The Carphone Warehouse
Boxwood, 2008
Change Management in the Private Sector
Summary
Group Information Systems (GIS) had been hugely successful in supporting Carphone Warehouse (CPW) through its spectacular expansion. However, rapid success was starting to stretch IT capability. So, keeping pace with growth aspirations required a step change in performance and relative reduction in escalating costs.
The business case was to reduce operating costs well below standard industry norms in three years, whilst dramatically increase business service levels. The breadth of the programme would be impressive, spanning technical processes to behavioural change. Therefore the CTO, Simon Post, engaged Boxwood to partner with GIS.
The tangible improvements were impressive with results exceeding business case estimates.
Boxwood brought task dedicated relentless focus from experienced change experts. They acted as GIS’s conscience to maintain momentum, challenging threats from significant ‘Business as Usual’ activity. Boxwood also brought a strong results focus with firm governance, and a leadership approach that encouraged CPW employees to own the various transformations.
The success achieved was wholly attributed to the strong partnership that was formed between CPW and Boxwood. This joint delivery team had a huge impact on business behaviours - emphasised by the fact that GIS is now achieving a greater throughput with less expenditure.
Significant service improvements were made through well managed radical change, and importantly for such a large programme, this was seamless with no adverse impact to users or customers.
GIS can now continue to support CPW’s market-leading customer propositions where speed to market is vital to ensure outstanding customer service.
What was the problem / opportunity faced by the client?
The Carphone Warehouse (CPW) business environment in 2005 was one of deregulation, strong competition and quickly increasing consumer demand, generated by the mobile phone boom. CPW had aggressive growth plans to become a FTSE100 company and this was on the back of already massive growth, which was starting to stretch IT capability and reliability.
The market was being driven by new products and new formats, for example, offers of free broadband. Speed to market was essential. Demands on Group Information Systems (GIS) were set to significantly increase.
GIS had been very successful in supporting the business through its spectacular expansion but a step change in performance or a ‘transformation’ was now required to keep pace with CPW’s future growth aspirations. As an added challenge the GIS cost base had to be reduced.
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