UK retail giant achieves major savings and simplifies IT Management with CloudM

A UK based high street retail giant with over 500 stores across the UK, Europe, Asia and the Middle East and a global online presence, employing nearly 50,000 staff worldwide. With over a century and a half of retail experience, they cater for 5 million+ active customers globally in 70 countries, specializing in Clothing, Footwear, Accessories and Home products. Even after 150 years, this retailer actively researches and invests in the latest technologies, including eCommerce, digital transformation and security, to keep their processes moving forward and continue to offer greater value to their customers.

The Issue

The retailer wanted to cut down license cost as their VFE licenses were due to be renewed as costly Google AU licenses, whilst also retaining the data in accordance to data regulation laws.

Offboarding was also taking them too long with an average of 1000 offboarding processes a month eating up the valuable time of their IT team. They also wanted to be able to standardize the process across all departments to speed up offboardings and avoid costly human error.

The Process

The retailer had spoken to us several years previously about our user management software before ultimately, and unsuccessfully, choosing a competitor. Upon reengaging with CloudM, they were pleasantly surprised by not only the growth and maturity of the product modules and features, but the attentive, professional and knowledgeable service they received throughout.

Being a company of their size, they wanted to make sure that CloudM would be a good fit for them long term. Our Sales Architects quickly allayed any fears that they had with a series of product demos with senior members from their IT team, explaining how CloudM Automate and CloudM Archive modules would combine to deliver a seamless process for their administrators, as well as scoping out potential issues.

As soon as the customer started to use CloudM, our Customer Success Team was on hand to guide them through the initial stages, helping them to set up their roles, groups and offboarding policies and archive storage buckets.

Claire Robinson, Customer Success Manager at CloudM, explained “The enablement process is crucial with every customer. Helping them start on the right track means that they can get the very best out of CloudM as quickly as possible. We want our customers to succeed so we are always on hand to help, listen and resolve, whether it’s day one or year 10 of their journey with us”.

It’s this cycle of communication and collaboration that encouraged the retail giant to suggest several software improvements that would make their experience easier. This feedback has helped us to develop and add several new features to the suite, benefiting all of our CloudM Automate and Archive customers. We also looked for new and innovative ways to use our current features to solve some of these issues.

The Result

As far as returns on investment go, few are as quick and evident as the saving the retailer made by simply using CloudM Archive and Google Cloud Storage as an alternative to transitioning to Google Archive User (AU) licenses.

“CloudM pay for themselves – We saved so much in license costs and the amount of time and resource needed to do really quite simple tasks.”

With almost 3000 free VFE accounts due to transition to paid AU licenses at their next renewal, the business was looking at an eye watering bill of nearly $350,000 over the next two years alone. CloudM helped to eliminate that need with CloudM Archive, allowing them to keep all their user data, securely and totally compliant, at a fraction of the cost. CloudM Archive has been proven to save customers as much as 75% compared to renewing to AU licenses.

But ROI shouldn’t be counted in purely financial terms alone. Time can be equally as valuable as money. Our offboarding features allowed the retailer’s IT team to easily build bespoke workflows, customizable for each Organizational Unit and Smart Team, so the entire offboarding process is automated and triggered with one button. As they routinely offboarded around 1000 users a month, we worked out that CloudM would save them an incredible 21 full days on manual offboarding tasks…every single month. Even better, with CloudM Automate, they no longer have to rely on GAM scripts or continually accessing the Google Admin Console.

Now, their IT teams can get on with the important tasks, assured that we are taking good care of the monotonous offboarding work in the background.

A UK based high street retail giant with over 500 stores across the UK, Europe, Asia and the Middle East and a global online presence, employing nearly 50,000 staff worldwide. With over a century and a half of retail experience, they cater for 5 million+ active customers globally in 70 countries, specializing in Clothing, Footwear, Accessories and Home products. Even after 150 years, this retailer actively researches and invests in the latest technologies, including eCommerce, digital transformation and security, to keep their processes moving forward and continue to offer greater value to their customers.

The customer: a leading UK retail organization

Our customer is one of the UK’s leading fashion retailers, with over 45,000 employees, more than 450 stores, and several distribution centers across the UK.

The retail industry has a notoriously high staff turnover rate – over 50% in the UK, according to the British Retail Consortium. This high turnover significantly impacted the business, particularly because of the need for frequent, resource-heavy offboarding processes.

The challenge: reducing costs, saving time and standardizing processes

The retailer faced challenges with archived ex-employee data due for renewal. The change from free VFE licenses to expensive Google Archive User (AU) licenses and the need to manually complete an average of 1,000 offboarding processes per month prompted them to seek a solution. Their goals included reducing costs, saving time, and standardizing processes.

They required a solution to:

– Securely store ex-employee data in compliance with data regulation laws.

– Achieve significant cost savings.

– Standardize the offboarding process across departments, reducing manual intervention and freeing up the IT team for strategic initiatives.

The solution

To meet their ex-employee data retention requirements, the retailer selected CloudM Archive. This solution:

• Allowed them to avoid the high renewal costs of Google AU licenses.
  
• Enabled them to retain data ownership in their chosen Google Cloud Storage bucket.
• Provided the option to restore data if needed.

To address their manual offboarding efforts and minimize the risks of human error, the retailer also implemented CloudM Automate. Its powerful, set-and-forget workflows transformed their offboarding process into a streamlined operation triggered with a single click.

The outcome: significant savings and seamless processes

The retailer avoided the expensive transition of 3,000 VFE licenses to Google AU licenses, saving $350,000 over a two-year period. By leveraging CloudM Archive, they eliminated the need for AU licenses while meeting compliance requirements and securely storing data at a fraction of the cost. CloudM Archive delivers savings of up to 75% compared to AU license costs.

By automating previously manual processes, such as running GAM scripts and accessing the Google Admin Console, the retailer transformed the offboarding of 1,000 users per month. What once required considerable time and effort became a seamless, repeatable process executed at the click of a button. CloudM Automate now saves the retailer an estimated 21 days every month – equivalent to over 250 working days annually.

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