Spanish fashion retailer, Desigual, has increased employee engagement and streamlined operational efficiencies in partnership with YOOBIC, the digital workplace solution for frontline teams.
Desigual is an international fashion brand that was established in Barcelona in 1984. It is famous for the individuality and unique character of its creations, which aim to bring positivity and authenticity to thousands of people who want to express the best version of themselves. The company currently has a workforce of around 2,700 employees and is present in 107 countries through 10 sales channels, 428 monobrand stores and six product categories: Woman, Man, Kids, Accessories, Shoes and Sport.
In 2019, the retailer began a new chapter of digital transformation, in recognition of emerging consumer trends and consumption habits, creating an omnichannel model that would provide the connected experiences its customers wanted with physical stores offering an immersive retail environment complemented by digital sales formats and faster point of sale service.
As part of this transformation, Desigual recognised the need to modernise and streamline communications and visual merchandising (VM) processes and compliance across its store network and, accordingly, deployed the YOOBIC mobile-first platform.
“We needed a solution that allowed us to centralise our task management and communications across our entire store estate, to ensure the customer experience and ‘look and feel’ of our stores was both consistent and streamlined. Until then we had been using multiple, manual channels that were labour intensive. Crucially, these didn’t allow for two-way communication between our frontline employees and head office, and meant we weren’t able to capture and analyse the data contained in these transactions,” commented Eduardo García de Frutos, Head of Business Operations at Desigual.
Following the initial deployment, and realising the value of the platform, the retailer began using it to streamline other key aspects of the business, from operations and maintenance to marketing, stock and finance – with each store now processing daily cash closures digitally through YOOBIC.
“A lot of the information we are now able to track with YOOBIC would have been impossible previously because of the internal resources it would have required to aggregate and track all of the information,” explained García de Frutos.
Transport costs have also been significantly reduced through the use of virtual shop visits by management, to ensure compliance of VM and other key processes.
Currently the retailer has more than 500 staff using the YOOBIC platform, and to date more than 35,000 task-based missions have been completed and almost 400,000 store images shared internally, significantly improving overall visibility across its store estate.
“The platform has increased synergy across the business, not only in terms of operational management, but driving team and economic efficiencies,” said Garcia de Frutos.
“Once the team experienced how easy it is to use and began to see the benefits it was extremely motivating to them. They enjoy having visibility across the network, seeing the innovations in other stores, how their own stores score and working on their action plans to improve on delivering customer experience. From a management point of view, this engagement provided invaluable insight from our frontline which in turn helps us streamline processes to constantly improve the environment and experience we provide to our customers.”
“The biggest benefit of implementing YOOBIC is we find the teams are much, much more engaged. We have better visibility of what’s going on at the point of sale, and communication is much more fluid. We now have a constant feedback loop between the frontline workforce, our shop teams and the head office, and so we can adapt quickly as a result,” concluded Garcia de Frutos.
Fabrice Haiat, CEO and co-founder of YOOBIC, commented: “Desigual is at the forefront of understanding the changing needs of customers and have put digital transformation at the heart of its business. From logistics to stock and workplace management, Desigual understands the role technology – and specifically tech that empowers the frontline workforce – plays in creating a great customer experience that not only meets shoppers needs in the immediate but keeps them coming back.”
“We’re completely delighted with the results our partnership with Desigual has delivered. The brand has embraced mobile technology to empower the most important part of their business – their frontline, understanding that providing them with the right tools, delivered in the flow of work, is the key to delivering greater commercial returns,” Haiat concluded.
