This month, Martin Schofield took on the challenge of streamlining Harvey Nichols’ global operations, with the aim of replicating the success of the transformation that he has already led as head of IT and logistics.

After joining the upmarket department store chain in 2003 from fashion house Burberry, Schofield introduced a five-year change programme with IT at its heart.

The first year of the overhaul involved restoring the reputation of the IT department (see below) as well as driving a cost-control exercise and a re-evaluation of vendors to ensure value from technology contracts.

“During the initial six to 12 months, it was all about stabilisation, cost containment, understanding what we needed or did not need and demonstrating that I knew what I was doing,” said Schofield.

Preference was given to mid-tier suppliers rather than the large, global players.
“I cannot justify spending tens of millions of pounds on an SAP implementation ­ not for a company of this size. So we tend to look for more sensibly priced products,”
said Schofield.

“Another benefit of using small and mid-tier suppliers is that they are more flexible in terms of the construct of the deal and our requirements. We both get value from the relationship and work very closely, so I find that much more rewarding.”

Once the new suppliers were chosen, Schofield set out to build the firm’s core platforms, starting with warehousing and logistics systems to support the move of
a main depot from London to Northampton.

In one weekend, the merchandising, point-of-sale and warehousing systems went live, after a year of signing deals with suppliers and developing, tailoring and piloting the new setups.

Another project was the introduction of virtualisation at the firm’s datacentre to meet requirements around PCI-DSS payment card compliance and security.

The business faced challenges adapting to the new systems, said Schofield, with the warehousing platform being the most fraught.

“Like any large implementation, there is a period of disquiet where everyone hates you because it is all different and nothing is as perfect as you would like it to be ­ but that is part of the IT world,” he said.

Schofield shadowed Harvey Nichols’ commercial director for a few months before the director’s recent retirement, which led to the additional responsibility for store strategy worldwide.

A number of new IT-led projects aim to take cost out of the business, alongside initiatives such as customer relationship management and service automation.

“Investment has to be justified ­ it is not just spending for spending’s sake. We are not going to massively expand this year as it is not the right time, but we won’t scale down,” said Schofield.

“However, I would like to offer a service along the lines of: ‘We don’t have that item in store but we’ll get it for you’. The implications of that simple statement are quite big but I would like to provide more information to customers on the shop floor as a real service differentiator.”

Schofield hopes that his diverse remit will help to boost the profile of IT as a whole.
“To a certain extent, my technology background helps as I can see end-to-end process and the obvious efficiencies that can be introduced. It also gives more credibility to IT and makes things easier to implement as I have control over the entire supply chain,” he said.

“I have to be perceived as a retail operations director and not as some IT boy made good.”

Overhauling the IT organisation

One of the areas Martin Schofield had to tackle when joining Harvey Nichols six years ago as head of IT was the organisation of its IT department.

“It was about gaining trust with the chief executive to start with. Systems were not badly maintained – sales would usually be there on a Monday morning, but not always. It got to the point where IT may or may not have delivered something,” he said.

The issues were eased by the implementation of a real-time infrastructure that allowed better visibility, as well as new procedures and checks brought in as systems were migrated to a new setup.

As a result of the reorganisation, the IT department is now completely integrated into the business, said Schofield.

“We pitch ourselves as an internal consultancy, with a strong business systems component. I hate the whole debate around ‘IT in the business’ – we are here to understand how the business works end to end, so we are an integral part of it,” he said.

“The perception of IT is very important to me – my team will do their best to deliver and if they are not, that’s my problem as a manager. But if they are doing their best, people should learn to live with it.”