By adopting Retail Express, Early Settler have been able to:
Since opening their first store in 1985, Early Settler has grown to become a network of over 70 stores across Australia and New Zealand as well as a flourishing eCommerce presence.
Right from the very beginning they’ve been committed to offering customers the widest possible range of stylish, affordable, and built to last products teamed up with the very best in customer service.
Their furniture range has grown to cover every corner of the home - from kitchens, dining rooms and lounges through to home offices, bedrooms and bathrooms. Alongside this they also offer a wide array of homewares, home renovation and lighting products.
But while the company’s successful store network, eCommerce and product range expansion has enabled them to become a leading force in the market, it has also presented an increasing amount of complexity to manage throughout their growth journey.
Like most furniture retailers, 80% of Early Settler’s product ranges are Sales to Order items – bulky goods where a sales order and deposit is taken in advance, then goods are fulfilled to the customer at later date once they’ve made their way through the supply chain and received into the business.
This involves managing thousands of container imports per year from many suppliers, factories, with constantly changing ETA dates.
Providing reliable and acceptable ETAs to customers for all of the goods they wish to purchase is therefore critical to securing sales and ongoing loyalty.
Early Settler were originally using an on-premise, server-based solution for their Point of Sale and operations management software. However, it was increasingly evident that this did not provide the critical features and real-time intelligence needed to build a best-in-category customer experience and efficient business processes.
So, in 2009, they made the decision to adopt Retail Express and leverage the powerful omni-channel supply chain and inventory management features and process automation capabilities it provides.
With their old POS system being server-based rather than a cloud solution, store employees did not have access to real-time status of where goods were in the supply chain and inventory levels across all stores within the business.
Staff had to use printed reports and make countless phone calls to see if stock was on order or in the process of being shipped. And for inventory within the warehouse and other stores, data polling and corruption meant that employees were often seeing out of date and inaccurate information.
So, when a customer visited a store, it was difficult for employees to provide accurate ETAs and set realistic expectations. When multiple products were on one order, each coming from different suppliers with different lead times, the risk of getting an ETA wrong was common.
Often several stores were allocating and over-committing the same stock to different customers.
All of this meant that store employees were not confident in the ETAs they were providing customers which impacted their success at winning the sale. And when orders were taken, there was a higher risk of cancellations from the customer when the goods had not arrived by the estimated dates.
With the introduction Retail Express, Early Settler store employees were instantly able to get full, real-time visibility of the entire supply chain for every product in the business portfolio - all within the POS interface.
Staff in any store can see in real-time whether stock is on purchase order, on an inbound container or received in the warehouse.
They can then see an estimated lead-time based on the live status of the products and then allocate the stock to the customers order within a few button clicks, instantly removing it from the stock-on-hand available to other stores.
Not only does this mean store employees can more confidently provide a realistic, real-time data driven ETA and avoid double-allocating stock, it also means they win more sales by having visibility of and access to stock further up the supply chain than they had with their old system.
Before adopting Retail Express, store employees had to use printed reports and make phone calls to check the status of stock on hand and on order, this was extremely time consuming for employees and for customers.
Most customers want to purchase multiple products in a package when they visit a store, and it used to take a long time for store staff to provide ETAs for all the goods and generate a proposed order. This created a significant risk of customer walk outs and lost sales.
With Retail Express providing the ability for store employees to see the ETAs for the whole package instantly within the POS, they’re able to eliminate wait time to create an order and focus on interacting with the customer.
With Retail Express, each store is provided with a report showing real-time ETA changes such as POs being pushed out and shipping windows missed. Armed with this information, they can then proactively reach out customers and provide advanced communication of this change in ETA.
While customers never want to experience delays in the arrival of their goods, the timely and proactive communication means that many cancellations can be avoided and customer goodwill is maintained.
This combined with more realistic, data-driven ETAs being set at the time of order, has allowed Early Settler to significantly reduce their cancellations.
By leveraging the historical sales data and powerful reporting capabilities of Retail Express, Early Settler have been able to substantially improve their demand forecasting capabilities and purchasing accuracy.
This means they’ve been able to reduce excess stock that would typically have to be discounted at a later date while also avoiding understocking that would result in lost sales.
Early Settler have made extensive use of the unique container capacity planning solution within Retail Express, allowing them to look at the dimensions of all the products they’re ordering from overseas suppliers and maximise use of container space.
The driver run sheet planning features within Retail Express enables Early Settler’s warehouse teams to plan the optimum home delivery runs based on all the current orders within the system, live inventory availability and individual customer locations.
This means that goods can be delivered to the customer as quickly as possible and with maximum productivity.
By adopting Retail Express, Early Settler have been able quickly implement a wide range of processes and practices that have transformed their bulky goods operations.
Capabilities that CFO, Neil Cresswell, believes that would not have been realised had they adopted an all-in-one, expensive ERP system.
In a retail environment that is increasingly turbulent and with customers afforded more choice than ever of who they buy from, Early Settler have best-positioned themselves to adapt and remain ahead of the pack.