Iconic British retailer Marks & Spencer uses Teams as a one-stop shop for employee productivity and customer care

Microsoft Power Apps in Teams streamlines work and saves half a million pounds

Marks & Spencer was already exploring the use of Teams as a communication platform when COVID-19 prompted the organization to take a deeper dive into what the tool could do. It turned out that enhancing colleague communication was only the beginning for Teams, which has evolved to become a complete productivity platform including task management, workflow, business intelligence, and third-party apps for employees—all in one tool. “People initially thought of Teams as a communication platform only, but it’s become an ecosystem that colleagues use to operate the store through one interface,” says Andrew Redman, Head of Technology, Colleague Experience and Retail Platforms at Marks & Spencer. “We have around 80 applications that might be used from time to time. By embedding apps in Teams, it feels like we’ve only got one.” Stephen Bolton, Product Owner, Communication and Collaboration at Marks & Spencer, agrees that Teams has quickly become more than a collaboration tool. “Our strategy is to use Teams as a front-end platform where employees can get the vast majority of their work done,” he says.

When COVID-19 forced retailers around the world to radically rethink how they served customers, Marks & Spencer turned to Microsoft Power Apps and Teams to create a simple solution to one of the major challenges they faced. “When COVID hit, we realized very quickly that capacity in our stores would be limited,” says Redman. “We used Power Apps in Teams to create a counting app in a matter of days that was designed to help colleagues count people in and out of a store.” The app is embedded in Teams, where employees access it on any of their devices. Redman also found that the use of Power Apps helped accelerate improvements to the application based on feedback from employees in Teams. “The rapid prototyping process we were able to execute with Power Apps was absolutely critical to the success of the Teams-based application and helped us monitor the safety of our stores throughout the pandemic,” he says. “Feedback from customers was very positive that they felt these measures improved safety in the stores,” says Sacha Berendji, Group Property, Store Development and Technology Director at Marks & Spencer.

The business also turned to Power Apps and Teams to make the process of answering colleagues’ queries easier. “We created a Help Portal application to replace the process of phoning a help desk and waiting to reach the appropriate person,” says Redman, who notes that employees had an overwhelming number of support phone numbers to call depending on their issue. “Today, we use the Help Power App to capture the intent of the help request and direct it to the right person to open up a Teams chat or start an automated ticketing process,” says Redman. The application will save valuable time for employees and help the business reduce costs as well. “The Help Portal app we developed with Power Apps and embedded in Teams will deliver between half a million and a million pounds in savings based on the reduction in call time alone,” says Redman.

Also custom-built in Power Apps and available in Teams, the People Finder app is used by 200 Marks & Spencer colleagues every day. “As an organization with 70,000 colleagues, it’s often difficult to get in touch with the right person, especially with the current climate of people remote working,” says Duane Berge, Product Owner for Workplace Productivity and Automation at Marks & Spencer. “The People Finder app gives colleagues the ability to search for anyone within the business based on information like store location or role, helping them get the information they need faster.” Once employees find the correct colleague, they can instantly start a Teams chat or call from within the app. “The People Finder app in Teams is constantly growing,” says Townend, who notes that the application is often used by frontline workers who want to quickly check on the availability of a particular item in another store.

To facilitate a safe return to work for office-based employees, Marks & Spencer used Power Apps to create a workplace booking app to help employees reserve desk spaces and ensure social distancing requirements are met. “We created the Workplace Booking App in Power Apps and distributed it in Teams,” explains Stephen Bolton, Product Owner, Communication and Collaboration at Marks & Spencer. “The combination of Microsoft tools helped us create a solution extremely quickly, and we will continue to evolve the app as more and more people start coming back to the office.”

According to Bolton, the ability to embed applications directly within Teams helps with adoption of and education around new apps. “Pinning apps in Teams makes a lot of sense in terms of getting applications in front of the people who need them,” he says. “And we can also include adoption material and how-to guides along with the applications in the same place—it’s a great way to support employees using new apps.”

Accessing essential applications in Teams improves productivity

Marks & Spencer takes advantage of Teams as a platform for employees to access third-party applications like Culture Amp, an employee feedback application, and Blue Yonder and Shifts, the organization’s scheduling tool. “We use Teams and Shifts as the front end for employees to access their schedules, which are supported by a third-party workforce management app called Blue Yonder,” says Bolton. “Frontline workers have expressed positive feedback to Shifts in Teams, particularly the ability to access everything they need through one single app and to tailor notifications and set quiet hours to suit their schedules.” In the case of Culture Amp, employees are prompted to take part in various surveys via chat messages in Teams. “In the past, gathering insights from employee surveys was a time-consuming process that involved taking employees off the sales floor,” says Bolton. “Today, surveys go directly to employees on their devices to complete on the spot using Teams. Now we have a great way to collect and save feedback to make better decisions for the business.”

Marks & Spencer employees access apps directly in Teams to stay connected to the business. One third-party app embedded in Teams, known as “Suggest to Steve,” streamlines the flow of insights from frontline workers directly to the CEO, Steve Rowe. “The Suggest to Steve app, via partner Sideways6, helps us capture suggestions about how to improve the business,” says Redman. “Over the last year, we've sorted 5,000 suggestions from the Suggest to Steve app,” says Townend. “Since bringing the app into Teams, we have seen the number of ideas double.” Redman agrees: “It’s a great example of how we have used the Teams platform to streamline a process that would have been random and unstructured in the past,” he says.

Today, more and more colleagues across the business have adopted Teams to establish new connections, says Miles Mahoney, Foods Customer Assistant and In-Store Digital Champion at Marks & Spencer, Eastleigh. “Both within a store and across the company as a whole, Teams makes us feel much better connected,” says Mahoney, who encourages the use of Teams as a digital champion. He uses the tool to network with colleagues from around the United Kingdom who are also part of the Business Improvement Group he chairs. “I can network so much easier with regional teams and even further afield,” he says.

As colleagues begin to return to the office, Marks & Spencer employees use Teams to facilitate a safe return to work. Nicole Edwards, Retail Communications and Engagement Manager, uses a Workplace Booking app embedded in Teams to gauge how busy certain Marks & Spencer office locations will be, helping her make a considered decision about where she wants to work. “The Workplace Booking App is easy to find within Teams and helps me feel more comfortable and safer knowing what to expect if I choose to work from the office on a given day.”

Balancing tradition and transformation with digital tools for modern work

Marks & Spencer’s use of Teams as a central hub for work has been a significant step towards a more modern, efficient way of working that ultimately improves customer service. “In order to keep pace with our colleagues’ and customers’ evolving needs, we are embracing digital tools like Teams to work in a more modern way that supports our vision for the future of retail,” says Berendji. “The opportunities are endless,” says Mahoney, in reference to Teams as a platform. “The more Marks & Spencer gets into Teams as a central hub for work, the better for colleagues who can work more efficiently to serve our customers. Everyone wins.”