Announcements

Co-op Digital is now the ‘Co-op Experience’ team

The group of teams that most people know as Co-op Digital is now called ‘Co-op Experience’. This week, we brought the following interconnected and complementary expertise together under this new umbrella:  

  • Design, Content and Customer Experience (CX) – those who create strategic visions for future Co-op experiences and design journeys that deliver positive outcomes for customers and colleagues 
  • Product – those who align the customer and business strategies to set priorities that drive the outcomes we need to achieve  
  • Delivery – those who craft a culture and environment for a team to deliver better experiences 
  • Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – those who create the very first interaction our customers have with our products and services 
  • Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) – those who carry out experiments within an experience to achieve better outcomes for customers and the business 

The reorganisation will give us more opportunities to work more closely. For example, it will be easier to embed experimentation and measurement from our CRO experts deeper into our product teams; and our Content Design community and SEO specialists have many complementary skills we can explore. Ultimately, our goal is to strengthen the team so we can improve customer, colleague and community experiences. 

We sit within the Digital Technology area of the Co-op and continue to work alongside our engineers in multi-disciplinary teams.

Restructuring to reflect (and enable more) growth 

Co-op Digital was set up back in 2016. Since then, we’ve grown exponentially and it’s been essential to reconsider our structure so that we can continue to grow and maximise the value we deliver in our products and services. As with all organisations, what worked to get us here won’t necessarily take us to where we want to be.  

The thinking behind the changes 

Our team name should indicate what we do. We’re still ‘digital’ in how we work, but the multiple possible interpretations make the term unhelpful.  

Our focus is on outcomes (the overarching aim) rather than outputs (for example, a straight-forward delivery checklist of features). An outcome can be achieved in many ways, and the solution is not always digital.  

Here’s a real example from our Membership team. 

An output is an instruction, such as: add Apple Pay to the Co-op Membership registration flow.  

It doesn’t give us much opportunity to explore how much value it may add. Its success can only be judged whether it was delivered. (It was? Ok, check ✅) 

However, we focused on an outcome. We wanted to: increase conversion by 10% in our Membership registration flow for new, in-store customers.  

The team wasn’t dictated to and instead, it was free to explore different solutions that may have been quicker, cheaper and more impactful than simply adding Apple Pay. 

In this particular case, we delivered the outcome by iterating paper leaflets in-store. The solution did not involve ‘digital’ at all. 

Our work is not bound by screens and apps. Crafting valuable services and positive experiences for our customers, colleagues and communities is the highest priority for this group of teams. This is why ‘Experience’ now better reflects what we’re striving for. 

Adam Warburton

Chief Product Officer 

Introducing local.co.uk – Co-op’s new marketplace

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We’ve recently launched local.co.uk – a marketplace that connects independent businesses to customers across the UK. We’re doing this because we want to give small businesses a fairer way to trade and help make communities across the UK stronger.

We built the service in 13 weeks and we’re proud of what we’ve achieved. But we know it’s far from perfect – there are parts of the service that could be smoother and features that we want to improve and introduce.

We launched it when we did so that we could learn quickly from real users and make the service valuable for them.

We’ve done a lot and learnt a lot.

This video shows how we created local.co.uk (2 minutes 26 seconds) 

Karen Lindop: we’re hiring! Plus our ‘Federation Presents’ events

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(Transcript) Karen Lindop: Hello, and welcome to our update on what’s happening in the Digital team.

Firstly I want to welcome some new people to the team. Caroline Hatwell, Matthew Edwards, Lucy Bridges, Devon Gillespie, Lowri Davies, Kyle Welsby, Dominic Jefferson, Danny Wilson, Mark Pittam and of course Kim Morley who returns to cover Cara’s maternity cover. Welcome to you all, it’s great to have you here.

I also want to congratulate Carl Burton who won Disruptive Leader of the Year last week at the Tech Leaders Awards for his work on Guardian for our Funeralcare Business. It’s really well deserved, we’re all proud of you Carl as well as the whole team, past and present!

We host lots of different groups and organisations events in The Federation. Anyone can use our events space, and you can find details of all upcoming events on the website and we’ll add the link to our blog.

