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Eight months ago, Boots UK stores director Simon Roberts took on the job of integrating 2,300 Boots and Alliance stores. Jennifer Creevy finds out how he’s getting on

It’s been a hectic eight months for Boots UK stores director Simon Roberts. When the health and beauty giant was sold last July, in an£11 billion deal to a partnership of KKR and vice-chairman Stefano Pessina, Roberts was promoted and took over responsibility for store operations at 2,300 shops across the UK and Ireland – amalgamating the Boots the Chemist and Alliance Pharmacy businesses.

“The past few months have been incredibly busy, but exciting,” says Roberts. “The key to making the integration of the store operations work was to do it from the ground-up, and that means getting out into the stores and seeing how to make it work.”

Roberts says he had four big goals to work towards in the integration: maintaining the promise of putting healthcare and pharmacy first; to be customer-led; to organise the portfolio by format; and to create the best retail employment brand in the UK.

“We needed to respect the two cultures of Boots and Alliance,” explains Roberts. “We needed to bring the best of both together, to create something that is better than both.”

Among Boots’ key strategies is a customer-led approach and the new, bigger group needed to be even more so, says Roberts. “We’ve always been customer-focused but, by integrating the two businesses, we looked at how to work this harder,” he explains.

One of the main elements in the integration was maintaining the independent, community-focused approach of the smaller Alliance Pharmacy stores. “Each Alliance Pharmacy offers a tailored service to that community,” says Roberts. “Pharmacists have individual relationships with their shoppers – they enquire about their family and friends, as well as offering a professional service. We didn’t want to lose that.”

After testing several different formats for the Alliance Pharmacy integration, the retailer settled on the Your Local Boots Pharmacy fascia. “We learnt a lot about what our customers wanted from the trials and believe we’ve found a format that brings out the best from both companies,” he says.

Starting this month, 900 Alliance Pharmacies, plus about 200 of the smaller Boots stores, will be rebranded to Your Local Boots Pharmacy. The shops will be refreshed and Boots’ product lines will be added, along with Boots Advantage Card services. The shops will retain the same staff and services and there will also be more space allocated to the dispensing area. “Where we have space, we’ve created areas where shoppers can chat to the pharmacists as they are dispensing their prescriptions,” explains Roberts. “It gives a better customer relationship and adds to the community feel of the stores.”

The remaining Boots portfolio has been split into three other formats – health & beauty, flagship and UK airports. Its Republic of Ireland stores sit within a separate group.

The reorganisation being of a sizeable scale, April was dedicated to a “mid-air refuel”. Roberts explains that store leaders were gathered at a conference in September to gear them up for the change. “We needed to empower those store leaders and make them excited about the re-organisation,” he says. “By empowering them on a local level, they really took charge of their own particular area and made sure their staff were on board, too. And all this happened while we continued to deliver strong sales performance and our best ever third-quarter results.”

Roberts believes the smooth transition could not have happened without store leaders being on board. “Most periods of change at retailers leave store staff wondering what is happening, as changes are being made from the top but, by being open and engaging from the beginning, our store leaders drove the change through,” he says. “And they are the ones that really know what the customers want, so the new organisation makes us more customer-led as well.”

The engagement programme seems to have worked. Earlier this year, Boots scored its best result to date in its internal Great Place to Work employee survey, with more than 80 per cent of staff satisfied in their work.

Yet Roberts does not stop there. “As we launch our stores organisation, there is still much to do, and nothing makes me happier than seeing store leaders who are really flying and grabbing all the opportunities. Having the best people is what really fires me up,” he says.

With Alliance Boots clear in its ambition to become the world’s leading pharmacy-led health and beauty retailer, Roberts will have a key role in making sure the brand is consistent, from the smallest local pharmacy to the biggest high street store.