ABOUT THE CUSTOMER

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A powerful force for good

Which? is the UK’s consumer champion. As a non-profit organisation, Which? is all for protecting consumers – a powerful force for good, here to make life simpler, fairer and safer for everyone. Which? research gets to the heart of consumer issues to enable better product decisions through impartial, expert advice. In 2024, Which? worked with Telefónica Tech Business Applications to deliver a modern, scalable product testing management solution on Microsoft Power Platform.

 

THE CHALLENGE

Delivering valuable insights to consumers at scale

Which? conducts tests on over 4,600 products every year, ranging from toothbrushes and washing machines to cars and compost. The testing lifecycle involves large amounts of complex data being generated by several sub-teams in order to purchase, test, analyse and then publish thousands of product reviews every year. It’s a time-consuming process that involved a lot of manually input and curated data.

 

Accuracy and independence is paramount for Which?, given the risk of commercial and reputational impact that an error can have. However, with thousands of spreadsheets of test data being created every year, error-checking has been a formidable task. Consequently, Which? found that staff were having to spend too much time on admin.

 

Therefore, Which? required a better way to centralise the information they generate, in a standardised, automated system to improve data quality, enhance visibility, and save employees’ time. This would aid Which?’s ability to continue to deliver valuable insights to consumers in a modern, sustainable way, at scale.

 

Which? set out to find a new approach by leveraging modern low-code/no-code technologies, ultimately selecting Telefónica Tech as their technology partner after viewing several demos and commissioning a Proof of Concept (POC).

Customer Quote

  • “

    "Which? is not like any other organisation in the UK; we run a large and complex operation, testing thousands of products every year from over 150 markets. It can be challenging to explain to external sources how we work, so we were blown away when Telefónica Tech quickly grasped our challenges, workflows and why we do what we do. The initial POC gave us a real sense of assurance that the team had a firm grasp on what we needed to achieve, and we were delighted to proceed with the full project."

    Adrian Porter

    Content Systems and Data Lead, Which?

THE SOLUTION

Modernising the product testing management lifecycle

Which? partnered with Telefónica Tech to deliver an enterprise-level solution based on Microsoft Power Platform, which offered the flexibility and power required to meet their ambitious project aims.

 

The first step involved understanding the complexities of the datasets at hand and the flow of work being done by the Product Testing team at Which?.

 

Every product that Which? evaluates at a lab will generate 250-1,000 measurements – and that’s just the raw test data. Products are also purchased and sent to laboratories, creating a large amount of logistical data that also needs to be captured. Therefore, Which? required a repeatable process but with built-in flexibility for variable categories – how a kettle is tested is very different to how a smartwatch, vacuum cleaner or hedge trimmer is tested. Furthermore, this had to be self-serviceable to support Which? keeping up with new products, categories and emerging trends.

 

Power Platform combined with Azure Data Factory presented the opportunity to achieve these goals, combining automation with user-friendliness for future scalability.

 

Working with the Product Lead, Telefónica Tech and Which? helped streamline standardised workflows that worked across the 150+ categories that Which? tests. Which? now has the ability to centrally store data from its range of tests with a variable number of questions through a Power App, reducing the number of spreadsheets. Staff can now monitor the purchase and test status of thousands of products in real time, perform a simple search against products to find out if they’ve been tested before and what the outcome was—moving away from static documents and establishing a single source-of-truth.

 

Azure Data Factory is used to take the raw lab data, transpose it and deposit it into a Dataverse database. Which? can then use its to analyse these results. We also established a direct integration with a CMS that feeds the Which? website, allowing for information to be prepared for publication online and simplifying the workflow.

 

This allows Which? to remain influential and work with peers to achieve the organisation’s goal of empowering consumers.

THE RESULTS

Saving time and safeguarding the Which? reputation

  • The Which? team is currently saving 150 hours per month on admin, freeing them up to spend more time on research
  • Time-consuming manual errors have been reduced
  • Increased automation has made for smoother workflows
  • Established a central environment for visibility and collaboration
  • Ability to output management information for performance reporting
  • Continuing to safeguard the Which? reputation as the go-to advisor for fair, accurate consumer information

 

As put by Adrian Porter, Content Systems and Data Lead at Which?, “With the solution Telefónica Tech delivered, we are saving a decent amount of time – but with further internal development we hope to keep growing the amount of time being saved. We now have an innovative, centralised test management system where we can quickly get a clear and accurate view of where all our products are in the testing lifecycle, bringing a much improved transparency to the entire process. To be able to harness our data in an effective way is reducing errors and freeing up resource for us to focus on what we do best: delivering reliable and independent information to UK consumers.

 

“Choosing a low-code technology like Microsoft Power Platform will allow us to focus almost entirely on outcomes in the long-term. Naturally there is a learning curve as you’d expect with any new software, but as we continue to explore what Power Platform and Power Automate is capable of, we will continue to build out a sophisticated but easy-to-use solution. Telefónica Tech brought the skills, knowledge and passion to make this project a success at Which? and I really appreciate the time and effort that its excellent staff put in to help us start to understand the system and its potential.”

Customer Quote

  • “

    "[Telefónica Tech] quickly developed a PoC, which led to the full project. The project was delivered on time and within budget and has delivered significant improvements in the end to end process, allowing Which? to focus on delivering value by reducing the admin burden."

    Martin Ogden

    Head of IT and Corporate Systems, Which?

  • “

    "With further internal development, we hope to keep growing the amount of time being saved. We now have an innovative, centralised test management system where we can quickly get a clear and accurate view of where all our products are in the testing lifecycle, bringing a much improved transparency to the entire process. To be able to harness our data in an effective way is reducing errors and freeing up resource for us to focus on what we do best: delivering reliable and independent information to UK consumers.”

    Adrian Porter

    Content Systems and Data Lead, Which?

Technologies used

Power Platform

Microsoft Power Platform is a suite of tools designed to enable businesses to build custom apps, automate workflows, analyse data, and create virtual agents. As a member of the Microsoft Inner Circle, Telefónica Tech has demonstrable experience and trusted capabilities across the entire Power Platform range.

Azure Data Factory
Azure Data Factory

Microsoft Azure Data Factory is a managed cloud service that's built for complex hybrid extract-transform-load (ETL), extract-load-transform (ELT), and data integration projects.

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