We’ve also been running a series of free events called Federation Presents which has been designed to explore ethics in the technology industry and society and using technology for good. We have collaborated with experts from around the world to talk about our industry’s big issues such as surveillance capitalism, racial and gender bias in machine learning, ethical business models and the future of work. This week we held one on Toxic Tech, and our next one will be in December – keep an eye open for more details.

Co-op’s interim results came out last week, I’d encourage you to have a look. There’s some great progress in 6 months by doing things #TheCoopWay.

Within the interim results we announced that we’ve acquired Dimec who are a healthcare technology start-up who have developed a platform which enables patients and their GPs to interact and better manage their prescription needs. Dimec will give us the online structure from which to build a new range of health and well-being services for our members. Excitingly, we’re looking for a Head of Product for this new business, if you’re interested the link to apply is on our blog.

We’re also looking for software and platform engineers, BA’s and front end developers, again the links to apply are on out blog.

That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to subscribe for all our updates on our blog and follow us on Twitter. See you soon.

Karen Lindop
Head of Digital Operations

Karen Lindop: 5 awards plus our very own Federation bee

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(Transcript) Karen Lindop: Hello, and welcome to our update on what’s happening in the Digital team.

I’ll start with some great news. Our teams working in partnership with our Funeralcare and Food businesses, as well as Equal Experts and UsTwo recently picked up five Big Chip Awards for the work they have done on Shifts, the app to help store colleagues manage their rotas and Guardian, our new Funeralcare digital service. Well done to the teams that have worked hard to get these digital solutions out to colleagues.

Our Federation bee was unveiled last week as part of Bee in the City taking place in Manchester over the summer. Our bee was created by artists Nomad Clan and shows the history of Manchester right from its beginnings as a roman fort. It now has pride of place outside The Federation. You can follow our bee on Twitter and if you’re in Manchester, check it out.

A massive thank you to Nick McLaughlin from our Funeralcare business and Carl Burton who spent time with the team, giving them insight into their business plans, strategy, market and challenges and learning. It was a great opportunity to learn more about one of our businesses, thank you both for their time.

Our next Federation Presents event is taking place next month. This time we’re exploring what humanity needs to do to make sure it survives the technological revolution with tech ethicist Shannon Vellor and other guests. The event is free and you can sign up using the link.

Some more great news. In a few weeks we’ll be welcoming back Kim Morley to the team. She’ll join Co-op Digital as our Head of Agile Delivery, covering Cara’s maternity leave. It will be great to have you back Kim!

Finally, we’ve got some vacancies for a variety of roles, you can find them all on our blog.

Don’t forget to subscribe for our updates on our blog and follow us on Twitter. See you soon.

Karen Lindop
Head of Digital Operations

Karen Lindop: we’re hiring! Plus news from our latest All Team

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(Transcript) Karen Lindop: Hello, and welcome to our update on what’s happening in the Digital team. Busy week this week.

On Wednesday all the team got together to share their work. It was great to have lots of the team members on their feet and talking about the work their doing. We heard all about digital coupons; our Design system; service design with our Food business; how we’re using our data ethics canvas; plans for one web and celebrating award success. Thanks to everyone who presented.

We’re looking for some new people to join us right now. We’re expanding the work on Funeralcare Guardian, and because of this we’re looking for product owner, delivery manager, BA, software engineer, platform engineer, QA, user researcher and interaction designer. If you, or you know anyone who might be interested then please get in touch.

You can also find out more about the Guardian roll-out and lessons learned on our Digital blog.

Also this week, some of our interaction designers have been involved in OH’s Catalyst programme – a 10-day alternative education programme for people looking to get their foot in the door of the creative and digital industry. Katherine Wastell and Jack Fletcher took part in a panel discussion about their design career paths. Then together with Nate Langley they all led a session called ‘Everyone is a designer’, which focussed on turning research findings into product opportunities.

That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to subscribe for all our updates on our blog and follow us on Twitter. See you soon.

Karen Lindop
Head of Digital Operations

Karen Lindop: our first ‘Federation presents’ event plus winning an award

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(Transcript) Karen Lindop: Hello, and welcome to our update on what’s happening in the Digital team.

