Burberry to roll out Chatter to 9,000 staff

Luxury tailoring firm plans to have all employees on the collaboration tool by the summer

Luxury tailoring firm Burberry is rolling out Saleforce.com's collaboration tool Chatter to all of its 9,000 staff this summer.

Speaking at Cloudforce today, John Douglas, Burberry's CTO, said that the vision behind the deployment began to take shape last year.

"A year ago Angela [Ahrendts, Burberry CEO] and I met with the Salesforce team [in a restaurant] and sketched out a vision of our social enterprise on a napkin."

Today Burberry has 4,500 users on Chatter, and is now rolling out the tool to its retail staff, with the aim of better connecting them to the organisation.

"We will have everyone on Chatter by the summer, that's 9,000 staff," added Douglas.

He said that the firm uses Chatter across all areas of its business, with around 900 groups so far created to promote employee collaboration around different issues.

"We use it for everything," said Douglas. "We have a group of 162 members in tailoring, sharing sales figures and stories. The feedback from staff has been extraordinary."

Although employees have now taken to the tool, he admitted that there was an initial reluctance from senior levels.

"There was scepticism initially from senior staff, but then they began travelling and engaging with staff around the world and seeing how they are connected. It has now really taken off."

Douglas explained that the firm uses SAP for much of its back-office functions, along with Salesforce for its front-end, and the act of joining the two systems together is what will drive the business in the future.

"These technologies are not mutually exclusive. We need Salesforce for front end, and SAP for back end. Join them in the right way and we'll lead the field in the luxury industry."