John Lewis Press Release on £1billion Sales as it Launches Web Platform

Online sales at John Lewis have passed the £1bn mark on a rolling 52 week basis, alongside a successful launch of a new multi-million pound web platform.

 The milestone comes a year ahead of the retailer’s forecast, which had estimated reaching £1bn of sales in 2014.

The department store has invested nearly £40m in its new website during the three year project, which is the foundation for future online growth and its customer-focused omnichannel strategy.

Mark Lewis, who has recently joined the retailer as online director, said: “Passing the £1bn milestone almost an entire year ahead of schedule is a fantastic achievement for us, and a reflection of how central online shopping has become to our customers.

“We have a leading omnichannel strategy which our customers love, but to continue to deliver the service our customers want, we need a website which will serve us as well as the old one did, and maintain our position as a leading innovator in online retailing.”

The new website features new functionality including an enhanced wish list function, search history, and more inspirational content, with more customer-focused functionality planned for the future. With mobile now accounting for over 25% of traffic to johnlewis.com, the retailer has also revamped its mobile offer to mirror the creative design of the main site, and plans to launch a new app with details to follow later this year.

Paul Coby, IT director at John Lewis, said: “With sales up over 40% for johnlewis.com in 2012, we are seeing an unprecedented pace of online growth and customers are making more demands on our website, than ever before.

“The billion-pound success of johnlewis.com is a reflection of our strategy to put the customer at the heart of our online operations. Early testing at every stage of the build, and inviting over 3 million customers to use our beta site before full launch, has resulted in what we believe will be an outstanding experience and journey for customers.

“We have designed the new site to incorporate the best features of our previous site making it not only easy and intuitive to use, but inspiring to shop.”

The site also features a prominent feedback form, which generates around 300 pieces of feedback a day, which the retailer will use to prioritise issues and spot trends.

John Lewis Hits £1billion pa Web Record 1 Year Ahead of Schedule

Here is an article from the Online Sunday Telegraph today, by Graham Ruddick:

John Lewis hits web record sales.  John Lewis have cleared £lbn for the first time, demonstrating the rapid growth of its digital business. The retailer, part of the John Lewis Partnership that also controls Waitrose, said it has achieved the milestone of passing £lbn of online sales over a rolling 52-week period a year ahead of schedule.

John Lewis has built a formidable online operation that allows customers to collect orders from its department stores and Waitrose supermarkets. The news comes in a week when Tesco and Debenhams also underlined the shift in the retail industry. Tesco wrote down the value of its land bank by £804m because it plans to focus on convenience stores and digital operations, while Debenhams said its online business had become more profitable than its department stores. Mark Lewis, the new online director for John Lewis, said it was a “fantastic achievement” for the retailer to clear £1 bn of sales and it reflected “how central online shopping has become to our customers”. Online revenues account for roughly a quarter of John Lewis’s overall revenues. However, the retailer estimates that two-thirds of all customer purchases involve interaction with its stores and website. “There is no such thing as an online shopper, there is no such thing as a store shopper,” Mr Lewis said. “Our customers are now shopping John Lewis across all the channels.” John Lewis is relaunching its website in order to drive a new expansion in online sales. The retailer has spent £40m over the last three years on the project, which allows customers to build a “wish list” of products that they may want to buy.

How IT is Revolutionising UK Retail

Here is the short talk I gave to the UKtech50 about how IT is revolutionising IT in the UK, and what we are doing with IT in John Lewis.

Is there another digital divide in IT in the UK?

As someone who always devours the latest edition of Wired Magazine – and as an Apple fan – I was more than delighted to see Sir Jonathan Ives on the front cover of the July edition as No.1 in the “2012 Wired 100”, who the magazine describes as the UK’s digital power-brokers.

Now, it is notoriously difficult to categorise in groups the digiratti, since yesterday’s web entrepreneur is today’s venture capitalist and/or government IT adviser.

However, whilst stuck on a long train journey I did try and categorise all 100 of the Wired power-brokers, because something struck me forcibly when I flicked through the list, and I wanted to see if it was really true.

It is, as I said, wonderful to see Sir Jonathan at No.1 – and it is appropriate that he has been recognised with a “K”.  No more needs to be said on that.

So here is my categorisation of the 100:

• 25 venture capitalists
• 20 web entrepreneurs
• 9 media/journalists
• 7 conference and exhibition organisers
• 6 IT company leaders
• 6 in government IT
• 5 in advertising
• 4 in retail
• 4 in games
• 3 in politics
• 3 in charity
• 2 authors
• 2 inventors
• 1 consultant
• 1 in telecomms
• 1 private sector CIO
• 1 singing artist (that’s Adele).

