ATLASSIAN + THE VERY GROUP

Since we went live, we’ve been getting a 4.9/5
satisfaction score on average. With the previoussolution, we had nothing but complaints.
ROB CROMPTON
Head of Service Management, The Very Group

4.9/5

satisfaction score
for Jira Service
Management

34,000tickets submitted in
the first 7 months

16,000+incidents raised andresolved in 7 months

How The Very Group’s $2B
retail enterprise modernized
and centralized service
management
Transitioning from outsourced to in-house IT services led
The Very Group to modernize their legacy service
management system and boost employee satisfaction.

Atlassian Solution Partner

T H E VERY G R O UP
With annual revenue of £2.15bn, The Very Group is a unique digital business that combines online retail and flexible payments. Theirdigital retail brands, Very and Littlewoods, help to bring over 2,000 desirable labels within easy reach of more customers. They haveover a hundred years of history behind them, but at their heart there is a passion for change – to constantly improve what they do, toinnovate with data and technology at their core and to be the best possible place to work.
I ND USTRY
RetailATL ASS I A N P RO D U C T S & A P P S

LOCATIO N
Europe, Middle East, and Africa
COMPANY S IZE
1,001-5,000 employees
SOLUTIO N PARTNER
Clearvision

Jira Service Management
Collaborative IT servicemanagement

Jira Software
Project and issue tracking

Confluence
Document collaboration

THE CHALLENGE
As The Very Group transitioned from outsourced to in-house IT services, they saw anopportunity to improve both the employee and customer experience by modernizing
their legacy service management system, which was quite basic and highly manual.

THE SOLUTION
The company implemented Jira Service Management in a matter of weeks with thehelp of Atlassian Solution Partner Clearvision.

THE IMPACT
The Very Group has rolled out Jira Service Management across the organization to rave
reviews from employees. In addition to rating the system a 4.9 out of 5 in satisfaction
surveys, team members say they love how the tool helps them collaborate more, work
faster, and provide even better service to both internal and external customers.

Bringing service management into a centralized tool andthe 21st century
As a retail empire that has evolved from mailing catalogs in 1861 to ane-commerce and financial services giant today, The Very Group is no stranger
to transformation. So, when the business was moving IT services back inhouse after outsourcing them for decades, Head of Service Management Rob
Crompton and his team saw an opportunity to optimize The Very Group’s service
management practices, beginning with a new platform.
Rob says the company’s legacy tool was “quite clunky” and required employees
to rely on phone calls and emails to fulfill requests. While this may have been
sufficient for a small business, it was far too basic and manual for an enterprisewith over $2 billion in annual revenue, 3,000-plus employees, and 4.4 million
active customers. “We wanted to mirror what we do in our wider organizationand innovate through technology to give our colleagues an experience similar towhat they would have if they were using any online retailer or any social mediaplatform,” Rob explains.
Since The Very Group already used Jira Software and Confluence for project
and knowledge management (respectively), the Service Management Teamwas intrigued by the idea of adding a familiar, integrated tool like Jira Service
Management. Rob says, “It gives us the opportunity to bring everything together
on one platform: our incident management across multiple different solutions,
all the forms, and that centralized collaboration ability of Jira Software.”However, Rob and his team were still new to Jira Service Management, so theyturned to their Atlassian Solution Partner, Clearvision, who provided a demo
and guidance on the platform’s capabilities. Impressed by its potential, The VeryGroup moved forward with building a rapid prototype with Clearvision. “Within
three or four weeks, we had a product that would work for the organization
very quickly. We were able to configure all the key elements, the self-service
portal, and the knowledge articles enough for us to take it on ourselves andstart working with it,” Rob recalls. After setting up basic incident, change, andproblem management workflows along with a self-service portal, the Service
Management Team spent the next few months finessing configurations,
implementing automations to increase efficiency and self-service, and rolling out
the tool to the rest of the organization.

Better efficiency and control make employees happy
Since launching Jira Service Management, employees across The Very Group haveembraced the tool as a faster way to serve each other and their own needs. Over50,000 tickets were created in the first seven months after rollout, 36,000 ofwhich came through the customer portal.
Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “Since we went live, we’ve beengetting a 4.9/5 satisfaction score on average, which has been fantastic to see.
With the previous solution, we had nothing but complaints,” Rob says. He notesthat Jira Service Management has enabled support teams to be much closer
to the end user as they use it to communicate updates, ask questions, andseek clarifications when needed. He believes the improved communication is
directly reflected in the great satisfaction scores. “People love the fact that they
can search knowledge articles, self-serve, and track requests. It improves theemployee experience.”
Technical and non-technical teams alike are using Jira Service Management tospeed up everyday tasks and collaborate to complete requests. Employees haveturned to the platform to raise and resolve over 16,000 incidents, 1,400 changes,
and make 8,000 service requests since rollout. While The Very Group’s previoussolution required a five-day lead time to handle changes, with Jira Service
Management and pipeline integrations, they have optimized the change process
and reduced lead time significantly, while enabling continuous integration andcontinuous delivery.
The Very Group also streamlined the access management process and built
in strict controls required for security and regulatory compliance. Jira Service
Management is integrated with the company’s HR systems, so whenever a newemployee starts, hiring managers can search for the employee in the self-service
portal, choose which applications they need access to, and submit a request
within minutes. The User Admin Team can then take that request, break it up into
multiple tickets to grant access, and track permissions. The Very Group also uses
Jira Service Management’s native Assets tool to track which employees haveaccess to each application.
These strict security controls and audit trails are especially important for The
Very Group’s financial division, which must comply with the UK’s Financial
Conduct Authority. “As a regulated organization, we need to make sure we havethe right controls in place,” Rob says. “What Jira Service Management enables

us to do is really lock down that control around access to systems, to make sure
we’ve got an audit trail of all the access requests.”

Happier employees across the company means happiercustomers across the globe
Improving the employee experience has trickled down into a better customer
experience. Keeping customers happy is especially crucial – and even moredifficult – during the busy holiday season. Research from Salesforce showsthat over one billion consumers stocked up on gifts from their favorite storesin 2022 and spent over $1 trillion in online shopping alone. For retailers like
The Very Group, providing speedy service and managing incidents are an evenhigher priority during peak times like these. “Jira Service Management gives ourcolleagues easy access to support when they need it. So if our customers haveproblems, we’re able to request support very quickly for them,” Rob explains.
“Now, we can promptly resolve issues that are facing our customers at this timeof year [the holidays], when we want them to keep on shopping. We don’t want
to be interrupted,” Rob says.
Implementing Jira Service Management has also helped The Very Group gain visibility
into data that can be used to make improvements across the business, such as themost common issues and total onboarding time. As more teams (including People,Accounts Payable, and Facilities Management) have seen the types of processes they
can streamline and the data they can gather, they have approached the Service
Management Team for help launching their own service desks.
Going forward, Rob and his team are excited about optimizing more processes,
as well as getting even more value out of the tool by expanding automation,
Assets and their CMDB, cloud environment, and more. Although it’s still earlyin their journey, Rob says teams across The Very Group are already loving theday-to-day improvements of Jira Service Management and looking forward to its
long-term potential. “It gives that real flexibility and real ease of communicationthat we were looking for.”Transform your service delivery with Atlassian.
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