Room Screen Solution Enhances Beauty Experience at One of World’s Top Stores

In late 2019, Harrods of Knightsbridge unveiled a revamped beauty emporium as part of three-part makeover of its beauty department.

The iconic Brompton Road store in London, now one of the largest beauty destinations in the world, now offers an immersive experience that includes ‘Magic Mirrors’ that allow customers to digitally try a new make-up look, a beauty concierge service and a masterclass studio.

As part of the make-over, there are 14 new private treatment rooms, each dedicated to iconic beauty brands including Dior, Chanel and La Mer.

Harrods chose the room screen solution, ResourceXpress, from Microsoft partner, Essential Computing to provide free/busy signage for the individual treatment rooms.  The screens are enabling concierge staff showing clients around the beauty area to see at a glance when the next free appointment is and proceed to a booking.

Explained Alcan Fernandes, IT Project Manager at Harrods, “Offering a positive customer experience is paramount across all the services we offer in the store, which is why we wanted to ensure the treatment rooms were managed super-efficiently and used state-of-the-art display technology.

The appeal of this solution was two-fold:  It integrated with our beauty session booking system, which works with our Microsoft 365 calendar, and with ResourceXpress we were able to control what information we displayed on the screens.  For example, we needed to display only the treatment schedule and the name of the beauty professional providing the treatments.”

Customised, great-looking panels

The store has used low profile screens, set into bespoke wooden panels outside each treatment room. 

The screens have also given Harrods total freedom of design, enabling them to represent the beauty brand on offer in each different treatment room.

Ensuring a smooth rollout

As part of the solution, Essential provided training to both the technical and the beauty team. 

Jim Fussell, Senior Technical Consultant at Essential responsible for the implementation at Harrods commented, “We put a lot of effort into ensuring everyone using system is comfortable with how everything works, both behind the scenes when making a booking ahead of time.

The staff in the beauty treatment rooms also wanted to be comfortable that they could swap the different brands represented in each room quickly and efficiently when needed.” 

Having implemented Microsoft 365 for its business, the store plans to extend the room booking screens to its own meeting rooms.

“Getting the maximum utilisation out of the space we have is paramount, especially given our prime location.  The ability to see what rooms are free at a glance, and re-use rooms in the event of a last-minute cancellation will help us in achieving this”, concluded Fernandes.