge on hospitality EPOS systems and to run a fair tender process, covering functional and non-functional service-related requirements.

The Solution

Our project team conducted a thorough supplier selection process and, once this approval was granted, all workshops and demos with end users were conducted remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic, with our team overseeing the implementation of the chosen supplier.

Matt Ward, Hawthorn’s chief finance officer, said: “We’re delighted with the support we’ve received from Retail Assist; with their help, the tender process of our new EPOS system has been very smooth and we’re very happy with the support they’ve given to our team. Outsourcing to their project services has meant that we have leveraged their expert knowledge and experience to deliver an outcome that’s seen us on-board a new supplier which best fits our growth aspirations.”

What Can Our Projects Team Offer?

Our IT project management services offering is very diverse. Whether you’d like to implement our own solutions, such as OMIO PIM or Merret Pro, or our managed IT services, such as our IT Help Desk, we can also run a variety of in-house projects, too.

Have your existing IT teams got a lot to juggle? Let us take the pressure off. We deal with the headache of balancing third parties, dealing with deadlines and suppliers.

Kevin Greathead, Retail Assist’s chief services officer, said: “At Retail Assist, we take great pride in the support we give to our hospitality customers and how we manage IT services for them; our collaborative approach allows them to be innovative and push through with their business growth plans. Retail and hospitality are fast-paced industries: as the market moves faster, we want to help bring new and usable technology to our customers to keep this pace. Innovation is really key to us.”

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We’re usually providing award-winning IT support to national and international retail and hospitality customers, but this time our latest client had quite a different challenge for us.

We were contracted by Nottingham City Council with a very important project. The project brief explained that they needed us to reach out to local independent businesses on Nottingham’s high streets as they started to re-open, with retail reopening on 15th June and then hospitality on 4th July. Whilst our Help Desk usually provide IT support to retail shops, hospitality vendors and head office environments 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, they can also take on projects, too – perfect for when you’ve got a short-term issue that needs specialist support.

The Challenge

Partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund and the UK government, vital messages about reopening needed to be shared quickly with as many businesses in Nottingham as possible. At the same time, the availability of additional support for businesses, such as government support grants available to businesses who had been negatively impacted by COVID-19, needed to be communicated to ensure businesses could survive the pandemic and have every opportunity to thrive after it.

The Solution

In just 3 weeks, we put together a team on behalf of Nottingham City Council to contact hundreds of qualifying businesses to advise them on safely re-opening and to ensure they were aware and able to access vital additional support. Using our experience within retail to underpin these conversations, we supported businesses within the city of Nottingham, providing advice and directing them to key grants that could help them to re-open their doors.

Robert Dixon, Head of Business Growth for Nottingham City Council, said: “Supporting our city’s economy during this pandemic has been a key priority for Nottingham City Council, and it was the right decision to work with Retail Assist to be absolutely sure local businesses were able to access the right support as quickly as possible. We needed our independent businesses and small high street businesses – which are such a huge part of Nottingham’s character – to be able to re-open safely and get central government support to maintain their presence on our high streets.

“If an extra 200 businesses accessed support, including grants, and that helped them to re-open safely, that’s a massive boost for our local economy. With more and more businesses re-opening in our city centre, it also provides reassurance to local people that they can come back into Nottingham safely.”

Dan Smith, our Chief Executive Officer, added: “Every small business that re-opens is another influence on footfall within the local economy, and another step forward in getting ‘back to normal’. We are extremely proud to have our head office in Nottingham and this work had a feel-good element as we were able to support the city. We are all delighted with the success of this project and the positive impact it will bring to Nottingham.”

Nottingham received £294,601 from a total of £50m of funding being provided from the England European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (and, in London, the intermediate body Greater London Authority) is the Managing Authority for European Regional Development Fund. Established by the European Union, the European Regional Development Fund helps local areas stimulate their economic development by investing in projects which will support innovation, businesses, create jobs and local community regenerations.

For more information click here. 

The post Why You Should Select Us for Projects: How We Helped to Re-Open Nottingham’s Economy appeared first on Retail Assist.

There’s a meme going around the Internet at the moment that says: ‘At least no-one was right in 2015 when they were asked “where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time?”’ Whilst it’s a good example of some situational dry humour, making light of the strange, ‘unprecedented’ time that we all find ourselves in, it’s a sound reminder that we can never know exactly what’s going to happen over the next few years ahead.

Whilst we can make educated guesses or review previous years, deciding on budgets and planning future business strategy can be difficult as none of us can accurately see into the future. However, throw away the crystal ball and step away from the horoscopes – here’s our top 3 reasons why outsourcing your IT can future-proof your business.

1. Reduce your IT costs by 30%

How does saving 30% of your IT costs sound? Many businesses in many different sectors have been hit financially during Q2, when COVID-19 and the safety measures around it were put in place. Moving into the second half of the year, businesses looking to recoup funds and de-risk further, should look no further than outsourcing their managed IT services.

At Retail Assist, we work as an extension of your existing team, meaning that you can work with a reduced team or even hand over your IT operations for us to run, so that you can still receive high quality IT support whilst reaping cost savings. We run a 24/7 IT Help Desk (in fact, it’s won quite a few awards… have a look here) but you can also tap into our team of PRINCE-2 qualified project managers, receive desktop support services (perfect for head offices that are working from home) and enjoy a whole host of other managed IT services that can ensure your operations aren’t affected wherever and whenever people are working.

