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CASE STUDY
Retail

Preparing Specsavers for a digital future

Global eye care and hearing care retailer Specsavers accelerates digital transformation in partnership with Accenture.

5-MINUTE READ

Challenge

Specsavers is an international company providing trusted eye care service, affordable glasses, contact lenses and hearing care in Europe and across the globe. As the company developed its future vision to become a digital business, it found that its disparate systems hampered its ability to change and be more agile.

Consumers now expect to be able to buy seamlessly from a retailer across any channel and at any time. Specsavers needed to reduce application and technology deployment times by providing continuous service improvement. To speed up digitalization, Specsavers collaborated with Accenture to consolidate and manage its Legacy IT applications and infrastructure. In addition, Accenture continues to help Specsavers develop new capabilities to support its digital transformation.

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What Accenture did

Accenture is working with Specsavers to help manage the performance of all business transactions. As part of the five-year agreement, Accenture is providing Specsavers with the following services across its entire IT landscape in eight European countries, Australia and New Zealand:

  • Application maintenance
  • Application development
  • Application testing
  • Infrastructure monitoring

The team successfully completed the complex service transition quickly, achieving 100 percent service level agreements. Continuous improvement efforts, encompassing automation, analytics tools, an IT template for new store launches and the creation of a centralized operations bridge, are a key part of the service Accenture provides.

Accenture is also helping Specsavers prepare for digital beyond the application and infrastructure services work by conducting:

"This was a tight timescale piece of work and conducted in record time. And I have to say, with absolutely amazing results. A very, very top class piece of work."

— MURRAY WALDING, Global IT Services & Commercial Director – Specsavers

1. Review

Technology process and system reviews to see how the team could bring innovation to daily operations.

2. Innovate

Innovation workshops looking at new business growth areas and connecting them to relevant startup companies that can help solve business critical issues.

3. Assess

An IT readiness assessment for strategic program initiatives.

Value delivered

With Accenture’s help, Specsavers is preparing for new digital opportunities and a future operating model that supports an omnichannel approach. It now has a more manageable application portfolio, with enhanced business services and significantly lowered costs:

10,000

Application batch updates automated.

1,300

Hours saved per month.

50%

Reduction of major incident duration.

56%

Lowering of priority 1 to priority 3 incidents.

5,000

Less service desk calls.

Operations are more efficient, enabling Specsavers to provide a global 24/7 service.

With Accenture’s help, Specsavers can focus on its goal of becoming a digital business and offering customers innovative new products and services. With these improvements, Specsavers can transform the customer experience and build its digital future in an ever-changing, hyperconnected, omnichannel world.

Previously, a single build for new store opening took 24 days. Now it takes just over 24 hours.

Following this work, Accenture continues its support of Specsavers’ growth by helping to improve and modernize its technology capabilities with cloud, intelligent automation and security solutions. This will drive efficiencies across its business and enhance the service experience for its customers, store partners and colleagues. Read the full press release here.

"In working with Accenture, there have been two particularly critical elements as far as Specsavers is concerned. One is the way in which Accenture has helped us reduce deployment times and improve the stability of our legacy systems. And lastly, in terms of helping us prepare for our digital future and the future state that we are moving to."

— MURRAY WALDING, Global IT Services & Commercial Director – Specsavers

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