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Waitrose Denies that New Systems are Causing Stock Issues

We write pretty regularly about public sector procurement disasters, probably more than we cover private sector failures. When I was researching and writing the Bad Buying book, I found it easier to find stories about government entities than those featuring major private sector firms.

There are a number of reasons for that. Some areas of government spending – such as defence – are just very difficult and complex.  So it is a challenge in any and every country to execute that type of  procurement well. There is also the political factor, politicians who want to leave a “legacy” for instance, or who want to pursue a certain policy despite the fact that there is no procurement solution that is likely to work.

But the biggest reason is probably just the nature of government, meaning there is a higher probability that a disastrous IT system implementation will get into the public domain. So we find out about numerous tech failures in the UK public sector, going back to the DSS ICL “Benefit Card” fiasco, to the ongoing Home Office/Police Airwave failure.

So it was interesting and unusual to see a high profile private sector firm mentioned in the press recently for a significant IT problem. According to the Times, Waitrose, the upmarket supermarket chain and part of the John Lewis Group, has seen problems with stock management in recent months, which is being blamed on the implementation of a new Oracle / JDA ERP system.

But it is an odd example, because although the Times report was quite detailed, Waitrose has strenuously denied that there is a problem. So the newspaper says, “The idea is to replace the partnership’s antiquated systems with the Oracle system. But during the switchover, when the two systems have to temporarily “talk” to each other, the Oracle system has been producing incorrect numbers. Every time a new part of the system is introduced, more problems emerge… “

The report says that product availability has slipped from 3/94% to around 91%  compared to an industry average of 92%. Well, to be honest, that does not sound like a major problem, although many readers did comment on the article to back up the claim, complaining about lack of product in their local stores. Particularly cheese …

Waitrose then denied that there is a particular problem or that there are system issues, claiming that their product availability is still better than several major competitors. But one point which did make me wonder was the statement that the implementation has been ongoing for 6 years now. That does seem like a long time – even given Covid – to get a new system in place.  

Coincidentally, I heard from a friend the other day about another organisation in a very different industry (but one that will be well-known to most readers here) that has had major Oracle implementation problems this year. Now clearly many ERP implementations do succeed, or Oracle and SAP would not have grown to be two of the largest tech firms in the world. But it is also clear that things can go wrong.

I included a salutary tale in the Bad Buying book, all about FoxMeyer, a US pharma distributor. That ERP implementation appeared to set off a train of events that ended up with bankruptcy, and illustrated a number of common failings in IT disasters. The case study seemed to show defining the requirement wrongly; relying too much on external consulting-type expertise for the implementation; several suppliers sharing unclear accountability and blaming each other when things went wrong; trying to integrate different systems that did not really want to integrate; and poor programme management. We all probably recognise some of those warning signs.

So whatever the truth about Waitrose, if your organisation is planning or going through a major systems implementation, be very careful. Get the right expertise lined up, including at a minimum, some internal “intelligent client” resource even if you are using consultants for much of the work.   Be cautious, do your risk management properly, define accountabilities, never assume different systems will integrate easily (e.g. consider the data architecture), plan carefully, put the governance and reporting in place….

It is a long list, so good luck!

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M&S Buys Logistics Supplier – Why?

 Supply Management reported this week that retailer Marks and Spencer (M&S) is buying Gist, a logistics business.  Gist apparently do much of the food logistics work for M&S, but clearly all has not been well. M&S said its food supply chain “remains less efficient and, we believe, higher cost to serve than our competitors”.  Stuart Machin, the CEO, said “M&S has been tied to a higher cost legacy contract, limiting both our incentive to invest and our growth”. 

But it seems a rather strange move to buy the firm rather than perhaps;

  1. Negotiating a better deal with Gist so that performance and cost is more in line with that achieved by M&S’s competitors; and / or
  2. Finding alternative suppliers if Gist can’t or won’t meet those requirements.

I know that changing suppliers is not easy when it is clearly a large and strategically important contract. But it is not impossible.

