"It's the Business" programme, 3 August 1999

Recording of "It's the Business" programme for Sainsbury's staff (mainly store management teams). "It's the Business" was the anchor business television programme on the "SMART" network (Sainsbury's Management and Retail Television). This programme was broadcast live on 3 August 1999 by satellite to Sainsbury's stores, depots and offices. It was presented by John Howard in the studio.

Contents:
1. Introduction by presenter John Howard.
2. Studio interview with Bill Williams about recent press coverage on various topics; disappointing sales figures; new initiatives taking action to stem decline and grow sales; A.C. Nielsen survey which compared supermarkets; news on Safeway and other competitors; Asda claims about market position and sales; Wal-Mart and Asda link up.
3. Report on improvements to the CARES (Customer Complaints Analysis and Response System) computer system to help manage customer complaints and feedback, with Roy Watts (Head of Customer Relations), Theresa Wainwright and Freddy Carter. Includes footage from a store showing the customer service desk and CARES system, and staff helping customers.
4. Report on the new training bus (labelled ‘Spring the future of work’) with Lisa Moore (Senior Business Change Analyst), Steve Simmons (Systems Team) and some of the staff who had been trained on the bus. The bus (coach) would go to stores to help provide training. It contained computers for each trainee to use.
5. Report on new SWIFT checkout system with Dave Sheehan (District Manager), Fred Clarke (Store Manager, Alton) and staff who were using the system. Includes footage of the checkouts and the system in operation with staff helping customers. Filmed at Alton store which was the first store to have the new system.
6. Presenter discusses the Millennium Millionaires scratchcard promotion with a top prize of £1 million. Includes still images of posters for the promotion.
7. Television commercial for Millennium Millionaires prize draw.
8. Live-in phone calls from staff answered by Bill Williams. Discusses: staff being unable to take part in the prize draw; concerns about insufficient assistant manager posts being available for store staff on Band E; customers being upset about the ‘no card, no points’ policy (not retrospectively adding points manually to customer Reward Card loyalty card, if the customer had forgot to bring their cards previously); customers being disappointed after stores had run out of stock of special offer products such as beers.
9. Concluding remarks by presenter including about share options being offered to staff.

Duration: 27 minutes.

There are five additional videos of unedited footage ("rushes") for this video.