Shop Direct Overview

Prashanth Prasanna
Order Progression in Retail
A "retailer" buys goods or products in large quantities from manufacturers, either directly or through a wholesaler, and
then sells smaller quantities to the end-user.

Types of Orders in Retail:

1. Catalog / Direct-Email:
Selling the products by sending the Catalogues to home and receiving the sales order via email or telephone

2. Direct Selling:
Sales people meeting the customers face to face at the customer’s locations

3. TV home shopping:
Display the products on TV and receive the order over phone

4. Electronic / Online:
This is a format where in the retailer and the customer communicates with each other through interactive electronic
networks. The products are typically delivered directly to the customer’s home
Order Progression in Retail (cont…)

1. Product Inquiry - Initial inquiry about offerings, visit to the web-site / catalog request
2. Order Configuration - Ordered items need selection of various options
3. Order Booking - The formal order placement or closing of the deal
4. Order Acknowledgment / Confirmation - Confirmation that the order is booked and/or received
5. Invoicing / Billing – Generating the commercial invoice / bill to the customer
6. Order Sourcing / Planning - Determining the source / location of item (s) to be shipped
7. Order Processing - Process step where the distribution center or warehouse is responsible to fill order (receive and
stock inventory, pick, pack and ship orders).
8. Shipment - The shipment and transportation of the goods
9. Delivery - The delivery of the goods to the consignee / customer
10. Settlement - The payment of the charges for goods / services / delivery
11. Returns - In case the goods are unacceptable / not required
 Shop Direct Overview

• Shop Direct is the United Kingdom's leading online retailer, and its largest home shopping company.
• Brands: Shop Direct is a dedicated home shopping organization that operates variety of home shopping brands
consisting of Littlewoods, Very, Very Exclusive and Littlewoods Ireland
• Order Placing can be done through Connect and Ecomm
• Types of Orders – DC and DD
Shop Direct Business Models
SD operates 2 broad business models – EMBEDDED and DIRECT

EMBEDDED MODEL (price has interest embedded, customer can spread payments over weeks) - An Embedded/Agency account is one
where the full credit cost of an item is already calculated and embedded (added) to the cost price of the item at the point of order
– Brands
• Littlewoods
– Terms offered
• 20 weeks (interest free)
• 52 weeks (interest free)
• 104 weeks (interest bearing – embedded into price)
• 156 weeks (interest bearing – embedded into price)
• 256 weeks (interest bearing – embedded into price)
• Terms embedded into price, hence prices are higher on same product on Embedded brand

DIRECT MODEL - A Direct Account is an account whereby Interest is calculated and added monthly depended on the number of items and
the payment terms of those items
– Brands
• Very
• Very Exclusive
• Littlewoods Ireland
– Littlewoods Ireland trade in Euros

CASH - A Cash Only account is where the full cost of the item has to be met at Checkout before the item is delivered
Orders, Payments and Refunds
Order processing
– Connect - Phone
– Connect – Mailed
– Ecom

Order Variants
– 1 Man – eg. Socks FA7021J  on Very
– 2 Man – eg. Washing Machine PE27129  on Very
– Multiparts eg Bed UX3911S  on Very
– Financial Products
– BNPL / Value Offers / Staff Sales

Payment source
Connect / Mailed – Cheques / Paypoint / Paypal / Ecom / SEIVR

Refunds
Returns / GLIT / Cancel / Reselect
DC and DD

What is DC?

– DC stands for DISTRIBUTION CENTRE

– A DC is a warehouse where SD store the items it has for sale
– SD have a number of DCs around the country but mainly in the North West of England
– DC items are generally delivered to the customer by the Carrier Yodel (HDN)

What is DD?

