Case Studies - Debenhams
Background
Debenhams is the UK’s leading department store with a turnover in excess of £2bn, over 140 department stores in the UK, a further 40 franchised stores around the world, and a significant online presence.
The original Debenhams store, founded in 1913, was based in London, and is still used by the company for its press and communications activities. Acquisitions of Harvey Nichols and Browns stores followed and the company listed on the stock market in 1928. Debenhams continued to expand rapidly in the 1990s before being bought by a private consortium in 2003, returning to the stock exchange in 2006.
Debenhams was voted the 8th ‘most favourably viewed UK brand’ by Marketing Magazine in 2006, and has expanded in to finance and wedding gift services.
Project Requirements
In early 2005 Debenhams launched a new initiative to offer customers the ability to order currently unavailable items either from within their home store, or by calling a central phone service. Called ‘Debenhams to you’, the service needed a means by which up to 2,500 internal members of the Debenhams team could be contacted to help make the ‘Debenhams to you’ service a success.
“We decided on text messaging as our means of communication early on, however what we needed was a cost-effective solution that could be relied upon twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week”, commented Paul Munday, Debenham’s Technical Manager of Networks.
When a customer places an order through the ‘Debenhams to you’ service, text messages are dispatched automatically to local store mobiles for staff to check the in-store availability of the item ordered. Once availability confirmations have been relayed back, the customer is informed and the item is either delivered to their home or can be picked up at their local store.
Project Solution
Debenhams decided to outsource the sending of the text messages to an SMS provider, rather than build that part of the system themselves.
Following a review and evaluation of SMS providers, TextAnywhere was chosen as Debenhams’ text-messaging partner.
“We originally chose TextAnywhere because their service was swift, good value, and they understood the importance of business-critical applications in a customer-centric organisation like Debenhams”, added Paul.
Project Successes
The ‘Debenhams to you’ service has been a great success with thousands of items per week being ordered through this route. And the decision to use a text service to deliver the store-to-store communication has proven to be a good one.
“We are delighted with the success of this sales initiative. We are equally pleased with TextAnywhere. We have worked with them for three years now, and the service has been faultless, simple to use, and highly economical”, added Paul Munday.
Since the introduction of text-messaging to Debenhams, other applications and uses for SMS services have been found. Daily, tailored sales figures are sent out to store managers, regional managers and directors, as a means of providing up-to-theminute store and region performance data.
The next business area to support SMS services will be within Business Continuity Planning. Text messaging will be used as a means of communication between members of staff, local services, partners and suppliers.
About TextAnywhere
TextAnywhere provides commercial and public sector organisations with text messaging services to enable the sending and receiving of SMS messages from individuals’ desktops, through online and email applications, and a developer toolkit.
Since 2002, TextAnywhere has offered a range of text services that focus on reliability, ease of use, security, and good value, backed up by quality support, from a financially viable, profitable organisation.
TextAnywhere has over 11,400+ UK clients. Clients range from single person organisations, through academia, the health sector, and local government, to FTSE 100 companies. Our client community includes CM2000, Debenhams, Dixons, Harveys The Furniture Store, Leeds City College, Pepsico, Totton College, and Virgin Active.
TextAnywhere is a privately owned, limited company, registered in England, with company registration number 04208390, and is VAT registered with number GB 781 7907 88.
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