Orange

Delivering best practice asset performance through exceptional store delivery

Orange UK, part of France Telecom Group, outlined a new customer service strategy to include new stores, customer centres and a new online virtual shop, as it was trailing other mobile phone/telco retailers by at least 100-200 stores. Therefore, an ambitious store acquisitions programme and re-branding objective was launched in 2007 complimented by a back-of-house upgrade programme. The goal being to grow the business income, through delivering the stores as quickly and cost effectively as possible, without growing the Orange organisation.

Creating solutions

As the outsourced delivery partner, EC Harris in conjunction with Cushman & Wakefield (for acquisition and disposals), were brought on board to deliver the 2007-2009 programme and to act as a member of the Orange ‘extended team’.

"Using EC Harris Retail roll-out best practice, we created a ‘one stop shop’ Programme Delivery Model, designed for the high volume small format rollout with aggressive turnaround times."

The Programme team worked closely with the client to manage the ‘end-to-end’ store delivery through survey, retail formatting, procurement/supplier management (applying an innovative category management approach). Furthermore, project management, cost management and web-enabled communication tools, including benchmarking, project profiling and document management, were applied.

Adding value

The following results have been achieved to date:

• Delivery of the new and re-fitted stores has enabled Orange to achieve record sales despite the economic challenges in the market, which means that the investment plan is on course for 2008 and 2009 so that Orange can extend its existing retail base to 400 stores, all re-branded in the new format.
  
• By the end of 2008, over 100 refits and over 30 new stores will be delivered with £3 million cost savings versus comparisons with the previous re-brand programme in 2005, whilst maintaining an average of 6 to 8 stores per week.

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