Case Studies

Summary - Payments provider review for UK blue chip retailer

Situation - John Lewis Partnership (JLP) is a leading omni-channel retailer in the UK with 34 John Lewis shops, 332 Waitrose stores and both brands with a substantial online presence.  JLP offer a range of financial products from Home Insurance to Foreign Currency and our credit card, the Partnership Card through John Lewis Finance.  Online and in-store JLP processes over £15 Billion of  transactions per annum. JLP prides itself on first class customer service, and as part of its investment to deliver this service undertook a program to enhance its customer payment channels. 
 
Task - CBS were selected by JLP to provide commercial expertise for their customer payment category. The customer payments market continued to evolve and JLP wanted to ensure that its current providers were performing optimally and that JLP could take advance of new innovation in the market. 
 
Action - CBS’s commercial lead worked in collaboration with JLP’s procurement, operations and customer facing teams to first establish the current ways of working with the payment providers and business objectives. JLPs objective was to improve their relationship with the existing providers, it had been largely unmanaged and whilst performance was satisfactory there was an ambition to heighten the levels of performance. This was coupled with the need to encourage more innovation and product development from across the supply base.  
JLP also wanted to gain a better understanding the wider payments landscape to ensure they could offer competitive and relative payment options to their customers aligned with the ethos of the brand, both online and in-store. 
 
CBS worked in conjunction with JLPs key stakeholders to define and implement a revised supplier management program with their existing payment partners. The CBS procurement team designed the program with the emphasis on performance, innovation and product development. The program was structured around the importance of the service in relation to JLPs business (high risk, high value, high complexity). CBS worked with JLP to embed the program obtaining buy-in from internal stakeholders and the providers to participate based on the value it would deliver.  

The JLP key stakeholders were able to grow their understanding of the payment market as a result of the supplier management program, make informed decisions to help support their revenue growth and have a clear re defined organisational structure to support the management of 3rd parties. 
 
Result - Through the market engagement and supplier management insight, CBS worked in collaboration with JLP to develop and implement a new category strategy for customer payments. The strategy led to a re-procurement of the merchant acquiring provider which JLP successfully awarded within a condensed timeframe due to the market insight and a better understand of their own commercial, legal and technical requirements.  The re-procurement resulted in a reduced cost of ownership for JLP and no disruption to service.
 
CBS’s commercial resource has extensive experience in the financial and public sector. Leading complex projects in collaboration with the organisation’s key functions and stakeholders at all levels.

CBS brings Government Commercial Function insight and experience including governance and approvals. Experience of working in the Cabinet Office Complex Transactions Team including Business Cases development, dispute resolution, negotiations and contract assurance.  See CV for further information.