– DD stands for DIRECT DESPATCH

– Any physical item SD sells, which it does not keep stocked in it’s own warehouses is said to be a DD item
– The ordered item is sent directly from the Supplier (or Manufacturer) to the Customer
– Suppliers use various Carriers to get the item to the customer, some have their “Own Vans”, others may use Royal
Mail or even Yodel (HDN)
Orders - CAM

When an order is placed, through the Connect application or via one of the Websites (Ecom), the first back end database the
order hits is CAM (e.g. CAMxxPPT)

The order details are stored in the CAM database regardless of whether the items in the order are DD / DC

If an in Stock DC item is updated in CAM DB, it will set the NODS_DISPOSAL_STATUS on the ORDER_ITEM table to 40. If it
determines that the item is DD the NODS_DISPOSAL_STATUS will be set to 30

Any items in the order which are DD, CAM sends the details and passes the processing to the B2B database (e.g.
B2BxxPPT)

For DC items in the order CAM will create parcel information and forward this on and hand over the processing to the DMS
database (e.g. DMSxxPPT)
Order Progression

DC Order Progression

Connect / Ecomm > CAM > DMS > TMS

• When a DC item order is placed through Connect / Ecomm, the order will be progressed through the CAM, DMS
and TMS databases

DD Order Progression

CONNECT / ECOMM > CAM > B2B > KEWILL > Track and Trace > HDN > CIS / ZEUS Terradata

• When a DD item order is placed through Connect / Ecomm, the order will be progressed through the CAM
• CAM sends the details and passes the processing to the B2B database
• The order is acknowledged and despatched through the Kewill which is used by the various suppliers who will have
individual sign on’s
• The order is then progressed through CAM, B2B and TMS and then the Zeus Terradata will be updated
Shop Direct Architecture Customer
Customer
via Call
Centre

SOG
APS
Minerva E-Comm Connect Agent details ->
<- Order confirmation Xtant Tradeplace
Customer
Net
WISMO

QH / TO
EOS Conman Customer Orders,
Customer
A/C set up
Payments & Ac Queries
Customer Queries
Orders for 3rd
& Orders
party suppliers B2B Kewill Goods out
Product Info

CDMS
Buyer / Letters +
Merchandiser Statements
Genesis
Product
Set up
Cloud Services Financial
Reporting
Oracle
Financials
Batch
Product
Feed
info
Customer Credit card
SAS Queries Payments NETBANX
OOS orders

Start of day stock

CAM
OOS orders OPR OMR Insurance Insurance
AIMS Stock Management Streamline
Forecasting / Movements
Contracting Product &
Supplier set
up contract Credit
calls Customer
Orders Customer
Rating
Equifax
DMS
Returns
T’N’T Order tracking
info Authorisation
TRIAD
Route Cloud Services Decisions
(Authorisations)
Coding
RLOG
Business Dist. Stock
Returns Fraud
Falcon
Express MIS for information
Production Products (fraud)
Returns
info PAT tool
WMS
WMS
WMS
(Shaw / MAHS) DSAS / ZEUS Accounts in
Debt
Goods in / Arrears
Affinium Teradata
Goods out RSAS Campaign Manager
Manager

Buying & Customer Contact Distribution / Warehousing Publishing Cloud Middleware Financial / Reporting Marketing E Comm Non SDG System
Merchandising Centre / returns systems
Additional Notes

• Only Cash and Staff accounts can be created using connect (Credit account creation is decommissioned)

• Littlewoods Ireland - cannot returns the products / products don't have warranties

• Very Exclusive - Only DC items. DD Items are not available

• Staff accounts are available only in Very

• Very customers can trade in Very Exclusive also

• Brands which are migrated (recently)

Great Universal, Empire, Kays - migrated to Littlewoods
Isme, Woolworths, Additions - migrated to Very

11
NCE Overview - New Credit Environment
Credit will be provided within Shop Direct in the future.
The programme to deliver this change is called NCE (New Credit Environment) and covers a number of business streams
across the customer life cycle

Core Credit Projects

Digital Journey Originations FS Offers
Business Change A new solution
based on the
Implement a Build on the
Architecture & Analysis Re-design the Welcom
package to platform being
customer Financier
enable more developed by
experience package to carry
effective and customer
Test with support out rapidly
efficient Intelligence to
from a digital configure and
lending deliver
design agency release credit
decision Personalisation
Infrastructure offers
Workstreams focus on end-to-end delivery
 Digital Journey (DJ)

• This covers the interaction with the customer during their credit lifecycle and provides the ability to
market credit to the customer

• Digital Credit Journey will also deliver new / amended services if required to support new UI design
and new self-service functionality

• Digital Credit Journey project will deliver re-design of customer front-end channels UI – Mobile Web,
Tablet Web, Desktop Web, Mobile App
Originations Project

• Originations covers the application process to become a credit customer.