2. Free up your IT team

It's no secret that the importance of digital commerce and the role technology plays in supporting the customer journey has never been more crucial to business success. However, if your CIO, Head of IT and other IT managers are having to focus on the day-to-day development and management of services, rather than planning for the bigger picture, outsourcing your IT can free up their time to focus on the stuff that matters.

Simon Brealy, Global Service Delivery Manager at Ted Baker, explained just that: “Our service desk were looking after many hundreds of office based employees alongside looking after our retail partners. Since partnering with Retail Assist, we’ve been able to develop what (the service delivery within) Ted’s IT delivers; rather than focusing on 1st and 2nd line tickets coming in across our European estate, they’re now 100% dealt with by Retail Assist.

“Because of the standard Retail Assist has delivered to us, my service delivery teams have been able to focus much more on proactively supporting the business and focusing more on the project deliveries, which has in turn had a much more positive impact on the wider business.”

3. Share the knowledge

Sadly, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic may continue for some time and, with that, comes the potential for further spikes and subsequent lockdowns. If key IT team members are unable to work, for whatever reason, your business could be under threat if they’re the only ones that hold specific skills and knowledge. We are ISO-20000 compliant, meaning that not only are our procedures shared internally, updated and centralised, no matter what the issue is, our tech experts are on hand to pre-empt and solve any issues that might occur. With over 21 years of supporting retail, hospitality, local councils and logistics customers, what our tech experts don’t know isn’t worth knowing.

We pride ourselves on our thorough implementations and quick turnarounds – let us support your IT vision of the future. Click here to get in touch.

The post Ignore the Crystal Ball: Future-Proof Your Business by Outsourcing Your IT appeared first on Retail Assist.

Our Project Management Services are a valued part of Retail Assist’s business model. This blog is dedicated to explaining real life scenarios in which we could help support the success of your business change projects, whilst taking the pressure off your internal teams to deliver.

1 - Growing your store estate in the UK or internationally?

As with last week’s blog post on “Going Global”, more brands are approaching us with international requirements to trade overseas, including opening stores outside of the UK.

As part of our Project Management Services, our dedicated Store Systems and Store Development specialists and Project Managers can deliver store openings, store closures and store refit programmes. All opening activities are scoped, coordinated and carried out, from hardware and software roll-outs, to providing communications infrastructure in-store through our trusted partners.

• Our team have spent many years working in retail and hospitality operations and in-store IT, which means they have the experience necessary to ensure stores open on time and on budget.
• Comprehensive project planning ensures minimal disruption by working around key trading periods, to ensure no downtime and no lost sales.
• We provide managed support of retail & hospitality technology infrastructure for new systems roll-out, with installation of retail systems by industry experts for the smoothest transition.

Over the last year alone, we have managed store opening and relocations for major brands such as Oasis, Warehouse, Karen Millen, and Mint Velvet across the UK and in international locations as diverse as France, Sweden, Denmark and the USA!

Oasis’ new flagship on Tottenham Court Road (worked on by our Store Development team) has been very well received by consumers, press and the industry alike.

2 - Planning to invest in new systems, but don’t know where to start?

New POS? New tablets? New supply chain? Bringing in an expert is often the most efficient way to make well-reasoned business critical decisions, and our independent consultancy services are designed with this in mind.

Our expert project specialists craft bespoke RFIs around your business requirements, carrying out a detailed analysis of the systems marketplace to deliver you the best results. Leaving you to focus on your daily retail business practices, Retail Assist will carry out:

• Creation and management of a requirements document sent out to potential suppliers.
• Evaluation of supplier responses; cost comparison, and management of supplier demonstrations.
• Presentation of shortlisted results and recommendations.

With 17 years’ experience of evaluating, implementing and supporting a wide range of EPOS solutions, Retail Assist was recently selected to independently manage the selection process for a leading British lifestyle retailer’s new EPOS requirement. Commenting on the project, the IT Director said:

“Throughout my career in retail, I have worked with Retail Assist on many key change management programmes of this nature. We needed a partner to independently manage the selection of a new EPOS solution; a trusted partner who could understand our business requirements and translate them into a thorough RFP process that would ensure we found the right solution based upon the functionality our business desired.”

“Furthermore, we took the business decision that the best way to ensure on-time and on-budget systems delivery, was to employ an independent team of Project and Programme Managers, who would work alongside the internal teams and the selected vendor. With their knowledge of our business processes and having managed the initial in-depth EPOS selection programme on our behalf, Retail Assist was undoubtedly the natural choice.”

We have an intimate knowledge of the retail and hospitality systems industry, and are happy to provide consultancy on projects of any size.

3 - Implementing new systems to remain competitive in the market?

Implementing new retail and hospitality systems should not disrupt the day to day running of your business operations. That’s why our Store Systems team is fundamental to any new implementation project.

Rolling out new technology not only requires expert management, but experienced support personnel in place to ensure that every step of the transition is followed to best practice.

Just some of the projects we manage include:

• New systems roll-out across the entire store estate - including fixed and mobile POS solutions.
• Managing and coordinating store openings, closures, and re-fit programmes, provided by a team of IT professionals who have worked in retail and/or hospitality on the front line.
• Continued systems support, including 1^st and 2^nd line Help Desk services.

We have tried and tested processes in place and ISO 20000 procedures, which are continually improved to ensure you benefit from the most cost-effective approach, quickest roll-out and smoothest transition. Using our Store Systems teams takes the pressures off your in-house resources, enabling them to focus on day-to-day business operations.

If you think your upcoming project might benefit from our Project Management Services, just email info@retail-assist.co.uk or fill out our quick contact form here.

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