Let’s dig into the transaction more deeply than Supply Management did. Gist is currently owned by Linde – the largest industrial gas company in the world.  But how did Linde end up as owners of a transport firm? According to Wikipedia,

“In 1969, the BOC Group acquired GL Baker, after it expressed interest in its use of liquid nitrogen in chilled containers. The company was renamed BOC Distribution Services in 1991, before being rebranded as Gist Limited ….  Gist was acquired by Linde as part of its 2006 acquisition of BOC.  Following the group’s merger with Praxair to form Linde plc, Gist continues to operate as a separate entity under Linde”.

Gist declared profits of £24.3M on 2020 revenues of £472M (2021 results are not yet published). The M&S website tells us that “M&S is acquiring the entire share capital of Gist for an initial consideration of £145m in cash. A further amount of £85m plus interest will be payable in cash from the proceeds of the intended onward disposal of freehold properties or, at the latest, on the third anniversary of completion”. 

Another £25M might be payable under certain conditions and somewhat confusingly, “M&S has the ability to retain the freehold properties should it wish to do so in which case the full amount of £110m plus interest will be payable.” So I assume the basic deal does not include the freeholds.  

The big question is how M&S got into this position in the first place. It is a pretty dramatic step to spend over £200M to get out of a logistics contract! I can’t think of a similar case. Going back to the original M&S strategy here, you can imagine why a firm might go for the “strategic partnership” option in this spend category, rather than either insourcing or using a more dynamic multiple-supplier strategy. “Playing the market” might give the buyer more competitive leverage when it comes to negotiation, but might have some less positive practical implications compared to a longer-term partnership.

But how on earth do you get into a  situation where you are apparently locked into “a higher cost legacy contract which expires in 2027”? The M&S announcement also says this.

“The Gist business being acquired generated a proforma EBITDA of c.£55m in the year ended December 2021, with the majority of profit reflecting management fees recharged to M&S under contractual arrangements, which will be eliminated upon consolidation to M&S”.

So “the majority” of Gist’s profits come from M&S.  You would think the firm would therefore be in a powerful position to re-negotiate this onerous contract?  But you can also see that Linde may not have had much interest in owning a non-core logistics business – perhaps they just said, “we’re not moving on the contract, but if you want to buy Gist, we’ll do you a good deal”.

And in the short-term, it does look like a pretty good deal, if you can pick up £55M EBITDA for £230M!  But the downsides of owning your own logistics firm need considering. Some analysts would consider it a distraction from the M&S core business – as a retailer of food,  clothing and homeware. What makes the top management think they can run a logistics business, and how much attention and time might it divert from that core business?  

Secondly, Gist may well find that other retailers do not want to use a firm owned by their retailing rival. It’s hard to see Tesco, Sainsburys or Waitrose rushing to Gist’s door.  Might M&S ownership cause an exodus of other customers, which could be an issue even if they aren’t as important as M&S itself?

I have no personal interests here, but I see this as a worrying sign. It must have been a pretty bad deal with Gist, or M&S was incapable of managing the contract to their own satisfaction.  Neither gives you much confidence in the firm’s commercial nous. I’d also worry about the distraction factor going forward. So unless M&S can explain better what they are up to, I’d put this down as a (potential) Bad Buying case study.

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The Post Office and Fujitsu Horizon Case Shows Bad Buying at Its Worst

Many of the Bad Buying stories featured here or in my book have an element of levity to them. Some are decidedly humorous even. But sometimes there is a case where it is impossible to feel anything other than horror, anger and amazement at the behaviour of the parties involved.

The case of the Post Office, their postmasters and the Fujitsu Horizon IT system is a case in point. Last month,  39 people had their criminal convictions quashed in the High Court, the latest in a series of legal cases which have finally ended up clearing these individuals and exposing the appalling actions of Fujitsu and the Post Office.

Without going through all the details, the Horizon system appeared to show discrepancies in the finances of Post Office branches. That was blamed on the people running those branches – they were accused of stealing money or at best mismanaging post office funds. Many of those accused dipped into their own pockets to make up the supposed shortfalls. Eventually, the Post Office prosecuted hundreds of post office managers for theft – many went to prison. Some were ostracised by friends and neighbours; at least one committed suicide.

