Employing over 27,000 Partners distributed across 180 branches, Waitrose is one of the UK's leading supermarket chains. Owned by the John Lewis Partnership, the upmarket chain has an unusual culture of worker co-ownership and teamwork.
The Challenge
With limited opportunity for incorporating improvements, Waitrose realised that its existing partner training system was coming to the end of its life and that to ensure continued compliance with complex Health and Safety legislation and to enhance the management of training activity, a new solution needed to be found. The company wanted to be able to ensure that scheduling for, control of and visibility over training activity could be achieved through flexible data manipulation and reporting capabilities. An ideal opportunity for replacing the existing system using improved technology arose through Waitrose's decision to upgrade branch IT infrastructure.
The Solution
Having developed the existing training application and the three previous versions, Dorset Software had the expert knowledge that Waitrose needed to develop a new partner training application. Bringing challenge and creativity, Dorset Software consultants worked closely with Waitrose Managers to ensure that Waitrose knew exactly what was required from a new solution. As a result Dorset Software developed the sophisticated, yet easy-to-use Partner Training Database.
The Benefits
The Partner Training Database is already bringing a range of benefits to Waitrose. It is helping Waitrose to maintain compliance with Health and Safety legislation and provide proof of due diligence. Improvements in productivity are evident through the reduction in organisation and administration at branch level. Both Training and Personnel are already benefiting from vastly improved control and visibility over training activity. Training on the system is also greatly simplified with Branch and Personnel managers being trained in just two hours. Finally, the availability of the application on desktops business-wide is helping to educate the wider business on the importance of training.
Technology Snapshot
The Head Office Application was developed using Microsoft ASP.NET technologies connecting to a central MS SQL Server database. Connecting to the same database, the Branch Application was developed using Microsoft.NET technologies. It also interfaces with third party multimedia training CD’s.
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