Scrivens Accelerates Innovation and Streamlines Operations with the Progress Agentic RAG Solution
Industries:
Retail & WholesaleProducts:
Agentic RAGChallenge
As a retail business with 1,400 employees across more than 166 locations in the UK, Scrivens struggled to access critical information in its operations manual. Employees relied on IT support, generating 2,500 monthly help desk calls that slowed transactions, disrupted customer service and limited consistency. This spurred the company to seek a practical way to introduce AI.
Solution
- Deployed the Progress Agentic RAG solution as a conversational AI layer to index enterprise knowledge and enable natural language access to procedures and policies
- Implemented a lightweight, model-agnostic solution that integrated seamlessly with existing systems, allowing rapid deployment with minimal IT effort
- Enabled cross-functional ownership by empowering training and enablement teams to drive rollout, aligning adoption with real user needs from day one
Result
- Achieved rapid adoption, processing 8,000+ queries in the first month and scaling to 11,000+ queries shortly after deployment
- Reduced IT support demand by 32% (approximately 800 fewer calls per period), freeing resources and eliminating the need for additional help desk hiring
- Improved operational efficiency while enabling future AI-driven innovation across internal and external business workflows
Full Story
Challenge
Scrivens Opticians & Hearing Care, an 85-year-old family-owned retailer providing optician and hearing care services, with more than 1,400 employees across 166 stores, faced the challenge of maintaining operational consistency while modernizing its business.
The company relied on a centralized operations manual (TOM), but employees often struggled to retrieve relevant information, especially when they didn’t know exactly how to phrase a query. “It was quite difficult to extract the information unless you knew exactly what you were looking for,” said Adrian Ellis, Operations Director at Scrivens.
This led to heavy reliance on the IT help desk, generating approximately 2,500 internal calls per month, many of which are tied to routine procedural questions. In a retail environment, even small delays can have a major impact. As Ellis explained, “Everyone in this industry knows that if anything goes wrong or if anything slows down . . . that’s a killer that directly impacts the trust between you and your customers.”
At the same time, leadership at Scrivens saw an opportunity to bring AI into the business in a meaningful way that delivered real operational value. “Everyone talks about how AI can help, but not many people are using it as a real tool to drive business forward. We wanted to invest in something that would transform the way our employees are working day to day,” Ellis noted.
Employees are getting to the company policies and procedures faster than ever. The technology gives individuals the confidence to explain to customers, ‘I know exactly what I’m doing and here’s how I can help you,’ without having to jump on the phone with IT.
Adrian Ellis
Operations Director at Scrivens Opticians
Solution
Scrivens partnered with Progress to deploy the Progress® Agentic RAG solution, introducing a conversational AI layer on top of its existing knowledge base. The solution indexes operational content across formats and enables employees to retrieve information using natural-language queries.
"We could index all of our materials . . . then allow our staff to interact with it in a way they’re used to, like ChatGPT,” Ellis said. Instead of relying on static search, employees could now engage with the system conversationally-receiving clear, contextual answers in real time.
Delivered as a lightweight add-on, the solution was deployed quickly and began delivering value almost immediately. For Scrivens, what stood out most during deployment was how quickly the value became clear across the organization.
While initial discussions involved some internal skepticism, that hesitation quickly disappeared once teams saw the solution in action. "As soon as we could get them to see the benefits, the justification fell away,” Ellis said.
Internally, success was also driven by empowering the teams closest to training and knowledge enablement to own the rollout, aligning it with real user needs from day one and accelerating adoption across the business.
Equally important was the partnership with Progress. From the outset, the focus was on delivering a solution aligned to Scrivens’ needs, rather than prescribing a fixed approach. The model-agnostic architecture gave the team flexibility to explore and use different AI models without being locked into a single vendor, helping build confidence across stakeholders.
As Ellis explained, “[Progress'] interest was to give us a tool that worked for us rather than a tool that worked for them—it was also really refreshing to work with a group of professionals that say, ‘Yes, we can do that,’ and embrace our vision.”
Result
The impact of the Progress Agentic RAG solution was immediate. Within weeks, employees were actively using the system, submitting thousands of queries and quickly adopting a more intuitive, conversational approach to accessing information. In the first month alone, Scrivens saw more than 8,000 queries, growing to over 11,000 in the following period as adoption accelerated.
Scrivens significantly reduced demand on its IT help desk, cutting approximately 800 calls per period. At the same time, employees gained faster access to procedures and policies, enabling them to resolve issues independently and keep customer interactions moving without disruption.
This shift improved both operational efficiency and employee confidence. In turn, staff members are now better equipped to handle tasks on their own, reducing reliance on support teams while maintaining consistent service levels across locations.
Beyond immediate gains, Scrivens is also seeing a broader behavioral change. “We’re breaking this model of how people used to look up information,” Ellis said, highlighting the shift to a more dynamic, AI-driven way of working. “Employees are getting to the company policies and procedures faster than ever. And the technology provides individuals the confidence to explain to the customer, ‘I know exactly what I’m doing and here’s how I can help you,’ without having to jump on the phone with IT.”
“Our team is using capabilities like REMi (RAG Evaluation Metrics Intelligence) to understand how the system is performing and where we need to refine it, so it continues to improve over time,” said Daniel Lawton, E‑Learning Manager at Scrivens, who helped lead the deployment and further internal adoption.
As Scrivens continues to gather insights from user queries and interactions, the company is exploring how to extend these capabilities into more personalized experiences, using data to inform recommendations and better support both employees and customers.
The company is expanding its use of AI across additional systems, including IT workflows and customer-facing experiences, with Progress Agentic RAG technology serving as a key foundation in its broader AI roadmap. “We see this as scratching the surface in terms of what we’re doing with AI as an organization,” Ellis said.
With a trusted partner in Progress, Scrivens is well positioned to continue scaling its AI strategy with confidence. By embedding AI more deeply into its operations, the company is streamlining workflows, improving decision-making an delivering seamless experiences for both employees and customers.
About Company
Scrivens Opticians & Hearing Care is a family-owned and operated business founded in 1938 and headquartered in Birmingham, UK. The company provides comprehensive optician and hearing care services through a nationwide network of 166 branches, as well as additional hearing care outlets located within independent opticians and medical centers across the UK. https://scrivens.com/
We wanted to invest in something that would transform the way our employees are working day to day—and with Progress, we’ve been able to bring that to life across the organization.
Adrian Ellis
Operations Director at Scrivens Opticians