And all the way through this the Post Office and Fujitsu insisted that the Horizon system could not be wrong.  But eventually, after investigations and court actions, it became clear that the system was flawed and could well make the errors that led to the numbers not adding up. Even then the Post Office keep fighting for years, putting the postmasters through more pain.

There is a chapter in my book which is all about “believing the supplier”, and how Bad Buying can result from exactly that. That seems to have been one problem here. The Post Office initially at least believed Fujitsu when the supplier said the system was foolproof. No doubt there were careers and sales bonuses on the line for senior Fujitsu staff. Then when the integrity of the technology was called into doubt, we saw greed, fear, arrogance and stupidity from Post Office management, who refused to admit they might have been wrong. Instead, they continued to harass and prosecute innocent people, failing to take responsibility until the very end. 

So Bad Buying on the Post Office side, a poor product from Fujitsu and morally bankrupt behaviour from many of those involved on both sides of the supplier/buyer relationship. Fujitsu witnesses were also made to look stupid in court as they defended their system. Indeed, as Computer Weekly reported, after a 2019 hearing, “The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has referred information to the police relating to a High Court Judge’s concerns about the accuracy of evidence given by Fujitsu staff in criminal trials”.

The least the firm – along with the Post Office itself – can do now is offer a large sum of money to compensate those affected. (Fujitsu has continued to win huge government contracts, by the way). There may be charges of “malicious prosecutions” to be brought against Post Office executives too.

Well done to Alan Bates, the postmaster who initially took on the Post Office,  Computer Weekly and Tony Collins, the first to pursue the technology aspect of the story, and to Private Eye magazine which regularly investigated and reported on the whole affair over the years. It’s a lot more than simply bad buying and the story of another dodgy IT system of course – and it all adds up to one of the most distressing stories about corporate behaviour that I’ve heard in a long time.

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Advertising Spend Can Be Bad or Brilliant Buying – Consider Kevin the Carrot!

(Picture courtesy of my phone and a very old carrot from the back of the fridge)

Let’s have a rest today from pandemic related buying failures, (potential) frauds and so on, and look at something more heart-warming.

Advertising is a fascinating field when it comes to bad – or good – buying. That’s because of the multiplier effect. It is one of those spend categories where the impact of the spend can be out of all proportion to the amount of money actually paid out. That can be either a positive or negative impact, it is important to say.

So if I am buying cleaning services, or packaging, or raw materials, then as long as there isn’t a major fraud (contaminated material, perhaps) probably the worst that can happen is we “lose” the value of the expenditure.  The packaging doesn’t work on our production line, or the cleaning service is hopeless. Even then, I may well be able to recover something from the supplier. But if I spend a million on a brilliant advertising campaign, that spend could generate tens or even hundreds of millions of “brand value” in terms of future sales and profit. And if I make a lousy buying decision, we might lose similarly large amounts of value.  

There’s a great seasonal example right now with supermarket group Aldi and their “Kevin the Carrot” campaign, which first was aired in 2016, five Christmases ago.  I don’t know how much Aldi paid for the creative genius behind Kevin, but it was money very well spent. Aldi now receive millions of pounds worth of free advertising as the media highlights the adventures of Kevin without the firm paying a penny for much of the coverage.

There is even a range of Kevin-related soft toys, and demand is so great that “to help reduce crowds in the current climate, this year Aldi has introduced a digital queuing software that’s also used by music festival Glastonbury”, according to Wales Online’s coverage of Kevin!

But we might imagine the first meeting when the agency pitched this to the Aldi marketeers… “ a talking carrot? Are you sure? I mean, carrots aren’t even very Christmassy really”? 

“Yeah, but a cute talking turkey might not work…”

Anyway, marketing and advertising can go the other way too. Remember the backlash in 2017 when the Pepsi ad with Kendall Jenner seemed to suggest that public demonstrations would all turn into happy, cheerful love-ins if Kendall just shared some Pepsi around the police and the protesters? That was withdrawn and although Pepsi got free publicity too, just like Aldi, it wasn’t quite as positive.

