What does digital innovation at a leading retailer look like?

Grayce Analysts, Rebecca Shaw and Angharad Crabtree share their experiences supporting digital innovation at leading retailer, Pets at Home.

What's a typical day in your role like?

A: I spend the majority of my time in the Business Analyst role for the Success Factors project, which is a Human Capital Management software. I bring an analytical perspective, thorough and precise documentation and good collaboration and communication with the team and stakeholders.

I’m responsible for completing process documentation, requirement engineering, gap analysis, business case development and taking steps to ensure business readiness for product launches.

In addition to this, I also assist with some of the programme management aspects of Success Factors, providing key decision-making information to our steering group and assisting with change requests and governance.

R: After around 18 months of supporting various projects with a number of different tasks, I'm now in a full-time Business Analysis role. I bring good stakeholder management, curiosity and the confidence to challenge current ways of working and thinking. Every day is different and very much depends on the status of the project.

Before Covid-19 I was working on a different project, which ultimately got de-prioritised. I was then moved onto the Click and Collect project straight away because of the urgency for this to be implemented quickly.

In my current project (Click and Collect), I began with requirements gathering, moving onto business process mapping, and will be soon moving onto supporting with business readiness tasks to help with the implementation. Throughout these tasks, I have been in consistent contact with Ecommerce, Retail, Customer Services, the IT Service Desk, Supply, Facilities and Profit Protection.

Why is your assignment important?

A: Pets at Home have for a long while, depended very heavily on manual processes and paper-based documentation. Success Factors will allow the People Team to have an electronic database for colleague data, online learning, recruitment and a social platform all under one SAP product.

R: Same day Click and Collect is a service that is currently offered at a number of retailers. Part of the reason that we’re implementing this is to keep up with the competitive market. But the recent pandemic has increased the need to make the shopping experience as quick and as easy as possible.

How is your client driving innovation?

A: Pets at Home are very-forward thinking in terms of their approach to adopting new technology solutions. I think that the urgency of COVID-19 demonstrated how quickly they were able to implement critical systems such as Click and Collect and Go Instore video chat.

R: In addition to this, since COVID-19 we’ve introduced contactless collection which is being trialed in select Pets at Home stores as we speak.

Why do you think your client uses Grayce Analysts?

A: I think that other Grayce Analysts made such a good impression with the wider team that Pets at Home were keen to engage with more Grayce Analysts. They have been very impressed with the training we undergo and see us as a part of the Pets at Home team.

R: One of the Project Managers had worked with Grayce at a previous place of work and was impressed, so brought the idea to Pets at Home. I think all Grayce Analysts have a great work ethic and are willing to get stuck in and do whatever we can to help out and it really shows.

What do you like most about Grayce? 

A: The autonomy we get at the client site and the freedom to shape our own development programme.

R: The community! I've honestly not met a single person through Grayce who I haven't gotten along with. Everyone is so willing to help others, so we can learn from each other’s experiences which has been invaluable to me.

Find out more about how Grayce supports leading organisations nationwide