In 2013 John Lewis approached Forge to develop a cloud-based people counting solution for their retail stores. In conjunction with their incumbent security partner, we developed a solution that was initially trialed in 10 stores.
After a successful trial, it was rolled out to a further 35 stores, covering 390 entrances and counting more than 150 million people per year. We now count customers across 51 stores.
“Our people counting solution is now one of the key providers of real-time occupancy and consumer spend data which informs stakeholders of operational performance at the group level, region and store.” Paul Speariett, Co-founder and Director, Forge.
In 2017 John Lewis and Partners approached Forge again to resolve the issue of having multiple access cards for staff, because of different legacy access control systems across their sites, which was difficult to manage.
Working with the team Forge implemented its smart access solution which now provides a single view of access control across all sites, and importantly one access card for staff that provides them with access to all sites. This saves John Lewis and Partners £1000’s in producing and replacing multiple site cards for staff member a year.
Whilst working with the John Lewis and Partners team on implementing, Forge also identified that back of house reception areas for third party staff and visitors was inefficient and often lacked robust a process to record the entry and exit of the staff and visitors.
In 2018 Forge Bluepoint launched at 19 John Lewis and Partner sites. This was accompanied by the installation of integrated kiosks to back of house reception areas to provide an unmanned, secure and compliant visitor management experience for third party staff and visitors.
Forge continues to work with John Lewis and Partners, expanding our solutions into more stores and evolving our products to meet the changing needs of their retail landscape.
