Lancia Consult helps Busy Bees modernise Asia operations through digital transformation

Following a period of rapid growth, Busy Bees had the ambition to modernise parts of its operating model in Asia and shift towards data-driven ways of working. The firm engaged Lancia Consult to support the business and digital transformation project from beginning to end.

Founded in 1983 in the UK, Busy Bees is a leading international provider of early years education and childcare for children ranging from babies to school age. The company operates nearly 1,000 nursery and childcare sites across 10 countries, including the UK, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Malaysia.

As the organisation expanded its footprint in Asia, where it operates 10 distinct early childhood education brands, Busy Bees Asia saw an opportunity to modernise parts of its regional operating model – evolving from legacy infrastructure and long-standing manual workflows towards more scalable, data-driven ways of working.

Partnering with Lancia Consult, Busy Bees developed and launched a custom-built internal app that digitised core workflows across more than 20 entities in under six months. Today, the app is used by more than 800 users, streamlining day-to-day operations, improving cost efficiency, and generating insights for team leaders and management.

Three priorities for transformation

The project at Busy Bees focused on addressing three key challenges.

Disparate legacy systems
Years of expansion and acquisitions had resulted in a diverse mix of systems and ways of working across Busy Bees’ brands. Many established teams continued to rely on manual workflows, making the transformation as much about people and processes as technology. As the business expanded, the administrative workload also increased, creating an opportunity to automate routine tasks and allow teams to focus more on childcare operations.

Limited visibility
Data was distributed across brands and geographies, making cross-regional reporting heavily dependent on manual work and reconciliation. Busy Bees’ leadership identified a need for more timely and standardised performance insights to support decision-making across its entities and brands.

Escalating costs
With a large workforce of centre-based staff across multiple locations, the company’s per-user licensing model created an opportunity to optimise how high-volume access was provisioned. A more flexible and scalable approach was needed to maintain cost efficiency as the organisation grew.

Developing a custom digital platform

Lancia Consult supported the transformation through a multi-phase approach centred on the development of WeeBee, a customised internal application designed to digitise key workflows and enable employees to complete essential operational tasks more quickly and consistently.

Phase 1: Business Process Remodeling
The project began with a requirements study across departments, mapping existing pain points against a proposed Business Process Remodeling (BPR) framework. The diagnostic phase helped identify systemic inefficiencies and establish a basis for budgeting and phasing the digital transformation.

Phase 2: Custom app development
Using Jitterbit’s low-code application platform, Lancia Consult designed and implemented WeeBee, incorporating a range of internal management modules.

These included procurement and expense management, with a more mobile-responsive user experience for ordering items and creating new vendors, automated approval workflows and a customised dashboard for managing creation and approval processes.

The platform also introduced travel request management, centralising travel oversight for Busy Bees’ workforce.

Phase 3: Lead management and advanced reporting
WeeBee was subsequently expanded with a lead management system featuring client-facing web forms for parent enquiries and self-service scheduling of visits.

Integration with a third-party child enrolment and management platform streamlined the process from initial enquiry through to active enrolment. Integration with social media platforms also expanded lead sources.

The project additionally introduced enterprise-level reporting through Microsoft Fabric, providing an AI-powered analytics layer designed to improve visibility across the customer lifecycle.

The outcome

The WeeBee platform was rolled out across more than 20 entities in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, with more than 800 users trained and onboarded. The multi-phase transformation was completed in under six months, improving management visibility and sales conversion while helping optimise costs.

Reflecting on the collaboration, Shirley Lim, Chief Financial Officer of Busy Bees in Asia, said: “Lancia Consult provided a comprehensive analysis of our operations, scrutinising both our employee and customer journeys. They then segmented our complex transformation into a series of achievable, targeted improvements, streamlining our processes.”