Pets at Home

William Hewish

What are some of the day-to-day challenges in the retail tech space that you are trying to fix?

We have a 450-store network with many pet-related services like dog grooming, puppy clubs, a pet care centre, and vets in all our stores. We are a mix between retail and services, and our strategy lies in driving services to those that require a physical presence in the store.

One of the significant trends in the retail industry is that customers drive change themselves. Retailers are as close to the customer as anyone can be, so they are best aware of the customer’s wants and needs. Another macro trend is the convenience of customers to search, select, research products, order for same-day delivery, collect their online orders from the store in an hour, or connect with store colleagues. Recently, we launched a same-day delivery service, which is an advantage for us because we always have a store close to the central population of the UK so we can deliver from the store. The same-day delivery service is a change in our business model, where initially we would take an order and have highly automated distribution centres where we fulfilled customer orders, which would take days. But now, we use our store network, and with the help of the necessary technology, the ordered product gets picked up by a delivery partner or customers can order online and collect from the store within an hour.

"Aside from ACE, our 20-million-pound digital transformation project Polestar is used to envision all our digital customer journeys, build new websites, and a new app on a platform our development team built"

Another big trend that is affecting the industry is the economic outlook across the globe. The pandemic changed everything we knew in terms of inflation, and that is changing the customers’ behaviours. As a result, retailers are driven very quickly by consumer habits and behaviours, which is good for us. We are lucky to be considered an essential service as we stayed open during the pandemic to provide vet care and food for pets. For pet food, while owners want quality, they also look for better value, which we provide through our own brands. People love treating their pets, but they are expensive, so they come to us for food, bedding, and litter for a much lower price.

Did you take part in any initiatives to enhance the e-commerce experience and what did you think stood out the most?

Two initiatives which really stood out to me were digitalizing our store and recreating and reimagining the digital experience for customers, whether on the app or the website. To digitalize our store, we have a project called advanced colleague experience (ACE), which is getting technology in the hands of all our colleagues so that they know the depth of our data and analytics. We created a chief information officer (CIO) role and a chief data officer (CDO) role, who gathers data. Additionally, the data scientists in our team drive analytics and insights which help customers make the right decision about pet nutrition, products, and more. We started the ACE project to refresh all the technology in our stores with apps our development team built in a way that is easy for employees to use. After the developers create a new app, they take feedback directly from the employees, after which they iterate, redevelop, redeploy, and rework until the app is easy to adopt for employees. After taking the employees’ feedback from one store, it is easy to deploy the app or technology to the other 449 stores because those employees know that it is going to work the way they need it to. Since the developed technology is intuitive, employees are shown how to charge it, synchronize their headsets, and where the different buttons for the various processes are. It also helps to connect colleagues across stores which helps when we need expertise from an employee of another store about a particular pet or process.

Aside from ACE, our 20-million-pound digital transformation project Polestar is used to envision all our digital customer journeys, build new websites, and a new app on a platform our development team built. Our customer experience is unique as it is hard to buy an off-the-shelf solution that fits a business that looks like us, and we are building the platform to create the experience we want.

What advice would you give to the senior leaders or CIOs in the space for the implementation of innovative technologies?

My first advice would be to get as close to the customer as possible to understand their needs and expectations from the company. By putting the developers in the store, they can understand the business and what customers truly want for their pets. When businesses get out of their comfort zone for their customers, it gives a better outcome than the traditional way of trying to create products and technology. My second piece of advice would be that CIOs have to face that consumer habits change as they face the economic outlook. Technology has evolved in the past few years, and we have to overlay the trends and the direction of travel. Additionally, it is critical to bring technology to help customers with developments in AI and machine learning which helps personalize the products for the customers and help them find value in the company.