18 BACK OFFICE
THE CO-OPERATIVE DELIVERS PAYSLIPS ON
TIME The Co-operative Group is using just a single Ricoh printer to deliver 110,000 payslips on time and 98,000 in a short window.
The Co-operative’s people services
payroll department in the company’s Glasgow offi ce was producing around 80,000 monthly payslips in just three days. But the existing print equipment used to do this proved inadequate when the group took over the Somerfi eld chain of supermarkets and the print run increased by 30,000.
The department installed one
of Ricoh’s 110-page-per-minute Pro production print devices for payslips. Now it is proving so effective, the team is phasing out two of its existing four desktop printers and keeping two for other print functions and as standbys. Lynora Waddell, The Co-operative Group project and systems team manager, said: “One of the nice things about the Ricoh printer is its performance when being used heavily for three days every four weeks. Our other printers used to get jammed and stop working. It seems that the more the Ricoh printer runs, the better it runs and it runs pretty fast. “We are legally obliged to print and
distribute The Cooperative Group’s payslips on time for payday, so the Ricoh printer is at the crux of what we do. If we didn’t have this equipment – and the speed and effi ciency which it delivers – we just couldn’t get the payslips out on time,” she added.
THE CO-OPERATIVE STREAMLINES
fi nancial services provider. With its diverse businesses, the group operates over 5,000 retail trading outlets and employs more than 98,000 staff.
Some of the group has been using eg
work manager, an operational management system from provider eg solutions for a number of years to gain centralised views of all work types, across multiple sites and systems to avoid the problem of individual backlogs and improve end-to-end customer service, even as its business has grown. Adam Williams, head of shared services for the Co-operatives trading businesses, told Retail Technology it was essential part of back-offi ce operations.
Williams explained the software’s implementation was completed early in 2006, across a fi nance shared services organisational structure. “Within days we identifi ed changes in our capability to drive through effi ciencies without affecting customer service or processing levels,” he said. “It drove a lot of cost out of the business, but also value into it, in terms of what we need to prioritise in our planning cycle of work.
BACK-OFFICE FUNCTIONS T
he Co-operative Group is the UK’s fi fth biggest food retailer, a leading convenience store operator and
Six years later we’re still using the system in a very advanced way.” Since then, the Co-operative’s business has expanded to incorporate its merger with United Co-operatives in 2007 and its acquisition of some of Somerfi eld’s stores and operations in 2009. Being able to report on work throughput, backlogs, service standard achievement and quality, and at the same time analyse productivity, staff skills and unit costs has been invaluable to manage such change. Williams said the fi nal areas of
organisation’s businesses were now being integrated into the shared services model, which includes fi nance, human resources and information systems. “The eg system gives us a consistent platform in terms of workfl ow management and allows us to take our process view back to basics and review whether we are applying them as well as we have been in the past,” he concluded.
CSL OPTS FOR PAPERLESS FINANCE SYSTEM
Furniture retailer CSL has become the latest e-retailer to implement LaSer UK’s e-commerce fi nance software, enabling customers to fi nance purchases electronically through CSL’s websites. The paperless system combines online
verifi cation and electronic signatures to streamline the customer experience.
RETAIL TECHNOLOGY NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2011 Jason Tyldesley, managing director
of CSL, said: “As part of our focus on multichannel retailing, CSL is endeavouring to mirror our market leading instore customer experience through our online and direct channels. “Our focus on making order execution simple, fast and effi cient means that we
were extremely receptive to the advantages that e-signature remote credit brings. Our customers can now execute their agreements immediately after approval and we can action their orders immediately, making the process seamless and effi cient for ourselves, the customer and for LaSer UK.”
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