What struck me was how different this was from the lists that appear in the CIO Magazines that are aimed at the corporate sector, and this is reasonable enough.  Yes, I know Wired  aims to be uber cool and (ahem) perhaps we CIOs and IT Directors are less so…

So my point is that there is perhaps another ‘digital divide’ in the UK, and that is runs between the web entrepreneurs and venture capitalists on one hand and the corporate CIOs and the IT companies on the other.  The more I think about this, the more it rings true.  We inhabit very different worlds – corporate IT and the web investment world.

This is something of a shame, since – in my own field, for instance – John Lewis is now 25% online company, and retail and many other industries are being revolutionised by web technology.

But, more than a shame, I think this ‘divide’ could also have a serious impact on how IT is viewed as a career and how we train young people in IT skills.

Maybe we should be breaking down the barriers between these worlds?

John Lewis Android app now live

The John Lewis Android app is now available to download from the Google Play app store.

The app takes all the functionality available from the John Lewis iPhone
App and transfers it over for Android users.

The functionality includes the ability to:
• scan products in-store to access further product details and
additional information such as videos
• look at customer ratings and reviews to help you decide on the right
product for you
• watch informative and inspirational videos from our expert Partners
• browse the johnlewis.com product catalogue
• search for products using either keywords or product codes
• see the history of products and videos you’ve viewed
• find your nearest John Lewis via your phone’s GPS and get contact
details and directions, and
• link to johnlewis.com mobile site via the app to buy products if you
find they’re out of stock at your local shop.

To download the app search for “John Lewis” on the Google Play store from your
phone or alternatively you can take a look here:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.johnlewis.android

The Great British Technology Innovation for Retail Event

As John Lewis IT Director, I am getting very excited by an initiative that we have just launched: John Lewis’s “The Great British Technology Innovation for Retail Event”!

Innovation and John Lewis

Most people in the UK know John Lewis for our customer service and for the breadth of what you can buy.  We are increasingly known for innovation in our
shops, our formats and products – and, most importantly, we are known for our unique – at this scale – Partnership Model, which is the foundation of our business and our service.

What is perhaps less well recognised is the John Lewis heritage of technology-enabled innovation.  In the 1960s we were one of the first retailers in Britain to introduce computing into the heart of our business.  John Lewis was an early adopter of electronic point of sale (ePOS) in the 1970s, and we have been a leader in the “bricks and clicks” world with our development of our award-winning jl.com channel, which is now a quarter of our business revenues and growing fast.

We are now looking at how we can introduce new technology even more effectively into our shops.  One recent example has been the “StyleMe” Virtual Fashion Mirror in Oxford Street, which I blogged about here.  In our new store in Exeter, opening this October, we will display our full Store Assortment in about half the space we normally require, using technology.

We want to build on our heritage of British innovation in technology to
build commercial success in the new emerging omni-channel world of retail. We are aiming to build up an “eco-system” of John Lewis technology partners in retail innovation.

So we have invited some of the most innovative and exciting British technology companies and universities to work with us to solve key business challenges through innovation.

We have asked them to identify where they think technology can help meet our business challenges.  The best ideas will be short-listed and the companies asked to showcase their ideas and concepts at an Innovation Day on 5 November 2012, hosted at our Founder John Spedan Lewis’s former home at Odney, on the Thames in Berkshire.

A panel of experts, including John Lewis Business Directors and myself, will then work with the companies to test these ideas and an overall winner will be selected.

The winning idea will be prototyped with John Lewis and, if successful, then rolled out across our business.

This is exciting for us and, I hope, for the innovators – and who knows what will come out of this.  If anyone out there would in principle like to participate, let me know before 31 August.  We are already quite full!

e-skills UK’s Behind the Screen to be available to all secondary schools from September

I now know that I am definitely a real techie, since not only am I very excited today about Team GB’s brilliant  medals at the Olympics,  I am also very excited about e-skills UK’s announcement today that our innovative “Behind the Screen” programme (which creates  materials for teaching Key Stage 4 IT), will now be available to all secondary schools from the start of the next academic year.

 

I think this will open fantastic career opportunities to a new generation of school students in IT, by showing them what an exciting, fun and worthwhile discipline technology is.

 

Here is the announcement today from e-skills UK.  Some useful inks to the “Behiind the Scenes” web site are below.

 

The programme aims to give young people a rigorous grounding in the science and technology that underpin computing, has been in pilot since February 2012, and was originally scheduled for roll out in 2013. However, the excellent feedback from pilot schools, combined with the recent announcements about the future of IT in schools, have encouraged e-skills UK to bring the launch forward.

