Pets at Home’s director of information technology unleashes IT on the customer experience

At a time when other IT leaders have been forced to cut back on investment, relocate projects and settle for limited resources, Pets at Home Information Technology Director William Huish is in the midst of a transformation by hiring IT teams and investing more in technology. always before.

The boom in pet sales, emerging veterinary practices and the return of dog breeding services have shown that the pet retailer listed on the FTSE250 list exceeds forecasts, even during COVID-19.

“Last year was the first time in the company’s history that we invested more in technology than anything else,” said Huish, who described his own role as half “managing the business with the rest of the executive team” and half overseeing technology and technology. teams.

“It’s a lot for a store-based business – we have over 450 stores and over 460 practices – to spend more on your technology than its fabric. That’s a big leap. “

Huish, the former IT chief of United Utilities and Severn Trent Water, says he is now in the midst of a booming digital transformation with approximately 45 startups and runners.

The COVID-19 pandemic blurs the physical and the digital

Considered by the UK government to be a major retailer during COVID-19 and thus able to keep its ordinary stores open, Pets at Home continued to grow and deliver optimistic profitable presentations as it switched to online, click and collect orders. Honeymoon rooms and pet sales were paused for a short time, but have since resumed.

The group reported revenue growth of 18% to £ 677.7 million interim results for the 22nd financial year, driven by retail, omnichannel, veterinary business and subscription to pet care plans and membership clubs. In a statement, the company attributed part of the growth to stronger-than-expected and continued growth in the pet population.

Hughes says the company took advantage of special resources built before March 2020, according to the pandemic. He had already included a new RPA / automation team, implemented a digital development feature, strengthened his service desk, and hired a business change feature because “it’s not just about technology, it’s about how to make that change.”

There was already a separate data team reporting to a colleague of Huish’s chief data officer.

“Because these opportunities were built before the pandemic, it meant we could be really flexible during the pandemic, focus our business and respond to change,” he said.

Huish says that the “blurring” between digital and physical is already under way in retail and that the company is “experiencing a huge influx of digital and online orders.”

The developers of Pets at Home built a new contactless collection system using their mobile application and QR codes, which was implemented in stores within weeks. The chain also implemented store delivery services and clicks and pick ups while customers can talk to branch members over the phone through Pet Expert Live. Its Vet Connection service also connects clients in need of veterinary advice digitally with veterinarians and veterinary nurses.

Co-creation with colleagues for a better customer experience

Hewish has prioritized the development of services in the company and cooperation with colleagues from the store. The Pole Star project has built a new digital platform to “recreate every interaction” that Pets at Home has with a client.

“We will have the customer’s path from end to end,” says Huish. To do this, home delivery teams are building the platform, application, website and booking platforms – “everything below for the whole business”.

The rationale behind such a decision was twofold, Huish said. The complexity of Pets at Home as a retailer, veterinarian, dog care service and a handful of related digital businesses meant that it could not get an adequately prepared solution. In addition, a consistent customer experience had to be managed everywhere.

Pets at Home is implementing SaaS platforms, which are micro-services, API-first, cloud-based and headless (from MACH vendors) hosted in the Microsoft Azure ecosystem. Developers are developing at the core of the platform, using the latest .NET technologies to integrate SaaS APIs and services to create a unique customer experience, while previous teams work with React and Optimizely to develop websites and Swift and Kotlin to development of internal applications.

Another Hewish project involves the IT team working with colleagues from the store to implement digital technologies for retail outlets. In a test to prove the concept in Liverpool, Zebra retailer headphone devices are used to digitize inventory checks and fulfill customer orders.

Recoding in motion

The smartphones run on Google’s Android operating system and include dual-face cameras, a barcode scanner and NFC functionality for future payments in the aisle. Pets at Home has developed internal device applications and uses the Kotlin programming language to build functionality on Microsoft products such as Teams. The device also connects to Polestar so that staff can use the company’s pet data and insights and pet care products.

Having physical development teams in stores means they can get instant feedback from retailers who will be using the technology.

“They get the latest version of the app, go out to the store and talk to the store manager or one of their colleagues and show them what they’ve done,” says Huish.

“A colleague usually says, ‘Wow, that’s really good – but that’s not how a conversation goes when you talk to a client, it has to go that way.’ So, they go back to the office, recode it, and come back.

“This joint work was brilliant. Our developers like it, and obviously our colleagues in the store like it too, because what’s coming out the other side is something that’s really usable. “

Transition to nimble, clouds in the first place and “suffocating” heritage

Huish says his teams use a combination of flexible and waterfall methodologies.

“You don’t want the big bang, you want slight changes and alterations, so you don’t have this big retraining … implementation … or testing attempts. It’s just a lot safer and faster. “

As such, Pets at Home is moving towards flexibility for faster projects and smaller releases, several times a week.

“We are big in flexibility, we are first in the cloud and … the new things we are building in Azure,” he said, adding that inherited financial burdens are also migrating to the Microsoft platform. “We have some cloud providers … SuccessFactors is one, we use Salesforce in our contact center … and our data is in GCP, which is great for data. So it’s definitely multi-cloud, but it’s a cloud strategy.

Hughes says Pets at Home really relies heavily on two-speed IT, mixing new and older technologies – citing SAP databases as one such example – but he believes CIOs need to “think less to replay the inherited card ‘.

“We call it a legacy, but that was the right thing for the business at the time. You need a strategy that is about building new digital platforms and suffocating the old ones. ”

Pets at Home has a “suffocation strategy” that sees new features being turned off on older systems.

“In the background, we withdraw the old functionality and continue to do so, as each team brings new things online until we stifle the old platform – we bypass it with the new platform and then we can transfer all customers completely through the new platform and replace the old one completely . ”

Preparing for a “noisy” digital transformation

Hewish’s immediate focus is on continuing the “noisy” transformation, keeping pace with heightened business expectations, as well as recruiting flexible professionals and scrum masters. He is also well aware of maintaining a certain cultural resemblance in a world of hybrid and remote work and continuing the promising work on diversity and inclusion – 36% of the IT team are women and Hewish is a co-sponsor of the Gender Diversity Network. the company.

“We are at the top [of transformation] “The projects are really noisy,” said Huish, who began his career as a management intern at Booker’s wholesaler before joining the ranks of project management.

“The next 12 months will be difficult and the team is ready. I’m still recruiting and expanding the team – we’re about three times bigger than when I started [in 2018]. By the end of the year, our platforms should be operational. So the hard work on the plumbing has to be done and then we are at the top of the cake – the good changes and features, as well as the opportunity to make a change and see the reaction of customers immediately. “