"The Benefit of PMC's approach to resourcing is that they take all the hard work out of finding resources. They are proactive, take the time to understand our requirements in detail and only present for interview candidates that match those requirements. The quality of the people they have provided has been excellent. Their 'insider knowledge' of retailers' needs, is a significant asset."
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 Retail Perspectives
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Kingfisher
 Kingfisher Corporate Centre has recently implemented a number of strategic IT projects to improve business communication and increase accessibility to business information. These projects include the development of a web portal that enables Kingfisher staff to access information via the Internet.
“Kingfisher is one of Europe’s leading retailers operating principally in the home improvement and electrical markets. The company employs over 90,000 people in more than 1200 stores across 16 countries and comprises some of Europe’s best known retail brands including B&Q, Castorama, Comet, Darty and BUT among others”
Web portal access to business information
The scope of their operations mean that Kingfisher’s personnel spend a significant amount of time commuting between mainland Europe, Asia and the UK. This makes it essential for them to remotely access business applications from anywhere in the world.
Hugh Jones, Head of Corporate IT, Kingfisher plc, describes the development and operation of the system: “We wanted to provide our people, with world wide access to business applications. Using the web was the most sensible solution.”
“We selected Citrix technology to enable the applications and engaged Paul Mason Consulting Ltd. (PMC) to assist in developing and deploying the project. We used a Citrix module (Nfuse) on the front end of our Citrix environment, which web enables applications. The project was implemented in an extremely aggressive timescale with the pilot phase of the project, which has 50 users, being up and running within 16 weeks.”
Kingfisher and PMC worked closely on the project with key people from PMC joining the Kingfisher IT department and in the words of Hugh Jones: “The PMC people worked at our offices and became an integral part of our team. Their approach is excellent and they understand our culture.” Kingfisher provided the technical resources for the project and worked closely with Citrix and their partners, with PMC being responsible for overall management of design, development and delivery of the project.
Delivering immediate tangible results
Hugh Jones describes the benefits: “There are immediate tangible results. Our staff can connect to our systems and access key applications from any workstation, world wide via an Internet browser using standard browser software. For those operating companies that are not on our private network it offers access via their local Internet Service Provider rather than slow, unreliable dial-up connections, which depend on modems and analogue lines.”
The delivery of a single web access portal enables Kingfisher to provide its staff with access to key systems and corporate information plus individual personalised gateways into applications and data depending on role and responsibility. To ensure security a fully encrypted messaging and security authentication process ensures that access to corporate assets are ‘ring fenced’ behind centrally administered firewalls.
“The project has delivered a number of additional significant advantages,” explains Hugh Jones. “We have a truly scaleable system to protect our initial investment and support our future business requirements. Also, we have the ability to deploy non-web enabled applications quickly and securely from a single seamless environment.”
“We benefit from faster and easier application deployment to users. Access to systems is not only faster it is more flexible, which in turn, improves communication, decision-making and ultimately productivity.”
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