Mark Dearnley, COO Boots Wellbeing

Were having a good year so far. We launched now eighteen months ago and were sort of 250% up on this time last year. Were now over 450,000 customers on our database, and we expect that very soon to pass the half a million mark.

Jon Longstaff, Systems Architect Boots Wellbeing

Well I think really weve carried on the journey weve carried on maturing as a company, understanding a lot more about how we operate and I think thats one of the things weve really focused on the last couple of months, is understanding our operations and understanding all the value levers weve got. And now weve been extending that to the customers as well, understanding what the value levers for our customers are as well. What do they need from us and what do they want.

Jon Longstaff, Systems Architect Boots Wellbeing

The one area we have moved theres been a significant change in is weve built on our implementation of CRM we did last year. Initially we only did campaign management, which was what we needed at the time, weve now extended that, built on that foundation to actually run the whole call centre through SAP using the CIC module. So now instead of the call centre staff using a standalone system they use an integrated system. So when somebody calls them up on the phone they have all their records there, they know what theyve ordered, they know what marketing e-mails weve sent to them recently, theyve got that complete picture of the customer that they never had before.

Mark Dearnley, COO Boots Wellbeing

Getting to know our customers is something were really working hard on. With all the data weve been able to capture through CRM were now starting to actually segment them, both against their value and also against their needs. Weve got the tools in place, weve got loads of data, we need to make sense of that data. So I think for the next six to twelve months all of our work will be focused around data analytics within BW. But as of right now its doing everything we need.

Jon Longstaff, Systems Architect Boots Wellbeing

What weve found as weve implemented all the CRM solution is, as with a lot of things, retail industry stresses things. SAP are really understanding that retailers have specific needs, particularly around the volumes of customers and the volumes of transactions that just make us different from other industries. But yes were getting there, were running on those lines.

Jon Longstaff, Systems Architect Boots Wellbeing

What we did after last Christmas was we looked at the site, at how people used it and just got a good understanding of what the things didnt work and what were the things that did work. So weve done lots of little things this year, weve changed the way you check out slightly, weve changed the way you see promotions slightly. One of the big things weve done is now we can offer personalised promotions, which is actually driven out of SAP CRM.

Mark Dearnley, COO Boots Wellbeing

I guess advice to someone about to do this would be, try and do it really quickly, and get it in and get it working, and then improve it when its in.

Jon Longstaff, Systems Architect Boots Wellbeing

From having the CRM module up and running and running the Campaign Management, we then spent another 12 weeks implementing CIC.

Mark Dearnley, COO Boots Wellbeing

We worked with Peppers and Rogers for them to assess the actual return weve got of our investment in CRM. They looked at the areas weve implemented of Campaign management and the Call Centre. I think the numbers they came up with were about a 77% return of investment paying back in about 13 months. We actually think its slightly better than that because we only gave SAP the benefit of the software improvements rather than the process and the people so were actually much happier than that, we think it will be less than nine months.

Interview conducted by Sarah Turner, Customer Marketing Manager, SAP UK on 5th September 2002.

Boots Wellbeing Part 2 (4mins 52secs)