Anyone at M&S?

[fullyautomatix]

There are many companies I would outsource a customer facing website too but ones with a different cultural context would be nowhere near the shortlist.

Nor would I treat the biggest, most profitable shop to cost saving....

I think you are totally misjudging the reasons for outsourcing. Its not to cut costs for the company, its to line up the pockets with bonus based on the cost savings achieved. Does not matter if down the line 2 years later the project is a failure, by then the bonus was spent on a new Ferrari and the clown can go to a new company and start all over again.

[pjclarke]

There are many companies I would outsource a customer facing website too but ones with a different cultural context would be nowhere near the shortlist.

Nor would I treat the biggest, most profitable shop to cost saving....

Nor would I. I'm nowhere near the online stuff, but even in my little silo it seems to take an eternity and a small lake of red ink to get even the simplest design document from draft to sign-off.

Which we then ignore and code up something that actually does what the business needs ..

[sal]

oh look over there, its all IT's fault.

Sales at the website were down 8.1% in the 13 weeks to 28 June, with M&S chief executive Marc Bolland admitting the new site had "an impact on sales".

Like-for-like sales of non-food products, including clothing and homewares, fell 1.5% in the quarter...

...All six million customers registered on the old site were forced to reregister, and there have been reports of problems with site navigation...

Looks like it, even if ti was a poor management decision or botched project.

[mudskipper]

What went wrong?

I know when ex-clientCo's shiny new website went live, they failed to map their old URLs for products and searches to the new ones, so all google's results went 404.

Something that I'd repeatedly reported in testing but was considered non-critical. (i.e. poor management decision)

An emergency fix was put in, but that took about 4 days.

[vetran]

Looks like it, even if ti was a poor management decision or botched project.

point I was making was that as the ship sinks the captain is going round shouting I knew we shouldn't have painted the ballroom yellow look what it caused!

Its almost certainly a poor implementation but I suspect that wasn't down to IT bods but the management.

[NickFitz]

All six million customers registered on the old site were forced to reregister…

Laura Wade-Gery, who was head of M&S's online business, was elevated just one week ago to oversee M&S's UK stores and some are tipping her to, one day, take over from Mr Bolland.

Good to see that management incompetence on an epic scale is, once again, no barrier to advancement

[mudskipper]

All six million customers registered on the old site were forced to reregister…

Laura Wade-Gery, who was head of M&S's online business, was elevated just one week ago to oversee M&S's UK stores and some are tipping her to, one day, take over from Mr Bolland.

Good to see that management incompetence on an epic scale is, once again, no barrier to advancement

Ah, data migration...

[EternalOptimist]

Ah, data migration...

Ah yes sir! I am knowing all about the doings of the immigration

[Sysman]

hmm

oh look over there, its all IT's fault.

Scapegoat time?

This won't have helped:

All six million customers registered on the old site were forced to reregister, and there have been reports of problems with site navigation.

and

Ronbo, Lancashire emailed: "The old M&S website may not have been flashy but it was a masterpiece of clarity. In seeking to emulate retailers like Next, M&S have produced an over-complicated user interface that spends most of its time "selling at" the consumer rather than responding to their requests".

Oh dear.

[sal]

All six million customers registered on the old site were forced to reregister…

Laura Wade-Gery, who was head of M&S's online business, was elevated just one week ago to oversee M&S's UK stores and some are tipping her to, one day, take over from Mr Bolland.

Good to see that management incompetence on an epic scale is, once again, no barrier to advancement

I'd like to think it's even a requirement for advancement, let alone barrier.