STORES Magazine - January 2009 - (Page 51)

Gift card management Store-level technology is something customers generally notice only when it isn’t working — or is missing altogether. Since the upgrade, however, it has enhanced the already high expectations of customer service. This is particularly true of the gift card center, which wasn’t in Danier’s initial RFP (Fujitsu asked Danier to beta test ValueCENTER). “Any gift card would have been better than what we had,” Cutter says, “but having a gift card system that’s fully integrated into the register and totally controlled internally by us has allowed us to deliver it when I’m in purchasing mode.” According to Cutter, Danier has just begun to “scratch the surface” on capabilities that come from tracking promotions and loyalty programs. “People are more willing to give an e-mail address these days,” he says. “That gives us the ability to do more targeted marketing. Our CRM system gives us [data on] the kinds of things that might interest each customer.” Enhanced data collection The StoreCENTER software was critical to improving data collection, as it aggregates and monitors data from mara says. “What we tried to do on this one is really keep them in the box. Let’s not do a business process re-engineering activity. Let’s try to take the applications as they come out of the box.” But Danier had one area of change that was critical: inventory. The company is proud of its low shrink rate — 0.6 percent at the retail level — and was adamant about maintaining it. The new system would have to allow stores to continue to count inventory weekly, a process made easier by hand-held scanners that would be used to upload the inventory to a central area. DANIER’S NEW GIFT CARD PERKS deal with corporate sales across the chain — which corporate sales gift cards gift cards, or to offer emstretches from Vancouver ployee discounts on gift to Newfoundland — in Offering employees cards. I would rate the gift real time. discounts on gift cards card system application as “Our ability to track and … a terrific add-on.” service our customer isn’t Ability to track liabiliIt also enables Danier to just faster,” Cutter says. ty outstanding on gift cards keep a good handle on the “It’s the ability to identify exact liability outstanding what customers like and Monitoring the sequence of card on gift cards and the sedon’t like in our stores, numbers available in quence of card numbers right down to the color each location available in each location. and style. The transaction Raises the level of And by replacing handwritlogs are being captured perceived profesten gift certificates, it raised and networked; relevant sionalism the level of perceived prosales data is rolled to our fessionalism, Cutter says. BlackBerries by 8:30 a.m. The system overhaul also allowed We know each store’s sales and can segDanier to link its CRM to its loyalty ment them by corporate stores, power program, providing special offers in real outlets, A stores, B stores. We can tell the time at the point of sale. top 20 selling styles by 8:30 each morn“I don’t always know what brands my ing, including weekends.” wife likes to buy,” McNamara says. Bundling Fujitsu’s offerings made the “The system has that data — ‘There’s a transition easier for Danier. “Not getmatching purse that goes with those ting crazy on customizations is pretty gloves she’s already bought’ — and can important for this size retailer,” McNaWWW.STORES.ORG Efficient handling of “It sounds simple,” Cutter says, but Fujitsu “still had to write a program that would allow that to happen. [It] was important to us and it was a modification that we had to find a way to get done.” In retailing, “there’s a lot of activity coming around integration at a centralized location,” McNamara says, but “nobody is really taking a look at integration at the store level. This integration from a store system to some other central web service is the fundamental problem that retailers are trying to solve.” And many of them are trying to solve those problems with spartan IT staffing. “If you’re going to run a shop that’s not huge internally, you have to see the vendor as part of your team,” Cutter says. “What we were looking for from a vendor perspective is someone who is a partner, meaning they would share a litStORES tle bit of the pain with us.” Sandy Smith is a Nashville-based freelance writer. STORES / JANUARY 2009 51 http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - January 2009

STORES Magazine - Jauary 2008 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Mechanical Marvel P&G Invests in Ocado Now I Remember What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Breaking the Monotony Multi-Channel Concept2Watch E-Commerce Analytics Category Management IT Systems In-Store Technology IT Systems Communications Website Strategy Communications SOA Energy Video Surveillance Employee Theft Online Fraud Industry Perspective Loeb Retail Letter ARTS Update Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword End Cap

STORES Magazine - January 2009

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