| Work We Have Completed |
| Jevern Partridge is the main force behind Ridge Solutions Limited. He has retail experience in many traditional retailers including Arcadia, Boots and Marks and Spencer. He also has experience in a retail e-commerce environment having worked with asos.com as part of their senior team during a period of considerable growth. Below is a flavour of some of the programmes and projects that he has delivered. |
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| Scaling for growth - The growth of asos.com had come at a price. Many of their back of house systems were no longer fit for purpose and were struggling to cope with the huge increase in volume. The following elements were overhauled to cope with the growth |
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- Logistics and Fulfilment systems were completely replaced to move from 1 to 3 warehouses, and from 8,000 to 30,000 parcels per day.
- The billing system was rewritten from the ground up to allow growth from 1,500 transactions per hour to 30,000 transaction per hour.
- Image management was improved by autoscaling images for the website instead of manual intervention.
- Created a programme office function for IT including a project portal and standard reporting suite.
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"Jevern came to ASOS to lead some tactical changes to our warehouse system during 2008, and he was integral to supporting Christmas with sales growth of 108% that year. In parallel he led us in selecting and implementing a strategic solution that went live in May 2009. The strategic solution ensures that the domestic and international growth of the business won't be constrained by the logistics function. Jevern's leadership has been fundamental to the success of the logistics and fulfilment operation in our business, and I can sincerely say it's been a real pleasure working with him over the last two years " |
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| Stuart Hill, Head of Customer Logistics, now Head of International Operations, asos.com. |
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| Merger, rebranding and consolidation - Following the merger of Alliance UniChem plc with Boots plc, a decision was taken to convert Alliance Pharmacy (AP) stores (900) to your local Boots pharmacy. The trial stores showed significant uplifts in retail and prescription sales, providing a compelling business case to rebrand the stores. To deliver the rebranding an IT solution for the merged businesses was required. This covered every functional area of the business |
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- Finance - Integrated the core financials of the two separate businesses into a single financial system (SAP).
- IT - Increased legacy mainframe applications to support up to 3000 stores.
- Supply Chain - Scaling the new store opening process to cope with picking stock for the 50 stores per month that would open in rollout. Managing the changes to label printing to support the cross docking of Boots product into the UniChem supply chain.
- Roll out - Managed the tender process to select a partner to deliver the rollout of the new IT equipment required for stores.
- Commercial - Scaled planogram systems to cope with the extra stores.
- Stores - Development of the existing Boots EPoS system onto existing PC hardware. Development to streamline the in store communications interface to provide targeted content for small stores.
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| Ridge Solutions provided Programme Management support for the overall programme and roll out project management support. The team to deliver the programme was delivered from across both merger companies and their partners (IBM, Steria, Infosys and K3). The programme was delivered on time and on budget and was the largest programme ever completed by Boots.
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Replacement Systems Programme Turnaround - Alliance Pharmacy (AP) had grown through acquisition from a chain of 200 stores to a chain of 900 stores with no change in systems. The business had started a programme to implement EPoS for the first time, refresh the central systems and replace the Pharmacy Management System. The business had never embarked on such a programme and after six months a programme audit was requested as the programme was in a requirements circle. |
Ridge Solutions were brought in to the programme to provide the business with an EPoS pilot store in four months, to give credibility back to the programme and allow the business to believe that they could deliver a large programme. We mobilised a small team of consultants, developers and AP staff to work in a sealed environment to deliver the solution on time and to budget. |
| A single store EPoS pilot was delivered in four months. This was followed by an additional 6 stores to test further system functionality. From here a complete rollout to the 900 store estate was commissioned. |
| Following this success Alliance Pharmacy requested Ridge Solutions to undertake the following projects |
- Integration - The integration of the EPoS and financial systems in readiness for the national EPoS rollout.
- Business Intelligence - The development of the initial Cognos data warehouse cubes for EPoS sales.
- Financials - Replacement of the core financial modules including the implementation of an electronic purchase order system.
- Chip and PIN - The development, accreditation and rollout of an integrated Chip and PIN solution to support the rolled out EPoS solution.
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Business2Business - When Arcadia Group purchased the Sears brands of Wallis, Warehouse and Miss Selfridge, those stores operating on their own were upgraded to the Arcadia standard Electronic Point of Sale system. However, sales for concessions within Debenhams still had to be scanned through the Debenhams till and then through the Arcadia till. This was time consuming for the operator, provided an extra till at the cash desk that they didn't want and was inaccurate because not all tags were scanned at the same till. |
Working in conjunction with Debenhams we established standard interfaces to send item prices to Debenhams from the main supply chain system. Having loaded up the prices on the Debenhams tills, it was then possible to retrieve the detailed sales data from Debenhams automatically, using the internet as a transfer mechanism. |
| This provided sales data for marketing, accounts and the data warehouse, and improved store replenishment efficiencies within the supply chain, to drive increased sales. |
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| Euro Conversion - This project had one primary aim, to make sure that all stores were trading normally on the first day they opened after the Euro went live. This covered 250 Republic of Ireland and UK flagship stores. In just six months, we managed the following tasks: |
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- Provided an initial impact analysis to establish what systems would be effected.
- Documented the requirements for the development team to work to.
- Managed the installation of training centres in the Republic of Ireland to allow front line staff to be trained on new procedures before the Christmas rush and the Euro went live.
- Directing the systems helpdesk to ensure that they understood the procedures stores had to complete during the changeover.
- Liaised with the operations team at head office to ensure that manual and computerised procedures kept in sync.
- Liaised with the central accounting centre to ensure that financial controls were maintained during and after the cutover.
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| Not one store failed to upgrade to the new Euro system and this was achieved without any engineers attending site. All stores traded without loss of business over the cutover period. |
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| Data Integrity Improvement - Christmas is traditionally the busiest time of year for retailers and when the number of stores failing to send data each night started to increase, this needed to be stopped. We evaluated the reasons for sales data not arriving at head office and worked with the development team to design a solution to change the order in which data was retrieved. This was quickly implemented and reduced problems by 30% at a key time of the year, and ensured that stock was replenished efficiently in stores. |
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| Supply Chain Solution - Previously stores had been sent a best guess of how many items would be coming in their next delivery from the distribution centre. This was often completely inaccurate and was rarely used by stores. This meant that they were often ill prepared for large (or small) deliveries, and also didn't know what items would arrive in the delivery. |
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| Working in partnership with the supply chain management system, we developed an interface to allow detailed delivery information to be sent to stores before they received the delivery. This allowed stores to see what was due to be delivered, and also allowed them to prepare the shop floor in readiness for the delivery. Where stores could see that they were receiving a delivery of trousers, they could clear this shelf in readiness for the delivery. This helped to speed up the arrival of the new stock onto the shop floor which helped to increase sales and improve customer service. |
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| Where deliveries included customer orders, stores were able to call the customer the day before and let them know the delivery was due in the next day. This improved customer service and increased the chance of making the sale. |
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| In Store System Upgrade - As part of the overall upgrade of the in store solution, we managed the bespoke development of a new stock system. This allowed stores to transfer stock between each other for customer orders, and to ensure that stock was fully utilised. |
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| Stores were also given the ability to check current and future prices on a hand held computer by scanning the bar code. This allowed huge time savings when marking down good for sales and promotions. |
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| Arcadia's view of Jevern's work is given below: |
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| "Jevern's commitment and professionalism on the Euro project was the key to it's success. With regular structured updates, all areas of the project were kept up to date, ensuring that important issues were not overlooked." |
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| Douglas O'Connor, Euro Programme Manager, The Arcadia Group. |
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