Case study
Intelligent transformation: how Morrisons gets the best from BI
80+ hours
saved daily across 500 stores
Mastek are always very positive, always got great ideas, certainly ideas outside of the area in which they're just engaged upon. They add value in that respect."
Stuart O'Hara, Head of Application Delivery, Morrisons
Data, data everywhere — so where's the insight?
Even in its earliest days of digital transformation, Morrisons understood the central value of data to business development and success. But, like many large enterprises, it found itself hampered by silos of information from which it was a challenge to extract insight.
Determined to deliver a usable and useful enterprise data warehouse for business intelligence, the company found itself dealing with unexpected delays and spiralling costs as one of its suppliers struggled to resolve a number of issues.
That's when Morrisons asked Mastek to step in and help.
The UK's fourth largest food retailer, Morrisons has around 500 stores and serves around 11 million customers every week. It stands out among other UK supermarket chains in sourcing and processing most of its fresh food through its own manufacturing facilities.
Fresh approach, appetising results
With deep experience in Agile development best practices, Mastek could offer Morrisons a collaborative way of working that started delivering results sooner than expected and with much more cost certainty.
Despite challenging timescales, Mastek started by delivering the first work pack a day ahead of schedule, with no defects. And with each staged release of the solution, Morrisons got useful new intelligence functionality — without having to wait for completion of the whole project and without any interruption to business-as-usual operations.
Mastek proposed a pricing model — combining outcomes-based fixed pricing and a transparent rate card for time-costed work — that gave Morrisons confidence that costs wouldn't escalate uncontrollably. Costs were also controlled through a flexible mix of onsite and offshore resource.
Mastek and Morrisons created a win-win situation by jointly working to transition services offshore, wherever possible, for enhanced flexibility and cost reduction."
Nick Cooper, IT Delivery Director, Morrisons
Besides a flexible mix of agile and traditional methodologies and a compelling pricing model, Mastek offered Morrisons:
- Deep and broad BI expertise
- The flexibility to quickly scale either onsite or offshore teams
- A collaborative 'one team' ethos, with transparency and a 'can do' approach to problem-solving
The transferable skills that they've got, the architecture mindset that they've got, they're fantastic at problem-solving and that's kind of why we want to continue using that relationship."
Michael Holden, Senior Technology Manager ― Applications, Morrisons
Evolving priorities, continued success
With its BI and delivery expertise proven through a number of early projects, Mastek was chosen as Morrisons' Tier 1 Strategic Business Intelligence Partner. Over the years the Mastek team has delivered an extensive programme of BI work for Morrisons, and has expanded the level of engagement to include architecture, high-level design, development and testing (including integration, performance and user acceptance testing).
For example, when Morrisons launched its online site, Mastek delivered and tested an accounting hub to provide the analytics and reporting for Morrisons to manage this critical new channel in partnership with Ocado.
I think their performance on Food Online has been truly exceptional. … The quality of the application and their work has been really, really good. And generally, the reaction internally and with our wider stakeholders has been really phenomenal.
"And in another early project related to price-matching, Mastek development and testing work saved Morrisons more than 80 hours every day across its stores."
Nick Cooper, IT Delivery Director, Morrisons
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