Supporting Aggressive Growth Through Workflow Technology | Retail

8/15/2019 RRD

Brand and relationship management enabled, massive inventory transition achieved

CHALLENGE

Entering a significant growth mode, one national beauty supply retailer with a nationwide retail presence of over 850 stores had aggressive growth plans to open 100 stores per year for the next five years.

One (big) problem: The retailer lacked general informational control across the entire visual merchandising life cycle. Instead, all visual merchandising activities were managed via multiple spreadsheets — a time consuming and error prone process. This lead to excessive cost and waste up and down the supply chain due to the inability to accurately budget or predict the impact of changing visual elements.

Frustrations were also high with field associates, store set teams, and store managers due to breakdowns in execution and the lack of a functional, reliable technology solution, i.e., fulfillment portal.

SOLUTION

In search of a web-based store profiling database, a fulfillment provider, and a consolidator for grand opening store shipments, the retailer turned to RRD Marketing Solutions. Over a period of four months, RRD successfully completed:

Inventory management transition. RRD was able to transfer physical inventory of 10,000+ SKUs from the current supplier warehouse into RRD’s warehouse for overs fulfillment without any daily business interruption to store ordering fulfillment requests. Also maintained throughout this transition was the ability to execute on as many as one to five weekly grand opening events (requiring less than a week turn time on 3,000+ SKUs).

Implementation of store ordering and workflow management tool. Maybe even more importantly, RRD implemented the ISM Workflow System to keep and track store profiling, project and order management, and fulfillment management for business awarded for grand openings, weekly promotions, and planogram programs for in-store marketing (POP/POS).

RESULTS

300,000 SKUs organized to be picked, packed and shipped for new locations

1,000+ elements submitted daily for store openings and pull activity across 974 locations

20,000+ orders were processed and shipped in the first year of system’s implementation

No longer lacking a strategic vendor partner to assist with the growth, development, and execution of their in-store marketing programs, this national beauty supply retailer was enabled to achieve its rapid and significant growth plan.

In one year, our ISM Workflow System allowed more than 1,000 registered users access to a site that provides field associates with fulfillment ordering, while also providing the corporate team the visibility and functionality to execute on extremely tight turn times and aggressive growth, including new stores, relocations, remodels, and refreshes.

Users now have access to over 20,000 active graphics managed in the system and available for order fulfillment. RRD’s ISM Workflow System provides vast searchable functionality, including thumbnails, category tags, and item descriptions.

CONTACT US