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Littlewoods automates back-office
More bodies for customer-facing roles...

By Julian Goldsmith

Published: Thursday 04 October 2007

Catalogue retailing specialist Littlewoods Shop Direct has been able to shift more staff to dealing with customers after automating a number of back-office processes.

Littlewoods is using an application from Blue Prism to automate three credit and collections processes within its Everyday Financial Solutions financial services division.

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The result is the department will be reduced by 12 full-time equivalent roles, to be redeployed into customer-facing roles.

The roles being automated involve small balance write-offs, cancellations of insurance, and debit and credit administration, where accounts are being transferred from collections to recovery. Previously, these processes were managed manually. A further 20 processes have been earmarked for automation using the same system.

Littlewoods Everyday Financial Solutions director of operations, Steve Mound, said in a statement: "The organisation's strategic IT roadmap was creating challenges in fixing a growing number of day-to-day business requests. Our IT team fully supported the need to find a tactical solution to support the business, which has resulted in the deployment of Blue Prism Automate."