| At
least, that is, according to Chief Executive Thierry
Dumon. With a total of
75 stores already across Europe, and a 2002/3 turnover
of 15.7M€ (up from 3.3M€ and only 20 stores
in 2000), the ambitious CEO is certainly not restricting
himself to a life beside the pool. |
The retailer currently operates
55 specialist diving shops in France, Spain, Portugal,
Belgium and Germany, and has plans to double the
number of stores in four years. Another 20 stores
in France are dedicated to surfing and other active
water sports.
Increasing competitive
edge
With a strong business sense
and desire to make 'the water sports retail
sector more professional,' Dumon decided that
technology would help the business grow
and allow it to compete with other established general sports retailers like
Décathlon. Therefore, the retailer wanted to be able to analyse sales
data for improved stock management, pricing and assortment planning, enabling
each store to adapt its product range according to customer demand and thereby
improve customer service at the point of sale.
The retailer is unusual
in that it also offers specialist diving holidays, training
programmes and rental of equipment as well. This
means that the EPoS system has to cope with an
additional amount of information. It also claims
to stock a
much larger assortment of some products than general
sports retailers, so automated replenishment and
specialist knowledge of the products is an issue.
Given that high quality of service and the expertise
of its staff is
how it sees itself as different from its competitors,
wherever the store, the system also has to be multilingual
on account of its international infrastructure.
The
Colombus
Enterprise Suite was implemented in 2003
and the VCSTIMELESS integrated retail
solution was rolled out to link the company's head
office and all its stores in just four months. This
includes head office, back
office, CRM, point
of sale and
business intelligence capabilities.
Benefits
Colombus is now used by all services (marketing,
finance, IT, purchasing, logistics) and has
formalised many internal processes. This includes
streamlining
the retail supply chain, creating 100% visibility
of stock, which in turn has led to greater
control and increased reactivity. The technology
has
become a central component of the H20 infrastructure
and lies at the heart of its merchandising
management strategy. The retailer has reported
improved
performance in terms of sales, profits, and
competitiveness, as well as increased reactivity
and performance
at store level.
Other benefits include:
- increased productivity
through time savings and less paper work
- less
reserve stock
- better control of supply and demand
chain
- improved assortment planning leading to
more sales (seasonal demand, assortment profiling
per store
etc)
- increased service levels (deliveries
to store, customer orders)
- lower cost of ownership
- stores are able to concentrate
more on customer service than back office and
administrative work
- fighting "with
same weapons as all sports retailers "
- adapted
to future growth strategies
- adapted to
multiple distribution channels
- leading to improved
performance for concessions, franchises,
independent stores etc
- internationalisation:
multilingual, multitax etc
- improved CRM strategy:
by tracking clients, recording purchases,
offering specialised
promotions, targeted
direct marketing campaigns
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