Apples to go - IT director Andy Chalklin on how iPhones and iPads are helping Pret A Manger to provide better service to coffee lovers

Andy Chalklin, director of IT at Pret, explains why he opted for iPhone over Android, and why the firm hasn't jumped into big data

Pret A Manger is one of the biggest coffee and sandwich chains in the UK, with a turnover of £450m a year. It is also expanding internationally, and as IT director it's Andy Chalklin's job to support this growth with the most appropriate technology.

Always looking for ways to boost efficiency since he joined the company in 2011, Chalklin has recently been trialling Apple devices as a means of increasing staff productivity.

"We've trialled iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads in stores," Chalklin tells Computing. "We've used them for everything from carrying out audits, to stock taking and production management, and what we're finding is they allow us to simplify an operation that makes IT teams think in a different way."

Pret's in-store apps are now designed with these devices in mind as well as more traditional point-of-sale terminals.

"Because [mobile devices] have got less real estate on the screen our designers have to think more ergonomically about designing an application to make it trivial to use without any training," Chalklin says.

One example where Apple devices have had a big impact is Pret's airport-based business, where security rules prevent staff from preparing food within the actual outlets.

"Most of our outlets have a kitchen where staff make fresh sandwiches every day. But in airports, the security means that the kitchen isn't in the shop – you're not allowed a knife if you're out on the concourse – so the person who's running the shop needs to communicate what needs to be made back to the kitchen," he says.

"With their mobile devices, staff can scan the barcode of the products they need and relay that information to the kitchen, without having to phone somebody up."

Chalklin believes it's important for Pret's mobile solutions to be "blended into staff's natural working life".

"They will have a mobile phone, they will have a Pret app on it which allows them to set production and will allow them to report a problem with a till or a fridge or other equipment," he says.

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Apples to go - IT director Andy Chalklin on how iPhones and iPads are helping Pret A Manger to provide better service to coffee lovers

Andy Chalklin, director of IT at Pret, explains why he opted for iPhone over Android, and why the firm hasn't jumped into big data

But while employees are free to access Pret's apps using their own smartphones, for security reasons managers must do work using company-issued Apple devices.

"At the moment we feel that we're better able to lock down Apple devices. There are fewer 17-year-old hackers who are able to break into Apple devices than there are on Android," he tells Computing, although he doesn't rule out using Google's Android OS in future.

"That's not to say we haven't trialled Android and wouldn't look at it in future, it's just the current platform," says Chalklin. "We're largely using HTML 5 responsive design rather than iOS apps, so our apps would work perfectly well on Android devices."

Nonetheless, Chalklin's sticking with Apple for now because he believes iOS's device management capabilities offer greater peace of mind. "We want to be able to find a device, we want to be able to lock it down and then remote erase it; there's just a few more bits in iOS ecosystem for that [compared with Android]," he says.

One area of Pret's digital strategy where Chalklin is keen to make more progress is the customer-facing side, where its current offering "is very much app 1.0, for finding your nearest store and looking at the menu".

Big plans to upgrade Pret's mobile and web presence are in the pipeline.

"We'll be launching a new approach to our web presence in January, it'll be a brand new web platform and there will be a new app or responsively designed website to go along with that," says Chalklin.

"We're hoping to improve customer engagement by enabling users to save their preferences. So if you're vegetarian, or have dietary requirements, we'll save that information so next time you check our menu, it'll reflect your preferences," he explains.

"And similarly if you get off a plane, be it in New York, Chicago or Shanghai, those preferences are known and the menu is customised for you.

"We're not trying to revolutionise what people are doing, just giving them what they expect. If you've taken the time to download our app and log in, the least we can do is respect what information you've offered to share with us."

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Apples to go - IT director Andy Chalklin on how iPhones and iPads are helping Pret A Manger to provide better service to coffee lovers

Andy Chalklin, director of IT at Pret, explains why he opted for iPhone over Android, and why the firm hasn't jumped into big data

Pret's new app will also be able to use payment data to make recommendations based on a customer's location and product preferences.

"If a customer is in one of our trial shops we'll be able to ask them whether they'd like to try one of our trial products. That kind of engagement will help us get a better understanding of customers," says Chalklin.

However, as with any project involving the collection of personal data, Chalklin is acutely aware that Pret must not fall foul of privacy regulations.

"It is a massive challenge because we have to respect all of the data privacy rules, all of the confidentiality rules," he says.

Indeed, this data governance challenge may even be too much for Chalklin's limited resources to handle, which is one reason why Pret has so far resisted going down the big data route.

"We haven't gone into big data analysis yet, because if we go down that route the complexity will be enormous," he says, adding that Pret simply does not have the financial resources to gamble on such a potentially expensive exercise.

"We're a very big company, we have hundreds of stores, we're successful, but we're a retailer, so the margins we operate on are much thinner than banks or insurance companies," he says.

"When we spend we have to spend wisely and we can't afford failed projects, we have to have successful projects. So we tend to be slightly cautious and not right at the bleeding edge of technology.

"With analytics we can probably afford to be slightly behind that curve and make use of things that have been proved by other people."

For a company of its size, Pret has what Chalklin describes as "a very small IT team" with fewer than 20 people employed to manage the firm's global IT infrastructure. However, when making a hire, Chalklin tells Computing that attitude can be more important than a candidate being a "deep technologist".

"What we look at is a candidate's attitude, the way they look at IT. It's about IT being a service to the business, about being an enabler. We want practical, focused business people rather than deep technologists," Chalklin concludes.