There’s an older example in my Bad Buying book, with the case of Schlitz Beer. It’s a multi-part story really, because the firm’s problems started with a sequence of recipe changes to the beer, which didn’t go well in terms of customer reaction. With sales falling rapidly, a new advertising campaign was the answer.

Unfortunately, the creative contribution was the opposite of the inspired talking carrot, as Schlitz used a boxer who got upset when someone offered him a beer that wasn’t Schlitz. His anger at this proposal was not very appealing however, and it went down in history as the “drink Schlitz or I’ll kill you” campaign!  The firm was eventually bought at a knock-down price by a competitor, as sales continued to slide.

That was an example of advertising spend having that negative multiplier I described earlier and I’m sure we can all think of ads that made us feel less rather than more inclined to buy a product. But in the meantime, enjoy Kevin, and I’ll see you in the queue for the Giant Kevin the Carrot Plush Toy! (too late, sold out already…)

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Boohoo Report on Leicester Sweatshops – Lack of Governance and Supplier Management

We should give Boohoo credit for commissioning an independent report from a top legal expert, Alison Levitt QC, to look into the Leicester “sweat shop” scandal.  Earlier this year, the Sunday Times exposed multiple factories that were paying staff well under the statutory minimum wage as well as raising issues around workers’ health and safety during the pandemic. Boohoo was perhaps the highest profile of the retailers that sold  garments made in these factories.

But the report makes uncomfortable reading for the Boohoo board and investors. The very first paragraph is striking. “One of the aspects that I have observed is a tendency by the Boohoo board to treat every piece of negative publicity about the Leicester garment industry as though it was the first time they had ever heard it.”

But the firm knew about issues months (at least) before the story broke.  One auditor told the Board that the conditions in one factory were amongst the worst they had seen in the UK. Levitt says that there was no intenional exploitation by the firm, but rather that “governance” and processes were weak. Fundamentally, Boohoo felt no responsibility for the conditions in their suppliers’ factories. It was also unimpressive to see John Lyttle, the CEO, didn’t mention a trip he had made to “appalling ”factories when he was interviewed by Levitt. That only came out when she talked to others, which made Lyttle look somewhat devious or maybe just very forgetful …  

There is an interesting philosophical dilemma here of course. When I was a CPO in large organisations, I would have objected if you told me I had to take responsibility for every worker in every one of the thousands of firms and facilities that supplied NatWest or the Department of Social Security. So there is a question of scale and dependence here. But we have seen how the leading firms in the procurement with purpose movement (read our “Procurement with Purpose” interview with Unilever here, for instance) do step up when it comes to their major suppliers. They also look to intervene positively when important supply chains contain major sustainability-type risks and issues, whether they are environmental or social.

So suppliers of the clothes that are the main engine of Boohoo’s business should be defined as pretty strategic and worthy of more diligent supplier management from the firm than we saw in these cases. Boohoo has now accepted the review’s recommendations in full and apologised for failing to “match up to the high expectations we set for ourselves”.  The CEO also said the company would be a “leader for positive change in the city”, and promised to go further and faster to improve our governance, oversight and compliance.”

What about the business impact of all this on Boohoo? Well, the initial scandal certainly did have a negative impact, as the share price crashed by some 50%. But it is interesting to see that it is now back almost where it started, within 5% of so of pre-scandal level.  Does that suggest the group that is the main customer base for the firm – young females – has a short memory? Or do they think Boohoo has apologised and will take action, so everything is OK?   

Some of those customers are undoubtedly very committed to serious campaigning on purpose-related issues, from climate change to diversity. But (and sorry to sound like an old cynic here), it seems like many are happy to jump on a Twitter or Instagram controversy about transgender rights or veganism and express an instant virtue-signalling opinion, rather than do something more demanding and difficult – such as changing their buying behaviour and checking out the provenance of the clothes they buy.

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