How Centrality got Stonegate Pub Company ready to trade, all systems up, in just 5 months.
We're no strangers to pulling out the stops for our clients, but the August 2011 switch on of an entire estate of 330 pubs belonging to the Stonegate Pub Company is an achievement even by our standards.
With the acquisition in Autumn 2010 by the newly established Stonegate Pub Company of 330 pubs formerly belonging to Mitchells and Butler, a transitional service agreement had been put in place with M&B for the ongoing use of its IT systems until August 2011.
In October 2010, Stonegate Chairman Ian Payne approached hospitality and retail solutions consultancy Retail Fix with regard to replacing this temporary solution with a comprehensive IT environment and set of business systems capable of providing Stonegate with its own comprehensive operating functionality for Finance, Payroll, Property, Supply Chain, Machine Management, EPOS (including cash management and full wet and dry stock) and pub infrastructure.
In order to avoid a costly extension of the transitional service agreement, the new system needed to be planned, agreed, specified and implemented, with both out of pub and pub staff fully trained, by the time the agreement expired, then 10 months away.
Centrality to the rescue
Because of our particular expertise in design and implementation of commercial solutions within the hospitality and retail sector, Retail Fix invited Centrality to partner with them on the Stonegate Pub Company project.
At the time we came on board the deal had not yet even been formally completed, and Stonegate’s management and operations teams did not yet have offices to work from, let alone infrastructure or any kind of systems for us to start out from.
Within 10 days, Centrality had provided a head office infrastructure and personal computing service for all Stonegate out of pub staff (around 65 people). This included servers, desktops, laptops, email service, network links, mobile phones and remote working infrastructure.
Centrality and Retail Fix swing into action
Our partners at Retail Fix then recruited a team of 10 project managers with experience of delivering similar projects in the hospitality sector. We mobilised our service delivery team and, together, we set about developing a strategy and plan for Stonegate. On Christmas Eve, 2010 we presented a joint plan covering approach, cost and timescales to Stonegate, and this was approved in January 2011.
The nature of the plan meant that all central systems had to be implemented before the in-pub systems could be rolled out, so that the data from the pubs could be captured and processed from the start.
While a series of negotiations with potential suppliers got underway, we began to address the problem of the 330 pubs all requiring recabling to CAT5 standard in order to accept whatever current technology our solution might specify. As a result, we took the unconventional step of starting to conduct site surveys on the pubs before we had actually selected a suitable EPOS solution.
By early in March 2011 the key elements of the IT solution had all been identified and contracts signed with the solution providers. Only then, with just 5 months remaining before the expiry of Stonegate’s temporary agreement with M&B, were we and our partners at Retail Fix able to start out on the actual delivery of the entire programme.
5 months to make it all happen
While Retail Fix provided all of the programme and business change management team, we provided the entire implementation team, along with all technical design, training and solution development staff. In total, the project implementation team totalled 95 people, including 20 Stonegate staff acting as EPOS implementers.
The first thing to do was to implement the central systems. Along with Retail Fix, we placed great emphasis on planning and designing the end to end solution, choosing products and suppliers we had worked with before and which we knew to be appropriate for, or to understand, the pub business.
We also prioritised a need for the various solution elements to have been combined together previously and successfully in hospitality sector companies, so as to reduce risk and eliminate the need for excessively time- consuming piloting and testing.
Within 6 weeks of the implementation commencing, Stonegate’s new payroll system went live across the business.
OS Installer. Centrality’s secret weapon
To ensure a consistent IT experience at every pub across the new Stonegate estate, we used Centrality’s own OS Installer build, deployment and management suite.
OS Installer reduced the manual activity required to configure each of the 4,000+ devices that we were about to install to virtually zero, ensuring our ability to deliver error free, consistent, outlet builds at the required rate.
Roll-out
A meticulous roll-out plan was by now nearing completion, with Centrality and Retail Fix going to great lengths to ensure that everyone on the project team was focused on delivering a successful outcome. Centrality assumed responsibility for being the face of the roll-out to the pub managers and their teams, as well as for providing them with world class support during this potentially difficult period of change.
With this plan finalised, we and Retail Fix then set about delivering the outlet solution to the 330 pubs.
11 August 2011. The final Switch On.
On Thursday 11 August 2011, ‘The Crutched Friar’ pub in London’s Tower Hill became the last of the 330 Stonegate pubs to come online, beating the TSA expiry date by one day.
The roll out had taken place over a period of 8 weeks, with the last 256 of the 330 pubs going live in the final 4 weeks.
We believe it was a quite exceptional effort by Centrality, by Retail Fix and, of course, by our clients at Stonegate, and a testament to the excellence of the planning, management and implementation we had provided.
While we had been busy rolling out their new system, Stonegate’s management had hardly been idle, either. On 22 June 2011 Stonegate purchased Town and City Pub Company, rolling its 227 outlets into Stonegate’s estate.
By this time, Centrality and Retail Fix’s hard work had ensured not only that Stonegate was able to stand alone from an IT perspective, but that an IT infrastructure and management team were in place within Stonegate able to take over the ongoing support of its original 330 pubs.
This concluded a wholly successful collaboration between Centrality and our partner Retail Fix to deliver a unique and unprecedented programme to Stonegate Pub Company, on time and within budget.
