Business benefits for Adams
Significant enhancements in efficiency, monitoring and business planning are being achieved by one of the UK's largest children's clothing retailers through a partnership with the country's only dedicated retail IT support and development services provider.
Adams Childrenswear appointed Nottingham-based Retail Assist to provide managed IT services and facilities management across all aspects of the company's business following an £87 million management buy-out from Sears in July 1999.
The arrangement, which covers merchandising, warehousing, finance Service Desk for stores and head office, EPOS, PC and network support, has seen Retail Assist come to act effectively as Adams' outsourced IT department, as opposed to Adams' previous arrangement where all IT support was handled through the Sears Group.
Rather than just playing a supporting role, however, Retail Assist's involvement has led to a number of major operational improvements allowing Adams' management team greater control in areas from stock monitoring to responding to market fluctuations.
Retail Assist's Service Desk facility is providing vital support to Adams- network of 350 stores and concessions, all of whom can access expert advice on applications problems through a dedicated telephone number.
With the system controlling everything from day start and end functions and cash control, to back office hardware and on-line authorisation, downtime can have a major impact on store business and fast, responsive support is vital. The fact that the Service Desk operators are all retail experienced is proving to be invaluable as many more problems can be remedied without the need for recourse to an on-site visit by an engineer.
Furthermore, the polling support supplied by the Retail Assist Service Desk has substantially increased the number of Adams stores polled successfully every night, to an average of 99%.
With this data now being supplied daily to Adams' Nuneaton HQ for conversion into critical management reports, the quality of decision making by the supply chain and finance function is clearly enhanced, and also enables merchandisers to monitor customer activity and store performance, and act accordingly.
Inventory management and control is also significantly easier, whilst the system enables easy and fast communication of product and price-file alterations, ensuring the right products are always available at the right price in each outlet.
It is not just in the store network that Retail Assist's influence has been felt. A large retail store network such as Adams' relies on its warehousing system and Retail Assist have put in place a number of systems which have increased overall throughout by 40% and more than trebled warehouse system availability time, from five days a week, 12 hours a day, to 6.5 days per week, 21 hours per day.
Process improvements have allowed picking schedules to commence earlier in the overnight schedule, while the entire warehousing system has been re-engineered by Retail Assist across multiple platforms, allowing the system to run on just two machines thus maximising system uptime. This has been allied to enhancements to the control, monitoring and reporting of warehouse operations throughout, to enable greater planning of future picking requirements and management of the workforce.
This has only been achievable through detailed investigation of Adams' JDA WMS Warehousing application, which has been specially customised by Retail Assist, and effective technical management of the in situ hardware.
Retail Assist's facilities management function includes IT support at Adams' Nuneaton HQ as well as from its own sites at Nottingham and Northampton, the latter of these being the base for a state-of-the-art data centre containing all of Adams' main system hardware in a secure environment, with technical support on stand-by if required.
The Nottingham site is the venue for the Service Desk with both sites operating seven days a week, 52 weeks per year.
Phil Davies, IT Manager for Adams' Childrenswear, commented, "Our partnership with Retail Assist has significantly exceeded our expectations in terms of its impact on our business, at all levels and locations.
"They do not just react to situations - they are constantly analysing existing processes and systems and suggesting how these can be improved for the benefit of our business.
"The improvements in these systems are having a major impact on the way we operate, the service we provide to customers, and, in the long term, profitability."
- Get in touch:
- +44 (0) 115 853 3910
- info@retail-assist.co.uk