I’ll start with some brilliant news. On Tuesday our service team won the Special Innovations Award at the IT Service Management Foundation awards. A massive well done to Michaela and the entire team, past and present,including our partners BJSS.

At the Federation last week we hosted the first in the Federation Presents series. A massive well done to Emer and the Federation team, plus a thank you to Mary Mazzio. If you missed the event you can watch it again, we’ll add a link to the blog, plus you can always register for the next in the series which is next week on the 13th June. It’s on the very topical subject of responsibility with data.

We’re delighted that Aurelie Pols will join us to deliver the keynote, talking about how digitisation may be challenging our values as citizens and about our responsibility as data subjects, citizens and parents to assure technology works for the benefit of human beings. There are a few tickets left, so be quick and register. We also realise that not everyone can make evening events, which is why we’ll also be live streaming the event, and will make the recording available after as well.

Richard Sullivan and Cara Bermingham have been busy planning our next agile masterclass. It’s on 22nd June, and open to any of our colleagues across Co-op, so get in touch if you’d like to sign up.

Also this week, Katherine Vaughn and the user research team from Citizens Advice Bureau spent the day with our user research team sharing ways of working. It’s always so valuable to learn from others, so thank you to Katherine and the team for taking the time to come to see us.

Finally congratulations to Adam Warburton who completed his MBA this week – a fantastic achievement, well done Adam!

That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to subscribe for all our updates on our blog and follow us on Twitter. See you soon.

Karen Lindop
Head of Digital Operations

Karen Lindop: the AGM, user research training plus award nominations

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(Transcript) Karen Lindop: Hello, and welcome to our update on what’s happening in the Digital team.

I’ll start with some brilliant news. We’ve had not one, but 3 award nominations this week. Shifts has been shortlisted for best user experience and Guardian for transformation at the Big Chip Awards. Plus our service team have been shortlisted for the ‘special innovations’ award at the IT Service Management Foundation awards. Well done everyone, it’s testament to all of your hard work. Fingers crossed for 3 wins!

Talking of Shifts, you may remember a few weeks ago we made Shifts available to all our Food store colleagues. In just 4 weeks we’ve onboarded over half of the user base with 90% of those users returning in the past week. Chris, Paul and the team aren’t done though – they’ll continue to listen to feedback from colleagues and work on making it even better.

Our user research community have been running a training session to help get more honest feedback from our colleagues. Last week they ran further sessions with people who will be doing user research throughout our Co-op. Great work from Simon Hurst who has designed the course and is taking a lead on this.

Saturday was our Co-op AGM. Well done to all the teams across Co-op who come together as one Co-op to deliver a brilliant day for our members. If you couldn’t make it on the day, or were watching the royal wedding or football – our live stream is available to view.

Finally a quick reminder that next week the first of The Federation presents series begins. On the 30th May we are hosting an evening were we talk about Modern Slavery in Tech with the incredible Mary Mazzio. There are a few tickets left, so be quick and register.

That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to subscribe for all our updates on our blog and follow us on Twitter. See you soon.

Karen Lindop
Head of Digital Operations

 

Karen Lindop: Agile Manchester plus work begins on personalised digital offers

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(Transcript) Karen Lindop: Hello, and welcome to our update on what’s happened in the Digital team this week. It’s been a short week, but there’s no shortage of things going on in the team.

We’re proud to have been a sponsor of Agile Manchester this week. As always it’s been a brilliant couple of days, thank to the organisers who have done a great job. Also a massive thank you to Gillian MacDonald, Neil Vass, Ian Thomas, Danny McCarthy, Cara Bermingham who all presented, doing a fantastic job of representing the team and Co-op at the event.

This week our Membership ‘join in’ monthly email was released. This month we’re focussing on pizza, neighbourliness and digital coupons – so there’s something there for everyone. If you’re interested in finding out more you can from our Membership website.

You may remember reading a few months ago a blog post about about the discovery work that some of the team did in partnership with our food colleagues to investigate personalised offers for our members. Well the team have reformed, with the aim of building an end-to-end test of personalised offers via digital channels, ready to test with real members in Q3, 2018.

They are made up of colleagues from our Food business, Retail IT and Digital, each bringing their own expertise to different parts of the service. If you’re interested in finding our more they’re based on the 13th floor of Angel Square.