 

“The Education Secretary’s announcement about the disapplication of the IT curriculum gives schools a fantastic opportunity.” explains Sue Nieland of e-skills UK. “Schools continue to have enthusiastic cohorts of young people wanting to study IT, and a new freedom to adopt programmes which will challenge, engage and enthuse them.”

 

The Behind the Screen website offers a series of projects, presented as interactive online materials, and supported by full teachers’ notes. The projects – three now live, with more in the pipeline – are developed in close consultation with employers, and are based on real life business issues. 

 

Working through them, students will understand computational thinking, develop high level technical proficiency, and gain creative, team working and entrepreneurial skills.

 

Fully mapped to the IT GCSE and equivalent qualifications, Behind the Screen will provide students with an invaluable foundation from which to pursue computing related courses at Further and Higher education level, as well as preparing them for jobs in the industry.

 

“We’ve been working for some time on a new curriculum for the GCSE years.” says Sue Nieland. “To run alongside ‘pure’ computer science, we have created something that has the same depth and rigour but for a broader cohort of students. 

 

“These are young people who want to learn to create games, design apps, to get involved in the exciting and ever developing world of technology, and who are interested the power of technology to solve business and social problems. The extraordinary input of employers has enabled us to create exciting, engaging material to support these students.”

 

For more information please go the Behind the Screen page on the e-skills UK website or visit the Behind the Screen website.

 

Behind the Screen is led by a partnership of employers including IBM, the BBC, BAFTA, Blitz Games, Capgemini, Cisco, Deloitte, HP, John Lewis, Logica, the Metropolitan Police Service, Microsoft, National Grid, Procter & Gamble, Sainsbury’s, SAS, Steria and TCS.  It is supported by funding from the Employer Investment Fund of the UK Commission on Employment and Skills.

Summing Up the SITA/Airlne Business IT Summit

Every year at the end of the IT Summit, I have both the honour and the challenge of summing up the proceedings. 

It’s a challenge since I have to summarise the contributions of the distinguished speakers, and often the results of some interesting debates, and then draw conclusions from them.  I hope I will be able to post both my introductory challenge and my concluding remarks here as video clips. 

Meanwhile, particularly for those who were there, here is a summary of what I suggested were the conclusions of the Summit.  This year it was easier than most years because the presentations and the discussions converged in a remarkable way.

In my opening I said there were 4 “Mega IT Trends” that would hit the air transport industry in the the next few years.  These were:

* the Cloud

* Big Data

* Social Media and

* Mobility

From Tony Tyler’s Keynote in the morning to Henry Harteveldt at the close these themes DID keep coming back.

But there were two additional themes that also came through, which I felt were the glue which will join up these 4 technological Mega Trends.  One was a techie piece of glue and the other was behavioural glue.  

The techie super-glue was

* Web Services

And the behavioural adhesive was 

* Collaboration across the Air Transport Industry or as we in SITA call it Air Transport Community (ATC)

First, web services which Madame Xiong and Dr Krieg from Beijing and Frankfurt Airports – 2 of the leading airports in the World – and our own Jim Peters SITA CTO talked about.  Smart use of web services, open APIs and Service Oriented Architecture could join up apps, data, social media and mobile devices across the industry.

Second there was Tony’s central theme of how the elements of the whole air transport industry – not just airlines – must work together to provide better service for customers, and indeed to ensure that the industry was sustainable.  

Competition will intensify and should, but there are areas where airlines and airports, GDSs and government agencies need to share information so that the whole air transport eco-system works better.  

This is where SITA can help.   As the commercial co-operative company owned by the ATC, SITA can provide an honest broker role at the interface between the airlines, airports, government agencies and GDSs.  As a provider of technology networks and services to air transport we can help “join up the dots” in the new world of the Cloud, big data, social media and ubiquitous customer and employee connectivity on smart phones and tablets.   This would be an interesting reinvention of SITA’s original mission from 63 years ago. 

IT and Innovation

This is always a hot topic.  It is especially topical in Retail since the sector is being revolutionised by technology.

My view is that the IT innovations are important – but not as important as the fundamental changes that we have been and are delivering.

Retail is going through major structural changes as multi-channel becomes omni-channel – John Lewis is now a quarter online, by sales.  And all of this change is delivered and enabled by IT.

In my view, the important IT innovations are not the leading-edge (or possibly bleeding-edge) technology ones: they are the ones that apply existing or proven technology to make the business better.

We have just deployed two innovations with CISCO support;  one for customers, one for Partners.

The StyleMe mirror in John Lewis Oxford Street is clever technology combining a life-sized screen to display video output, a camera that captures gestures and an AI engine that combines images and augmented reality.

