Alfa Beta introduces a fresh way to communicate with stores using the Microsoft Teams platform

When Kalle Becker, Senior Vice President Operations at Alfa Beta Vassilopoulos (Alfa Beta), joined the Greek supermarket, he immediately got to work hosting workshops with his colleagues to better understand the daily operations of the organization – and find ways to improve. “One of the first things I did was ask, what are the biggest improvement opportunities from a store perspective,” he says. “One of the main topics that emerged was communication between the support office and our 331 stores.” It turned out that store managers were often overwhelmed with the volume of communication coming to them from the retail support office. These messages, while well intended, came from multiple sources and often in the form of emails. Sometimes, those emails contained duplicate information. 

Becker and his office-based colleagues were already committed users of Microsoft Teams, recognizing the power of the platform to help them stay connected and communicate efficiently during the pandemic. Something clicked, and Alfa Beta teams realized the solution to their communication roadblocks was already in use at the retail support office. “The work team we assigned to figure out how to improve communication realized we could bring store communications into a fully digital, Teams-based environment,” says Becker. “Teams is now the major communication hub for the entire business. With it, we have created a faster, safer, and more reliable way to communicate with employees in our stores.”

Optimized communication replaces legacy processes, boosts efficiency

The use of Teams to communicate with stores is part of a bigger initiative underway at Alfa Beta. “At the same time that we were exploring ways to simplify communication with stores, we were running a process simplification program,” says Becker. “Our use of Teams is embedded in a larger effort to help employees work more effectively.”

With that in mind, Alfa Beta created a custom integration of a SharePoint-based app that employees access via Teams. To create the new service for Teams, Oliver Gensterblum, Regional IT Manager, BECSE Modern Workplace, at Ahold Delhaize and his team used SharePoint Online and Microsoft Power Automate. “We created OCS using Microsoft 365 tools and following agile methodology,” says Gensterblum. “We implemented all our identified use cases between head office and stores in several sprint deliveries.” Dubbed “Optimized Communication with Stores,” or “OCS,” the Teams-based service has all but replaced emails from the support office. Gensterblum explains: “There were a lot of legacy processes happening between the stores and head offices,” he says, noting that in some cases processes were still paper-based and emails were the most common way to communicate. In the past, store managers received information through emails that they accessed via PC’s in a store office. Accessing the information took managers away from the shop floor, and there was no simple way to confirm with support offices once a task had been completed. 

Because many Alfa Beta employees were already familiar with the Microsoft 365 platform, the move to Teams for collaboration was simple and intuitive. “We decided that Teams was the best fit for our Optimized Communication with Stores project because it was part of the Microsoft 365 modern workplace and collaboration suite,” says Gensterblum. “It immediately fit from a technology platform point of view, was easy to implement, and accelerated user adoption as well.” For those who needed a grounding in using Teams, digital training sessions were there to fill the gap. “We utilized Teams to provide store employees with trainings related to topics like how to prepare for a meeting, record minutes, or share notes with participants,” says Gensterblum.

Time-saving technology keeps customers front and center

Empowering frontline workers with modernized communication tools is part of Alfa Beta’s strategy for staying at the forefront of its industry. “We want our frontline associates to be with our customers as much as possible,” says Becker. “We want to be product leaders in our market, so we need to make sure our associates are in the best possible position to convey Alfa Beta’s passion for choice, quality, and freshness to our customers.” Store managers can’t do that as easily when the demands of an overflowing inbox take them away from the shop floor. 

Timos Valsamakis, Store Manager of an Alfa Beta location in Vrilissia, Greece, explains how he uses Teams to work more flexibly. “By using the OCS application in Teams to stay on top of communications from head office, I am confident that I always have the latest information,” he says. “I use the solution to share updates with office-based colleagues, and the mobile aspect of Teams makes it easy for me to prioritize customers and stay where I am needed most - on the shop floor." 

Alfa Beta store managers receive messages from support offices at a standard time every day. “Almost all store information is communicated through OCS now,” says Becker. The new process is helping save time for managers and support office workers alike: Alfa Beta has tracked a 10% reduction in the time store managers spend looking for information. “Instead of combing through 100 emails a day, there are now 20 messages in the OCS Teams application,” says Becker. A typical message might share the details of an upcoming promotion or alert stores that a certain item will need to be discounted on a particular date. 

While the simple act of sharing relevant information with stores through a dedicated portal has already been impactful, Alfa Beta is constantly improving the OCS service. “We have added a confirmation function to OCS,” says Becker. “That will give us at the support office better visibility into how stores have taken action based on our communications.” Becker and his colleagues are also hard at work on a relevance filter that will sort communications based on how applicable they are to each store. “We have both large and small format stores, and each has its own unique priorities,” says Becker. “We are introducing functionality into OCS that will ensure store managers can zero in on the information that is most relevant to them.”

After a successful launch, Alfa Beta continues to evolve the use of Teams

After the initial roll-out of Teams, Becker and his colleagues immediately began planning for the next iteration of the tool. “We have a great first phase of the product delivered, and we are already working on how we can take this to the next level,” says Becker. Gensterblum agrees: “This tool is just the beginning,” he says. The next phase is to launch a custom-built bot in Teams, where store managers can ask questions and get an immediate response. The bot, built using Azure Bot Services, is designed to reduce the time support office employees spend answering questions from stores. “We have 331 Alfa Beta stores,” says Gensterblum. “You can imagine that when a new procedure, communication, or product gets shared, there are a lot of duplicate questions.” The chatbot in Teams will address common questions and further streamline communication between stores and managers.

Alfa Beta is also planning to add the Tasks app in Microsoft Teams to the toolset used by store associates, and the business is already piloting the tool. “We want to empower store managers to create Tasks for various department heads in response to the information they receive from the support office via Teams,” says Gensterblum. “It’s a more streamlined way to manage tasks.” There are still more innovations on the horizon: Alfa Beta also plans to create dedicated teams for each individual store, helping further modernize communication across departments in the same retail location.

For Becker, streamlining communications via Teams is about more than promoting efficiency. “Supporting a great employee experience is important, and we want to make it as easy as possible for our colleagues on the store floor to do their work,” he says. “It’s about respecting their time and not overloading them with too much noise.” Gensterblum agrees that providing employees with modern collaboration tools is vital to the business, and the customer experience: “A key part of this strategy is that we want to use the Teams technology to help us retain talent and reduce turnover,” he says. From a series of workshops to a new way of communicating, Alfa Beta is renewing collaboration across the enterprise. “Introducing Teams is a big step change in terms of how we interact with each other,” says Becker.

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