Member Article

Carpetright improves performance with Kirona

Kirona Solutions Ltd, a leading provider of optimised field workforce management solutions, has today announced the implementation of its software platform for Carpetright (LSE: CPR), Europe’s leading specialist floor covering retailer.

Carpetright piloted the software in two regions during the end of 2013 before completing the full rollout of the software across their 478 UK and 21 Republic of Ireland stores in March 2015.

Kirona’s platform automates and optimises key processes in Carpetright’s field based estimation services, from the stores to the field workforce. Once a customer has selected a floor covering in a Carpetright store, Kirona’s DRS resource scheduling solution is used by store staff to book an appointment for a Home Consultant to visit the customers’ home. The DRS software has visibility of the Home Consultants’ future diary and commitments, thereby allowing Carpetright to commit to an appointment that best suits the customer, whilst also offering an appointment that is most efficient and will incur the least cost.

The field based Home Consultants are a key component in the Carpetright sales journey. The consultants are responsible for taking measurements, understanding the customer needs by applying their knowledge and experience when providing quotes, and ultimately closing the sale whilst onsite. Each morning, over 320 field based Home Consultants receive their allocated jobs to a mobile device via Kirona’s Job Manager application, providing them with full details of their daily workload and the ability to electronically capture job information whilst onsite. The updates from the field worker’s mobile device; provides managers with dashboards and charts of their real-time service performance, such as jobs completed and sales converted, enabling improved visibility and exceptional management.

The project with Kirona.com has not only automated and optimised many processes in the Carpetright service chain, it has also helped deliver cost synergies by centralising service management. Home Consultants are no longer allocated to each store, but are now a shared resource across geographies. This enables the company to better utilise the workforce, providing enhanced coverage throughout the year, including peak trading and holiday periods, and crucially it now works with smaller teams.

Steve Johnson, Head of Central Operations at Carpetright commented “The project has been a challenge, in particular winning the hearts and minds of our Home Consultants. Over the last 25 years they have been used to managing their own diary, however, due to the training and support internally and from Kirona I have been very impressed with the speed of acceptance and their understanding of the benefits this new way of working supports the customer journey, a key focus for all of us. At the flick of a switch we now have full visibility of the Home Consultants’ utilisation and efficiency, customer appointments completed and forward bookings which for the first time allows me to ensure our resource and coverage is linked to the business needs and gives us an understanding of the potential new business due. Our customers can now book appointments by the hour (as opposed to AM/PM) and receive both a text confirmation of appointment plus a reminder the day before, benefiting both our customers and our Home Consultants as the level of aborted visits due to customers forgetting the appointment has reduced dramatically – a win for everyone!

It is early days, we have only just completed the rollout to the whole of the UK & Republic of Ireland, however, an internal review of performance at the end of 2014 (when 75% of the estate was live) revealed over 15% extra turnover was attributed to estimated sales. This earned the Home Consultants extra commission, and importantly with the benefit of the Kirona diary management software, travel costs have remained static.

David Murray, CEO, Kirona said “Kirona has delivered workforce management solutions to over 300 organisations, but this was the first time we have worked with a retailer like Carpetright. We were delighted they put their faith in us and that it has been richly rewarded with a terrific return on investment. As with all projects of this nature it is more than just software, it’s the ability of people to overcome business challenges that deliver success. Kirona and Carpetright teams have excelled themselves in that regard and we look forward to working with them and delivering continued success over many more years to come.”

Find out more at Kirona.com

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Kirona .