Littlewoods Case Study

Vizone were appointed to deliver the Group’s business optimisation programme to integrate twelve brands and three separate organisations into a single Target Operating Environment.  Littlewoods Shop Direct Group (LSDG) is a British retail company, based in Liverpool, England.  Formed from the merger of the Littlewoods and Shop Direct groups on the 1st November 2005, LSDG has its roots in the football pools and retail business founded by John and Cecil Moores, and the home shopping business of Great Universal Stores (now called GUS plc), respectively.  

Owned by Sir David Barclay and Sir Frederick Barclay it is the largest home shopping company in the UK.  When the Barclay brothers acquired Littlewoods Group they wanted to merge them with the Shop Direct group and GUS to create the UK’s biggest ‘shop at home Group’.  The cost of the programme was in excess of £300m and forecasts savings over a five-year period of £570m.  The programme included 4 live releases:

• Customer and Business Core Systems
• Accounts Set up and Maintenance
• Account Migration / e- commerce
• Brand Migration

The successful delivery meant that overnight 2.5 million customers had their accounts migrated and were able to order and pay online or via catalogues against each of the new brands, with no effects on customer service or operational performance.  Both phases were delivered on time and to budget.

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