My name is John Bryce. I am a Business Process Manager in the Strategy, Architecture and Business Engagement Department within the Coles Myer Information Technology group. At a high level, my role is to undertake and implement business process re-engineering/process improvement in stores across all the Coles Myer (CML) retail brands. I have 26 years experience in the retail industry and have subject matter expertise in store systems, administration and compliance. I am the Business Process Manager with responsibility for delivery of the Compliance Checkpoint application to Coles Myer supermarkets.
CML have more than 700 supermarkets across Australia. There is a requirement to conduct a minimum of one “Store Compliance Audit” per year per store, where there is a list of audit questions that need to be answered. The number of questions depends on the size of the store and setup of the store. All audits are conducted with manual (paper) checklists that are then re-keyed into a laptop computer and reports manually created on the computer. A single store audit will take up to seven days, with a further two days in preparing the audit report. The store audit team determined that they would need to become more effective in providing this service to the stores and looked for a way to automate much of the process, to reduce the time taken per audit.
In looking for a solution CML identified that there was little available that was a good fit for what the supermarkets were looking for and that what was available was provided by small companies. CML decided that as a first step we needed to confirm that we would be able to generate the benefits we were looking for by adopting this technology and approached Compliance Experts to undertake a “proof of concept”. The proof of concept was undertaken in the first half of 2004 utilising Compliance Experts’ Compliance Checkpoint application. The proof of concept was considered a success and CML determined that we would initiate a project to implement the Compliance Checkpoint solution.
Based on the proof of concept results, Compliance Experts made substantial changes to their core application, while CML developed business requirements that would enable the application be customised to specifically meet CML requirements. Part of this included a process review of supermarket compliance audits conducted by Compliance Experts, who have expertise in this area. An outcome of this process review was to better align Compliance Checkpoint, store audit process and leading practice, and therefore minimise customisation required by CML to the core product.
We have initiated a project to implement the Compliance Experts application in CML and the contract with Compliance Experts has been signed to utilise the product for supermarket compliance audits. Prior to signing the contract we did a check for other vendors that had a similar solution, but were unable to find any that were as good a fit or advanced as the Compliance Checkpoint product.
In December 2005 we had a review of the version of the software that we will be implementing and were satisfied that it met or exceeded all our requirements as agreed. We have conservatively estimated that it will reduce the time taken to conduct an audit and complete the reports by 30%, which is a very significant productivity improvement. It will also remove all manual intervention for state and national reporting as these reports will be generated automatically at the end of the month.
I am not in a position to estimate potential market value of the product, however the product is relevant to any business or organisation that conducts compliance auditing of any type. While we are implementing the product for store compliance auditing, we would also be able to utilise it for Health and Safety audits, Insurance Risk audits, etc.
In the three years CML has been dealing with the team at Compliance Experts, we have found them to be excellent to work with. They have invested a huge amount of time and effort to win the contract with Coles Myer and have been able to overcome all the hurdles that dealing with a large organisation produces. They have been professional throughout and all their deliverables have been of a high standard. The Compliance Experts team have also been very receptive to feedback from CML and have used the time in dealing with CML as an opportunity to learn & understand what is required to work with a large organisation.
From what I have observed Compliance Experts are a business that has the appropriate mix of people within the organisation to successfully exploit the Compliance Checkpoint application.
CML has no financial interest in Compliance Experts, other than that covered by the signed contract for the provision of application and services.
John Bryce
Business Process Manager
Coles Myer IT