Solution Case Study

Shoppers Stop enhances employee engagement, fuels innovative ideation

OverviewCompany: Shoppers StopCompany Website: shoppersstop.comCompany Size: 10,000 EmployeesCountry or Region: IndiaIndustry: Retail

Company ProfileShoppers Stop is one of the country’s largest retail chains. It has about 10,000 employees working across 65 outlets in India.

Business SituationShoppers Stop wanted a collaborative platform that enabled ideation, knowledge sharing and an increased efficiency amongst its diversified set of employees.

SolutionShoppers Stop chose Microsoft SharePoint 2013 to facilitate employee collaboration and built ‘Spandhan.’, which currently hosts over 200 subsites.

Benefits Encouraged positive collaboration

amongst the employees Nearly 9000 employees, engaged, over

1300 ideas generated Huge efficiency gains in Visual

Merchandising, Buying and Operations

"…common platform for collaboration… a unique identity for the group… representing core values… The platform had to be innovative and appealing to the company’s employees."

Anil Shankar, Sr. General Manager, IT, Shoppers Stop

The 10000-employee strong retail chain, Shoppers Stop, wanted to leverage the power of collaboration by developing a platform that promoted greater degree of employee interaction and sharing of ideas. It found the answer in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013. The company harnessed SharePoint to develop an innovation platform called “Spandhan” (meaning Heartbeat), which fostered the spirit of innovative ideation and improved process efficiency in the company.

SharePoint CustomerSolution Case Study

Situation

Headquartered in Mumbai, Shoppers Stop Limited has more than 10000 employees.

The company continues to plan for growth in India. From the existing 28 city presence, the company wants to expand its operations to other major cities and enter smaller towns with premium brands.

To enable the growth and foster the culture of collaboration, Shoppers Stop was looking for a platform that could enable ideation from grounds up, knowledge sharing amongst its large and decentralized employee base and bring in efficiency in operations.

“We wanted to create a common platform for collaboration across various entities and present a single identity for the group that represented the core values of organization. The platform had to be innovative, appealing to the company’s employees,” says Anil Shankar, Senior General Manager, IT, Shoppers Stop.

“Through this platform, we wanted to drive process efficiency thus significantly improve productivity and deliver higher return on investment,” he augmented.

Solution

To make this mission a reality with ease, Shoppers Stop chose Microsoft SharePoint 2013 to recreate its company portal ‘Spandhan’ (meaning Heartbeat), which currently hosts over 200 subsites. SharePoint could deliver a lot of functionalities out-of-the-box, which reduced the time in creating these from scratch and go live in 76 days.

Additionally, sections such as Share a Moment, Vacancies, Daily Dilbert, Latest Video, Quote of the Day, Contests, Surveys and Blogs are ideally designed to encourage the interactivity quotient of the employees.

Pune-based C3 IT Software Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Collaboration and Content Partner, implemented the solution for Shoppers Stop.

Grounds-up Ideation

The ideas management sub-site portal spurs the spirit of innovation amongst employees by encouraging them to submit their ideas. The employee, whose idea gets the maximum number of likes, wins a reward and his photo is uploaded on the site. The ideas could range from “cash counter cleanliness” to “printed bar codes on all carry bags for better operations and accountability.” So far, this platform is able to generate more than 1300 ideas in a span of just three months.

The ideas submitted at the store are first reviewed by the store, and then rolled up at a region level for review and the most eligible idea taken up for implementation and review even at highest management level.

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“… Microsoft SharePoint 2013 has been the real force behind Spandhan’s ability to seamlessly weave different interactive collaboration-driven experiences on a single thread.”

Sarika MalhotraChief Technology Officer

C3IT Software Solutions

We have enabled Kiosks at each store at prominent places such as cafeteria where employees can access the portal, submit their ideas in an easy-to-use format and also rate those ideas. In future, we are looking at having a functionality wherein ideas can be discussed on a real-time basis,” says Shankar.

One of the core principles of Shoppers Stop is to enable transparent communications between the employees and the leadership. An employee can now put up a suggestions or question to the CEO, through Spandhan. Thus the leadership team is constantly engaging with the workforce.

The new Visual Merchandizing platform has reduced turnaround time of store review process by 30%. Also task completion is now tied to KRA of VM team members.

An integral part of Spandhan is the new visual merchandising application. Shoppers Stop endeavors towards delivering a consistent customer experience across all its stores and the Central Visual Merchandising team lays down stringent standards for store aesthetics. However, with the number of stores increasing at a rapid pace, the visual merchandizing team was unable able to visit all the stores and hence the execution is delegated to the local visual merchandizing team at each store.

The visual merchandizing team member at each location receives guidance from the central team, organizes the store and captures pictures and posts them back on the tool.

As part of this process, about 5000 pictures are uploaded daily. The new application built on SharePoint now allows the Visual Merchandizing team to review these as a slideshow, along with metadata which captures information of the store, category and so on. If the central team would like to change the display, they can quickly create a task and assign it back to the regional team and the iteration process continues flawlessly.

“Earlier, review of Visual Merchandising process at stores… involved a lot of effort. Today, Spandhan carries a user-friendly interface and saves time by making the review and task management easier.”

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Arden Dsouza, Head Visual Merchandising, Shoppers Stop Ltd.

“Previously, the pictures were uploaded in a folder assigned to each store and it was a very time consuming process. The new system has helped speed up the review process by at least 30% and the effectiveness has increased many folds,” he adds on. Easier dissemination of training content with the E-Library

Another important benefit of this platform is employee training. With Spandhan, Shoppers Stop has been able to create a platform to disseminate training - an interactive, rich media experience for the employees.

Providing training to more than 10,000 employees in a traditional manner was challenging. It not only increased costs but also required more time. By developing a training subsite, Shoppers Stop has overcome this challenge easily.

“We have put in a lot of thought on how to create the right kind of interface so that

employees perform efficiently. The online library and video modules not only facilitate interactivity in the virtual class we conduct but also make the content searchable and reusable for onboarding new employees,” says Shankar.

Benefits

Successfully implemented One Collaboration platform across Shoppers Stop’s 10,000 workforce in 2.5 months.

Ideation platform helped generate 1300 ideas in just 3 months of rollout.

The Visual Merchandizing review process is more efficient with at least 30% saving on time.

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”We approached Spandhan requirements with emphasis on leveraging SharePoint 2013 capabilities to the utmost; side by side focusing on an intuitive and vibrant look and feel for the Gen Y user base”

Amol BhoreManager, ECM & BI

C3IT Software Solutions

SharePointSharePoint is the new way to work together. A simplified user experience helps you organize, sync, and share all your content. New social capabilities make it easy to share ideas, keep track of what your colleagues are working on, and discover experts you never knew existed.

For more information go to:www.sharepoint.microsoft.com

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about C3IT Software Solutions products and services, visit the website at: www.c3itsolutions.com

For more information about Shopper Stop products and services, visit the website at: www.shoppersstop.com

Software and Services Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013−

Partners C3IT Software Solutions