Stores Magazine - December 2007 - (Page 55)

labeled so that once a product has been picked up and put on the cart, we have a record of it,” says Wojewuczki, who expects a return on investment within one year. “We’re not a bottleneck to our sales force any more.” Efficiency of labor Vera Bradley can now “manage the entire flow of an order,” says Michael Wohlwend, senior director of sales for Atlanta-based Manhattan Associates. “By controlling the use of the space better and having things spread out more, they don’t have the bottlenecks and they can get greater benefits from their labor.” In addition to simply making the process move more quickly, Vera Bradley has been able to deploy staff more efficiently. Before, pick accuracy in the high 80s meant that each order had to be inspected before it went out. Now, nearly 99 percent of the orders are accurate: As a result, it only performs random inspections on about 10 percent of the orders. “We were then able to reassign the auditors,” Wojewuczki says. “Before, about half the staff was picking merchandise and half was auditing the orders before they went out. Now, 90 WWW.STORES.ORG had to be done,” Wohlwend says. “From the beginning they were able to pick the ultimate solutions and then train employees in the correct way” to operate and implement them. Critical to selecting a vendor was evaluating the implementation teams that Vera Bradley would work with, Wojewuczki says. “We had to see how they would fit in with our staff. Are they willing to work the long days and nights it takes to go live? Are they willing to stay when we say, ‘We need you’ — or are they going to need to catch a flight back to their office?” Once Forte was chosen as the designLooking ahead er and integrator, it was able to assist In designing the system, Vera Vera Bradley in selecting specific items Bradley did not look only at its used in the automation process. It was current needs, but projected those also able to assist in the design of the needs out five to 10 years. And like new warehouse, helping to determine most companies in the retail busiwhat size facility was needed. And while there were immediate benefits from the redesigned system, Vera Bradley is already looking at future applications for the technology. The current system is being used only to fulfill orders from Vera Bradley-licensed stores and other retailers that carry the brand; the company is considering expanding the use to fulfill orders that come from the brand’s e-commerce site, Wojewuczki says. Additionally, access to some of the order status could be expanded to the store level, McDonnell says. That way, store ORDER FULFILLMENT employees could get ness, it had to look at real-time status upthe ability to meet Before: dates on inventory in peak holiday requireNow: the warehouse. Not ments, as well. “Even only could sales assowith their current ciates check the status of an order they growth, this facility should be capable of have submitted, but they could check handling Vera Bradley’s needs” for at the availability of the product requested least another decade, says Forte senior by customers and assure them that consultant Alan McDonnell. “they could have the item to them by a While vendors associated with the unparticular day.” StORES dertaking admit that such an automation project is not unique, what sets Vera Lauri Giesen is a Libertyville, Ill.Bradley apart from much of the rest of based business writer with extensive the retail industry is the fact it was able experience in covering payment and to start from scratch. “There were no finance issues. pre-conceived notions of how things percent of the staff can work on picking orders.” In addition to improving the order fulfillment functions, the new design and systems have improved the ability to handle customer returns. Before, when products were returned, the staff had to manually walk the items back to their original locations. Now, returned items can be scanned with a bar-code reader and put on a conveyor to be returned to the proper location. 2 days 10 minutes STORES / DECEMBER 2007 55 http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Stores Magazine - December 2007

STORES - December 2007 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Holiday Shopping Extravagance What Shoppers Think 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Niche Marketing Eight Predictions for 2008 Concept2Watch Merchandising Strategy Sourcing E-Commerce Supply Chain Warehouse Management Software Contactless Payments Marketing Marketing Online Loeb Retail Letter ARTS Update Point of View NRF News Retail Industry Calendar Last Laugh

Stores Magazine - December 2007

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