This week we’ve had some new people join us. Tom Clegg, Daniel Cork, Paul Clarkson, Tom Simcox and Marianne Knowles all join our design community. We also welcome Dale Hudson and Michael Doyle as front-end developers. Welcome to Co-op everyone, it’s great to have you here.

That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to subscribe for all our updates on our blog and follow us on Twitter. See you next week.

Karen Lindop
Head of Digital Operations

Karen Lindop: Camp Digital and the Co-operative Education Conference, plus Shifts has 17,500 users

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(Transcript) Karen Lindop: Hello, and welcome to our update on what’s happened in the Digital team this week.

You may remember last week I talked about the go live of Shifts to all our Food store colleagues. At the start of last week we had 4,200 users. We’ve now got an incredible 17,500 users! Plus 93% of our stores have at least one user and 65% of users are accessing it accessing daily. Well done to Chris and the team, you’re doing a great job! Thank you.

Linda Humphries and Emer Coleman both did an amazing job this week representing Co-op. Linda talked about the positive effects of working in the open at Camp Digital and Emer was at the Co-operative Education Conference sharing the story of Federation, talking co-ops, digital and democracy.

Talking of events, we’ve just announced the first in The ‘Federation presents’ series. On the 30 May we are really proud to host an evening were we talk about Modern Slavery in Tech with the incredible Mary Mazzio.

Mary joins us in The Federation to talk about her documentary ‘I am Jane Doe’. It’s a look at how tech can be an enabler of modern slavery without appropriate regulation. Mary will talk about her decision to make the film and the role it has played in generating such focus on the issue and the political and social response.

She’ll then be joined by Co-op’s Director of Policy and Campaigns, Paul Gerrard, and Craig Melson, Programme manager, Tech UK on a panel hosted by our CMO Matt Atkinson. We’ll add the link to our blog, be sure to get your tickets early!

Our user researchers have been thinking about what underpins the way they work, and as a result they’ve created some principles. We published them this week on our blog and James and the team would love to hear what you think about them. We’ve already had some great feedback via Twitter which we really appreciate.

Finally, thank you to Richard Sullivan and Kim Morley who ran another Digital Masterclass last week. We had a great mix of Co-op colleagues from across our businesses and from lots of different disciplines. The feedback was brilliant, and we’ll be running another this month. If you’re a Co-op colleague watch this space for the date, also you can contact Richard or Kim if you want to know some more about it.

That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to subscribe for all our updates on our blog and follow us on Twitter. See you next week.

Karen Lindop
Head of Digital Operations

Karen Lindop: Shifts is live plus learning to be mental health first aiders

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(Transcript) Karen Lindop: Hello, and welcome to this week’s and my first Co-op Digital update.

This has been a big week for our team working in partnership with our colleagues in Food as well as Equal Experts and UsTwo. All Co-op Food store colleagues have access to Shifts, a website that allows them to view their past and upcoming shifts; who’s scheduled to work each shift in their store; their shift preferences; their break entitlements, as well as the payday calendar.

It’s been a real co-operative effort and a great example of us all working as ‘One Co-op’. You can hear what colleagues think about it on our YouTube Channel. Well done and thank you to everyone on the team, past and present.

But that’s not it for Shifts, the team will keep listening to colleagues, continually adding features and improving the experience.

Our Member Voice team held an end of discovery show and tell on Thursday. We’ll share their findings on our blog soon, so keep an eye out for that. The team have also recently hit the milestone of over 100,000 members joining opportunities – from helping to design a member wine, to sharing their thoughts and experiences on apprenticeships. Well done to Mark and the team.

On Thursday we welcomed students from our Priesthorpe Academy in Leeds. They got to meet a number of our teams and learn about The Federation. A big thank you James and our friends at Northcoders who also spent some time with all the students.

Finally, some of the team spent some time this week learning how they can be ‘mental health first aiders’. We’ll share more about this shortly on our blog. But thank you to those who took part and for Mental Health First Aid England for their support.

That’s it for this week. Don’t forget to subscribe for all our updates on our blog and follow us on Twitter.

Karen Lindop
Head of Digital Operations