Anna Milnes from Pets at Home talks about their digital workplace "The Kennel" and how it is transforming their business

1. THE KENNEL Anna Milnes

2. The Kennel
• Accessible across devices
• Digital workplace solution
• Transforming the way we
work
• ‘Pet Pads’

3. Pets at Home
We have:
400 retail stores
338 Vets Practices
179 Groomers
Our VIP loyalty
scheme has
more than 3.2
million members

4. Pets at Home
We live our values
day in, day out!
95% of colleagues
are also pet owners
In 2006 we established Support Adoption For Pets with a single,
passionate aim to help give abandoned and homeless pets a second
chance of happiness. In addition to its 372 pet rehoming centres in
Pets at Home stores, Support Adoption For Pets is also the UK’s
number one grant giving animal charity, and has supported more
than 1,000 animal charities across the UK and Northern Ireland.

5. Pets at Home
Background: The Retail Operations team identified a need for a more sophisticated tool to manage communications
with Stores.
Before the Kennel, stores received email communications twice a week;
• Every Tuesday the Retail Ops team sent the ‘weekly communications’; an email with a word attachment listing all the
activities for the week plus a combination of attachments or links to folders where related information could be
accessed.
• Every Thursday ‘Catch up Comms’ would be issued outlining any new activities that needed to be completed before
the weekend
• The Store Manager had to complete and return a ‘checklist’ to confirm that all the actions had been completed, and
the Retail Ops team spent a lot of time chasing the status of actions with Stores.
• In general all paperwork had to be printed out, and all emails had to be stored for reference by each store.
Before the Kennel, operational documents were stored on a system called ‘Store Back Office’
and only Managers had a log-in. This meant frequently colleagues could not print off the
new forms or paperwork required to complete a job (e.g. Isolation Room Care Sheet), but
had to wait for a Manager to be available to access the system and print off the document.

6. The Kennel: The vision
All policies and procedure
documentation accessible by all
colleagues
The capability to track
completion of actions
by stores and generate
reports to see who is out
of compliance
A communications tool for
stores to replace the weekly
communications via email
All colleagues can access
information from anywhere
Develop new capabilities:
Publish news to all colleagues
and create regional communities.
I-pad-friendly format for use on
the shop floor

7. The Kennel: the vision
And it definitely needs
the ‘WOW’ factor!
The constraints:
• Colleagues to use their existing till IDs to log-in, so they don’t have to remember yet
another log-in & password
• Only Managers can confirm that actions have been completed
• Only Retail Operations can upload new content to the Kennel
• Launch in September
• Project has a defined budget before it was fully scoped out

8. The Kennel
April May June July August Sept Oct
Sept Launch of
Kennel announced
at Retail
Conference
SharePoint
selected as
solution
Requirements
definition started
Mando invited to
PAH to discuss the
project
SoW finalised, PO
issued
Dev & Demo
SharePoint
environments built
Document & policy
review started
Mando
Wireframes and
concepts reviewed
and signed off
Mando Functional
Spec published
Mando Build
started
User Hierarchy
defined and built
SQL Database built
Nintex installed
and Weekly
Comms and Store
Task web part
developments
started
Document and
Policy review
completed
For delivery a hybrid approach was
agreed – Mando developed the
‘Look & Feel’ to deliver the Wow
factor and some of the web parts
and PAH delivered some of the
webparts, and the infrastructure.
Mando
development and
testing
completed, CSS
and web parts
deployed to PAH
demo
Weekly Comms &
Task Manager
webaparts
deployed to Demo
Documents
migrated to the
demo Kennel
Review
developments in
demo, adjust per
feedback and
review again
Built test,
production and Dr
environments.
All functionality
copied to test
environment
UAT Testing
completed
User instructions
created
Support Centre
Colleagues
(contributors)
trained.
Hierarchies/user
permissions
checked
Functionality
deployed to
production
Go/No Go to
launch the Kennel
01 Oct The Kennel
is launched
4 weeks warranty
period
Failover to DR test
completed

9. What have we learnt since launch?
• Resistance to change is much stronger than expected/
loyalty to ‘Store Back Office’ is high
• ‘Search functionality’ that was implemented was too
complex for the requirement
• Spell check needed
• Big bang launch put too much pressure on the IT
Service Desk

10. What benefits have been delivered?
• Less time spent formatting communications
• Better visibility of compliance
• Improved compliance because stores know they being actively monitored
• Area Managers spend less time chasing outstanding actions
• Retail Operations team can directly communicate with all store colleagues instead
of relying on the Store Management hierarchy to cascade information
E-forms/
Spell Check
Enhanced
Calendar
Dashboards
Rota
Checker
What’s next?