Debenhams significantly frees up staff by simplifying IT project management

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Debenhams significantly frees up staff by simplifying IT project management.

Debenhams is a leading department stores group, with 21,500 employees and 147 stores across the UK and Ireland. A dominant force in the high street retail market, Debenhams has 55 own brands and 25 Designers at Debenhams brands, all of which are highly successful.

The companys Project Management Office (PMO) is responsible for delivering a wide range of IT projects to support the business, and needed to increase capacity without escalating costs. A disparate approach to project management meant that reporting was very time consuming and the team struggled to predict future resource requirements.

Using CA Clarity Project & Portfolio Manager, Debenhams PMO has been able to reduce the time spent creating reports by more than 90 percent. The CA solution also helps Debenhams to identify ineffective IT projects earlier on in the lifecycle to save resources and money.

Faster access to more accurate information enables Debenhams to forecast its resource requirements up to 14 months in advance. The PMO has also been able to increase  IT project success rates and free up staff to spend more time delivering profitable projects that ultimately improve the customer experience.

The companys reach is not limited to the UK and Ireland Debenhams also has 45 international franchise stores in 15 countries. Debenhams has been a dominant force in retail on Britains high streets for many years, and is constantly growing and developing to keep up with changes in demand. The company also offers online shopping, with nearly three million customers a month purchasing goods via Debenhams website.

Increasing capacity without driving up costs

Every aspect of Debenhams business is supported by IT from point of sale transactions and its website to the supply chain, warehousing and general ledger. Dominic Nash, Business Systems Controller at Debenhams, explains, Technology has an important role in ensuring accuracy, efficiency and accountability within the business. The companys Project Management Office (PMO) is responsible for delivering a wide range of IT projects to support Debenhams operations, from the implementation of new technologies and systems to general changes and upgrades to the existing IT infrastructure.

Like many organisations, Debenhams IS Division is under pressure to deliver a higher volume of increasingly profitable projects. Although the PMO had a good governance model, it was keen to reduce the effort involved in administrative tasks to increase capacity without driving up costs. Debenhams was using a wide range of tools for different aspects of project management, including Microsoft Project, spreadsheets and a homegrown timesheet system. This disparate approach meant it was difficult for the PMO to plan for the future and reporting was extremely time-consuming. Phil Bartup, PMO Manager at Debenhams, comments, The quality and consistency of reporting is crucial to our governance model, but without a centralised solution it took a significant amount of time to produce our project status reports.

Delivering more projects without increasing resources

By implementing CA Clarity PPM, as a standard tool for its IT project management activities, Debenhams has been able to vastly improve efficiency and visibility. As Bartup confirms, CA Clarity PPM provides us with faster access to more accurate information, which is key to making informed business decisions.

As a result, Debenhams is able to:

Prioritise IT resources and projects that deliver greatest business value
Increase its IT project success rate
Free up project managers from administrative tasks

By increasing efficiency, CA Clarity PPM has helped grow our capacity for delivering IT projects. This means we can provide greater value to the business and ultimately Debenhams customers, comments Bartup. Following the success of the solution in IT, Debenhams is now planning to extend CA Clarity PPM to its training and store planning divisions.