• The Originations project within the NCE programme has selected Software-as-a-Service solution from Decision Matrics:
Decision Strategy to replace FIBDS and APS solutions as an alternative product from the marketplace to address the
current constraints.

• It will also deliver a number of key functionalities which are not possible in the current system such as:
• The functionality required to fulfil the “offer management” work stream of NCE
• The ability to refer credit applications to advisors for manual decisions on credit applications.
• The ability to use internally available information to support account opening decisions
Customer Offers

• Provides the credit offers to a customer.

• Offer Management will provide the ability to identify targeted offers for customers and to override the standard credit
offering for that customer. This can either be in real-time for a specific customer via ATG or Connect or as part of a
campaign.

• The offers available to a customer will be determined by the rules defined in Offer Manager by business users or by
determining that the customer was part of a specific campaign
 Core Credit

• This Core Credit project describes the implementation of a new finance system to manage new and existing customer credit
accounts, which includes removal of the credit functionality held currently in CAM.

• The CAM remediation work will change the existing CAM software to allow the separation of credit and retail processing. So
CAM will be retained for management of retail accounts.

• The Financier package from Welcom will be responsible for all credit management. A new solution is based on
enhancement of the Welcom Financier package to rapidly configure and release credit offers. This includes the
management of credit offerings across multiple platforms; as well as processing payments, producing statements, handling
customer account communications and 3rd party debt transactions
Data Migration

• Alongside the Core Credit project, there is an NCE requirement to migrate some of the customer and account data from CAM
into new databases including Financier and CIM (Customer Information Management)

• This is being managed by the Data Migration workstream.

• The first stage will be to test data migration into the SIT System Integration Test environment. This will confirm the process
and provide test data for SIT and UAT (copy of production, with customer and address details anonymised)

• The test team will also support final testing of production data migration before go-live.
NCE Test Phases & Responsible teams

• Unit & Link Testing: IBM development teams (Including Financier)

• Testing of Integrations: Fusion Team
• System Testing: IBM test team
• System Integration Testing: IBM Test Team
• Non Functional Testing: IBM Test Teams
• UAT Testing: Managed by IBM test team with execution by business testers
• Security Testing: Mix of IBM test team and SD security and 3rd Party Penetration Test Organisation
• OAT Testing: Managed by IBM test team with execution by IBM Test Team & SD Operations Team
• Cut Over Testing: IBM Test Team and SD teams

NCE documents are held in Share Point:

https://shopdirect.sharepoint.com/sites/SDShare/AMS%20SDShare%20Site/AMS%20NCE%20Project/Forms/
AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2Fsites%2FSDShare%2FAMS%20SDShare%20Site%2FAMS%20NCE%20Project
%2F31780%20-%20Test&View={3A0F3CEC-8FD7-42DE-B861-96BCA783FE30}&
Tools/Applications Access required for NCE
Tools to be used for NCE Testing include the following. Additional tools may be added as required.

Required Tools/Applications Usage

Wiki Existing BAU functionality knowledge repository
Sharepoint SD-NCE project document repository
Box NCE-IBM project document repository

Test and defect management for Agile Front End applications. This
JIRA tool will be using only to raise e-com (DJ) related defects.
Combined Lifecycle management. To be used by IBM resources on
NCE programme for:
• Requirements gathering and traceability
• Test management and reporting
Rational CLM • Defect management for new and amended systems
Will use this tool for Fusion services testing(Middleware) & also will
Soap UI use for Performance testing.
LoadRunner & Visual Studio These tools will be using in Performance testing.
To connect Shop Direct Virtual Desktop using VMWare client
EIBM ID, SOCKS, TACACS required mentioned applications should be installed or access
Access should be required