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French womenswear chain, Caroll,
with around 310 stores spread mainly across
France, Europe and Japan, has been using retail
software through VCSTIMELESS to help improve
customer service, supply chain
efficiencies and stock control throughout
its growing international business. The retailer
has implemented Colombus
Retail point of sale software and recently
added mobile solutions which allow staff to
carry out duties using portable devices. The
new system also integrates seamlessly with Caroll's Colombus
head office solution, so that, at any time,
the company knows when an article has been sold,
or needs to be automatically replenished.
Caroll, expanding through a
mix of own stores and franchise-style deals,
originally turned to VCSTIMELESS because it
felt a loss of control across the retail chain
and a threat to the sales of its own label merchandise.
Given that Caroll is responsible
for the sole distribution and production of
its women's collections, management was concerned
with the information support needed by an increasing
number of sales outlets, sometimes in different
countries. Problems of controlling stock in
and out of the warehouse, dealing with multi-lingual
and multi-currency transactions, as well as
generally improving the flow of information
from its Paris head office was therefore an
important issue. |
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Centralised retail management
A team of around fifteen people use Colombus at Caroll's
head office to manage allocation, replenishment, pricing,
promotions, and the retailer's wholesale activities.
The software centralises all the information gathered
from both stock and sales, and analyses data from
the point of sale, including sales, average basket
size, current levels of stock and best sellers. Technology can then recommend what new articles need to be sent
to which stores, replenishment cycles, or whether
markdowns might be a good idea to clear stock. Overnight,
the company's servers process all the data and send
the recommendations and actions to each store.
Improved customer service
In 2007, the retailer decided to upgrade its PoS technology
in order to be able to exchange data in real time
with stores, by switching to a broadband internet
network. It also wanted to make its staff freer to
serve customers by installing wireless systems. The
objective was to help staff work more effectively,
enabling them to perform traditional back office tasks
on the shop floor, leaving them more available to
serve customers, increasing levels of customer service,
loyalty and sales.
With only one PoS terminal on average for each outlet,
the till often gets busy, especially during the sales,
but also whenever inventories or processing deliveries
had to be done. So the company decided to take advantage
of a range of mobile point of sale solutions, opting
for Colombus
Retail Pocket from VCSTIMELESS. The solution
was first tested over a period of 2 months at the
end of 2007. At the start of 2008, following very
successful trials, Caroll rolled-out Retail
Pocket on PDA's to all 250 stores in France in just one month,
and has already started to deploy the system internationally.
With two PDA's per store, staff can now easily manage
store duties whilst maintaining high levels of customer
service.
In-store mobility
Colombus
Retail Pocket, available on personal digital
assistants (PDAs), enables store staff to re-edit
price tags for on-the-spot markdowns and do stock
searches without leaving the shop floor. Using a mobile
printer which can be strapped to the user, the system
can access the central Colombus
retail management system, register the need for a markdown and produce
a stick-on label for the garment tag. Not only does
this look tidier than the usual hand-written markdown
tag, but also allows central monitoring of margin
erosion caused by ad hoc markdowns. Armed with barcode
readers, and following an hour's training, sales staff
were soon able to re-price and re-ticket 3,000 articles
in less than two hours, all on the shop-floor.
The mobile devices have been well received by both
staff and customers. Benefits of the new system, at
store level, include: improved customer service; pertinent
information anywhere in the store or back office,
a massive increase in the efficiency of in-store staff;
and the time taken to re-price and re-ticket garments
has been reduced by around 200%. As for the head office,
real time information exchange has had positive knock-on
benefits for stock management throughout France, and
internationally.
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