Blog: The smaller they are, the harder they fall

At Fat Face, we’re no strangers to excitement and danger. A sense of adventure runs through the whole company, originally set up to support two friends skiing in the Alps. But it’s a fine line between the thrill of beating a black run – and the embarrassment of being air-ambulanced off the slopes.

When it came to our recent POS replacement project, we knew any mistakes could bring the whole mountain crashing down on us. And no one jumps in to rescue off-piste retailers.

It was a brave decision to replace the old system, no doubt; it was dead on its feet and in danger of toppling over at any point, but the project wasn’t without risks of its own. Massive benefits if successful; the very survival of the business at risk if we failed. And we had a timescale that looked impossible on paper and landing right at the start of peak trading.

Having come from the rather less adrenaline charged surroundings of Marks & Spencer, the POS project at Fat Face was a real eye opener. You tend to imagine similar approaches and processes on a bigger or smaller scale depending on the size of the organisation, but IT change projects in small to medium businesses bring with them a whole new set of challenges.

So, for example, in a large organisation you might have people whose full time jobs revolve around one aspect of the project. That’s not the case in a small retailer, where people have to be prepared to learn new skills, take on new responsibilities and push themselves out of their comfort zone – on a daily basis. That needs a real entrepreneurial mindset.

It doesn’t mean internal stakeholders have any lower expectations – if anything, they’re much greater as they have a lot more skin in the game. And with disparate and ageing systems, the requirements are often much more complex.

Similarly, there’s less governance and less large change project expertise in-house – so it’s vital to have a technology partner that you can depend on and pull in to help when needed.

And lastly, budgets are smaller and there’s absolutely no leeway. You might take a £m hit in a big company for going over budget. In a small company, you could bring the whole thing down. That’s a huge amount of pressure to deal with – and because it’s not a faceless “department” at fault, there’s nowhere to hide. You’re exposed and you’re accountable.

But, when it goes right – and despite a few late nights and scary moments our POS project went spectacularly well – there’s no better feeling. You can genuinely see the difference your work is making to the business, its people and its customers. And after a quick breather, you’re off looking for the next mountain to tackle.

Watch the BT Expedite Fat Face video case study: Cloud-based, omni-channel POS system designed, deployed and delivering the goods in just nine months