Smiths News is the largest UK based wholesaler of newspapers, magazines, books and consumables, serving over 24,000 retailers. A leading player in one of the worlds fastest moving supply chains.
Smiths News
Project Context
Smiths News looked to combine 2 of their current warehousing sites in Dublin, all with different functions, into one site with an aim to improve process efficiencies. The project consists of both the physical element and the technology element, combining a variety of IT and processing systems into one main system. The move would require excellent project management for logistics and IT setup. As such, Nine Feet Tall were brought on board to provide their expertise in project management to ensure a smooth transition.
Project Delivery
An initial requirements phase would involve Nine Feet Tall collecting user stories and cases to understand how the current systems were being used allowing areas for improvement to be identified and planned for. This phase informed the design and implementation process, ensuring Smiths News would have a new central system to fit their needs. A rigorous testing phase would follow, analysing users results and journeys of the updated system to iron out any issues but to also agree upon a final solution. Nine Feet Tall worked with both Smiths News, Newspread and the system developers to ensure Newspread would have a system that delivered both accurately and efficiently, but also remained user friendly to ease the change transition.
Nine Feet Tall worked closely with the key stakeholders at Smiths News and Newspread to ensure their change delivery process was adhered to. The process would see that all the right people would be in the right place, would be aware of their new roles within the system, would be communicated with at key impact points to allow for a better change transition, and importantly would be highly capable in using the new system from go live.
Outcome
Precise preparation resulted in Smiths News switching on their new system in the new central warehouse earlier than the planned go live. Not only this, but there was also zero impact to operations, a somewhat unheard-of achievement when implementing a new warehouse management system. Smiths News, Newspread and Nine Feet Tall achieved a seamless transition.
RFQ- (Request for Quotation)
Smiths News approached Nine Feet Tall with some further project management help around their quotation processing legacy systems. With multiple subsidiaries of the brand working across varying quotation platforms it was identified by the Smiths News team that by combining these systems into one central hub they could improve their process efficiencies. Nine Feet Tall were brought on board to develop, shape and deliver a new central system called SAP.
Nine Feet Tall collaborated with Smiths News to identify key requirements of the new system to enable a streamlined design and implementation phase. Feeding back to key stakeholders and users allowed for a testing process before stakeholder agreement on requirements was reached. Nine Feet Tall could now implement the new SAP system to meet the needs of Smiths News and their subsidiaries.
