Input from store colleagues improve IT systems
User-friendly IT systems, which have been developed together with store colleagues, make tasks easier and offers more time for customers in JYSK stores.
You have probably experienced it: a newly developed app or website that does not seem like it has been tested on a living human being before it was launched.
That is the kind of experiences, which Emil Ladegaard Andersen is working to help his colleagues in JYSK stores to avoid.
Emil works as User Experience Specialist in the Store Applications department at the Head Office in Denmark, and one of his most important jobs is to make JYSK’s IT systems as user-friendly as possible.
“Since I started at JYSK about three years ago, I have – apart from Denmark – visited stores in both Croatia, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands to get input on how we can develop our IT systems. It really means a lot to get input directly from those, who will use the tools every day,” says Emil.
Better stock count
One of the people helping improve IT systems with his input is Mathias Brøndum Madsen, who is Store Manager at JYSK in Randers Syd, Denmark.
“It is really cool to get influence. At the end of the day, it is us in the stores, who will be working with the systems, so it is great that my experience can help achieve better results,” says Mathias.
As a concrete example, Mathias at one point gave input on the function of doing stock count. That included which information you would need in the store to make it easier to do a precise count, as well as testing the scanner used to register the products. Mathias’ input helped improve the final solution in this regard.
From Backoffice to StoreFront
- Many functions in the JYSK stores are continuously moved from Backoffice to StoreFront.
- That includes, for instance, stock count, product search, receiving articles, stock adjustment and many others.
- Instead of moving them exactly as they are, Store Applications ask stores colleagues for input, so the systems can be improved and in the end offer more time for customers.
“The systems keep getting better and better, and that makes work easier for all of us. In the end, that offers more time for customers and for sales, which is what we really want to do,” says Mathias.
Common mindset
Developing IT systems without issues are of course important both to Emil and JYSK.
“It costs a lot more – both time and money – to fix something after it has been fully developed than it does to make it the right way the first time around. In addition, it offers a poor user experience, and none of us have any interest in that,” says Emil.
That is why input from users, regardless of whom they are or where they are from, is crucial in developing a good product, according to Emil.
“Of course there can be country-specific challenges, but my impression is generally that our common mindset and concepts in JYSK mean that if a solution works well in Croatia and Sweden, it probably also does in Belgium and Denmark,” he says.
