Seamlessly switching Boots UK to Savvy’s solution

CUSTOMER NAME:
Savvy
PROJECT TYPE:

Programme migration

SAVVY EXPERTISE:
Savvy

Ease of switching

Following an extensive evaluation of the marketplace and detailed procurement process, we chose Savvy as
our gift card processing partner. They clearly demonstrated to us that they had the best product fit and deployment capacity that met Boots’ needs. They designed and delivered a solution that was a very light touch on Boots’ existing EPOS infrastructure and would have zero impact on Boots customers during the migration project.

Gift Card Programme Manager, Boots UK

About

Founded in 1849, Boots has grown to become one of the largest health and beauty retailer and pharmacy chains in the world and is the largest in the UK.

Boots offers a range of healthcare and beauty products from a vast range of brands, as well as prescription medications, health services, optician services, hearing care services and health clinics. They operate approximately 2,400 stores across the UK and the Republic of Ireland and have one of the UK’s busiest consumer retail websites, receiving over 15 million visits every month.

The challenge

Before approaching Savvy, Boots had a gift card programme that allowed customers to purchase a physical gift card in any Boots store, along with thousands of other retail locations including Tesco and Morrisons nationwide. This gift card could only be redeemed in-store and there was no digital gift card option for consumers or businesses.

However, Boots wanted to migrate away from their legacy gift card processing system and move to a far more sophisticated solution to future proof their programme, which was where Savvy came in. But with 2,400 stores and millions of end customers using their gift cards every week, it was really important that we were able to implement this without any EPOS code changes, match existing reporting outputs on day one of go-live, and ultimately without disrupting day-to-day business. They also wanted to launch their gift card programme in the Republic of Ireland using this new solution.

The Savvy solution

Boots now runs a fully modernised physical and digital gift card programme operating across the UK and Ireland, in-store and online, and with multi-currency support. Equally as importantly, we were able to migrate Boots seamlessly over to our gift card processing solution with no customer disruptions underpinning the decision to work with Savvy.

Our unique approach involved ensuring their tills had no change impact by building a new software application to let the existing format gift card transactions re-route to Savvy. We would then ‘translate’ this into a Savvy format before processing as normal. This meant that Boots could ‘lift and shift’ their gift card database and content without experiencing a huge business change impact on retail store operations.

They can also now sell digital gift cards alongside their physical gift cards through their new CashStar solution
from Blackhawk Network which is integrated to Savvy’s processing engine. Digital and physical gift cards can
also now be redeemed online on the Boots UK and Ireland websites. This opens up a sizable new market opportunity for Boots that the legacy in-house solution was unable to monetise for them.

Translate »