Yammer is 'gathering own momentum' at Argos as CIO swears by Microsoft collaboration tools

Office 365 is creating a cross-branch 'hive mind', explains Mike Sackman

As Argos continues to roll out its new iPad-driven retail stores with a unified stock-handling system at the backend, staff collaboration and cohesion are also being enhanced with the introduction of new social software.

CIO Mike Sackman began the transition from a set of "disparate tools" last year, moving the retail giant's 31,000 UK employees to the Office 365 suite, with Yammer playing a starring role.

"Employees have started using it - in collaboration with tools in Office 365 - to drive productivity, effectiveness of stores, and much more cross-team, cross-company collaboration. There are discussions going on around particular facets of the organisation that perhaps would not have happened before outside of meetings and hierarchies," explained Sackman in an exclusive interview with Computing.

"It's driving a much greater integration of the business."

Sackman sees parallels between the ongoing integration of customer sales channels and that of employee collaboration channels.

"People look and feel now like they work for one organisation. They are less functionally biased and more integrated as a team. It's not unusual to see groups of people from in-store IT and lead comms working together naturally across the company, as opposed to it being highly organised and governance-driven. It's creating a much more interesting place to work," he said.

"You'll struggle to find people across Argos who don't describe our ongoing strategy in the same way I'm describing it," Sackman said. "Yammer is gathering its own momentum."

Asked about other aspects of the group's infrastructure, Sackman said that Argos is sticking with Windows 7 as its OS, with no immediate plans to move to Windows 8. It has, however, scaled down provision of BlackBerry phones with the aim of moving forward with a "device agnostic" strategy that capitalises on the platform-bridging nature of Microsoft's software offerings.

Keep an eye on Computing for the full interview with Argos' Mike Sackman.