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Put together, customers can browse stylish clothes and try them on.  You simply walk up and search for clothing by brand, size, colour etc.  You can see how combinations look, and then print the image or email it to yourself or a friend.

The key thing here is that the technologies themselves are well-established: it’s putting them together that creates the innovation.  The experience is fun and enjoyable, and the feedback from customers and Partners is remarkably positive.

Our second innovation is, on the face of it, very prosaic.  Again with the help of CISCO, we have installed high-quality videoconferencing between HQ and all of our new format At Home stores around the country.

This enables all the stores to talk to each other and to HQ in an effective and easy-to-use way, without the technical hassle you used to get with this technology.  Somewhat to our surprise, we have found it easy to build a business case around savings in travel and time, without having to factor in the qualitative benefits of video.

So it’s not the technology, it’s what you do with it that matters.

Topics at Women in IT Dinner

I was very pleased to be asked to kick off the discussion at a recent dinner for Women in IT, hosted by Spencer Stuart and Qedis.  I promised I would post the topics – and you will see why.

Apparently I was supposed to talk about “multi-channel in retail” but, being in blissful ignorance of this, I had notes on four topics which I am concerned about and I hoped the group gathered around the rather large table would be concerned about too.  These topics are not original but I think they matter to a UK IT audience.

Topic No 1: Social Media is Revolutionising Economy and Society

I started with the usual “Raise your hand if you:

• use Tripadviser
• are on Facebook
• use Twitter
• pin or browse on Pinterest
• have a blog.

I find the hands go down as you go down the list, and that’s fine of course.  No one has to use social media. There are, however, still quite a lot of people who see it as something young people do. Or think that it’s nothing to do with the IT department – just for the luvvies in Marketing.  We had a good discussion and several of the women there had great examples of creative use of social media to connect with customers.

My key point on this topic is that the old web used to be one-way.  Customers bought stuff on your web site and employees got information from the Intranet.  Not any more, though: we all expect our views to be listened to and we expect to connect.  So it is up to you as a company whether you want to listen to your customers and to the people who work for you.  I think there can only be one answer to that…..

Topic No 2: The British Disease

The British Disease is not taking IT seriously.  Sometimes this important question gets reduced or personalised into “Why aren’t there more CIOs on Boards?” – which, to my mind , is not really the problem.

I do think there is something much more corrosive here for our competitiveness -which is that the British political and business class still does not get IT.  It is still OK for top business, political or cultural leaders to make a joke out of technology.  This is emphatically not the case in Berkeley, Boston, Bangalore or Beijing.  In India you pray your bright son or daughter gets a place at the elite Institute of Technology.  But in Britain, Computer Science has one of the highest graduate unemployment rates of any degree course.

In Holywood they make a film about Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, in Britain we have “The IT Crowd”.  They are very few IT experts on the Boards of FTSE 250 companies: they are mostly dominated by accountants.

Would it be acceptable for a CEO or the Permanent Secretary of a government department in the UK to say they cannot read a balance sheet? Of course not – but they can still say “I don’t understand IT” and make a joke about sandals and bad hair.

In discussion many of the women there agreed that this really matters because it conditions attitudes to IT as a profession and to the role of technology in business and society.

Topic No 3: The UK IT Skills Crisis

I have gone on about this problem before on this blog, but a reduction of more than 50% in students studying Computing at A Level and a fall in UK resident applications for Higher Education Technology courses of 44% in the last decade say it all.

The UK IT industry is ageing with the number under 30 at less than 1 in 5 now, and over 50s doubled.  Again this is not the case in other countries who compete with us.

In discussion, we agreed that the unattractive image of IT in the UK and the low status of IT in schools and colleagues were a large part of the reason.  There was great enthusiasm for the new GCSE that e-Skills and others are developing, which will offer school students real programming challenges and opportunities to apply technology to solving real-world problems.

Topic 4: The Gender Imblance in UK IT

As is well known, there is a shocking gender imbalance in UK IT and it’s getting worse.  Only 18% of IT and telecommunications professionals are women.  And only 8% of A Level candidates and 15% of applicants for university IT courses are female.

We discussed why – and, again, image and perception matter here.  Several of the attendees had participated in CC4G (Computer Clubs for Girls) and similar initiatives to encourage girls to keep on IT as an option.

There was general agreement round the table that role models mattered. So remember Ada Lovelace Day this October – what should we be doing to mark the occasion and to raise the profile of women in technology?

So, having urged  everyone to get stuck into social media, I have done my duty and posted these topics. I look forward to your thoughts in return.