Boots PLC

Boots is one of the best-known retail names on the high street in the UK. Their headquarters is on a campus site near Nottingham containing some 24 buildings that the FM department looks after, eight of which are the core buildings for which John Litherland is the Office Services Manager.
We are talking about the new Planon system that has recently gone live at Boots. It is an extensive system that uses the Helpdesk, Reservations, Space Management and Inventory Management modules, as well as Work Orders, Visitor Management, Personnel and Address Management and Alarms.

Smarter and more efficient processes
"We had previously gone through a restructuring of the Office Services Group, and that had made it apparent that a software package was needed to help us pull the new, smarter and more efficient processes together. Planon was the ‘enabler’ for that, if you like. Before Planon, we were using five or six separate packages – one for the catering, one for the reservations, spreadsheets… and they weren’t integrated at all. So there was quite a bit of legacy data to get into Planon. We’re careful about the architecture of our own ICT infrastructure and there are quite a few restrictions that we’ve enforced. Our own ICT staff managed the implementation, working closely with Planon."

Processes not set in stone
Was it a question of making changes to the work processes, or configuring the system to suit the Boots way of working? "The beauty of the Planon software is that it is an off-the-shelf package. That was something we wanted, instead of bespoke software. But we also wanted configurability as we recognise that our processes are not set in stone and may need to be changed in the future if we see opportunities for improving efficiency as a whole."

Call centre reduction
"Although the system has only been live for something like eight weeks, Boots are already beginning to see some savings being made. "We had twelve people on the helpdesk and seven FM advisors – nineteen people at the call centre, then, handling the needs of all our internal customers on the main site here. The processes were being reworked as well, so it’s not all down to Planon of course, but that figure has now been reduced to just six."

Intuitive interface
"There are something like 4,500 people here who now have access to Planon over the intranet. It looks like our own application, either letting people log on directly with the settings they’ve used before, or through a step-by-step guide – with a shell around it so to speak. The interface to Planon is actually quite intuitive, so we decided to do it that way and only provide direct training for key users, the managerial secretaries and others who we think will be the main users."

Movement and Relocation
John Litherland is well aware that Planon can offer more than what Boots currently use. "Right now we’re using it primarily for all sorts of office services and for the call centre. But in an organisation like this, people are often moving or teams are being relocated. And the links to AutoCAD could certainly be useful for that in terms of planning."

Get your ICT people and the end users involved
The implementation at Boots was successful, despite the fact there was a tight schedule and Planon themselves had to follow Boots’ ICT project guidelines and programme and only the key steps of the full Planon Implementation Method. "I think an important piece of advice is to make sure that you have your own ICT staff on board, of course, together with the end users. Find yourself a ‘super-user’ who they can refer to. Get people involved."