“By adopting a POS system that integrates into our Omni-channel software stack, franchisees are feeding into a model that maximises support opportunities we can provide to them in the form of marketing automation, powerful insights and data management efficiencies.”
– Chris Panagiotou, Head of Technology.
Return on Investment Summary
By adopting Retail Express, Forty Winks are able to:
Create automated marketing campaigns and customer experience processes on behalf of all their network members to drive more foot traffic and sales
Achieve a single Omni-channel view of customers that both national office and franchisee stores can leverage
Eliminate the need for stores to import and maintain product and pricing data
Deliver benchmarking data so franchisees get insights into their performance versus other stores
A multi-store franchise success story
Founded in Melbourne in April 1984 by an experienced group of retailers, Forty Winks started its journey as a member co-operative with a handful of stores located in Victoria. Fast forward to today, and they are a thriving network of more than 106 family-owned and operated franchise stores, servicing all major cities, territories and regional centres.
As one of Australia’s most iconic specialty bedding brands, they offer consumers a quality range of mattresses, bedroom furniture and top of bed accessories, featuring leading Australian and International brands.
However, what truly makes them stand out is their dedication to an exceptional level of customer service, backed up by employees trained in the field of sleep science.
Building an integrated Omni-channel tech stack
As a franchise business, Forty Winks identified that their future success relies on fully unifying data at all levels of their business — across their individual stores, eCommerce store and national office operations.
With this vision in mind, they have set about building an innovative integrated technology stack that allows them to:
Centralise and aggregate data from their stores at a National level and leverage this for the benefit of their members
Feed data from the National Office to individual stores to provide powerful insights and consistent, up-to-date operational information across the network
The project will mean that data from their eCommerce platform and the in-store POS software used by their members will feed into a centralised CRM and data warehouse, which then connects to a Marketing Automation Platform.
As part of this project, Retail Express' POS system integrates with the centralised data warehouse and BI tool (DOMO). With this two-way data exchange and the right tech tools in place, Forty Winks head office team will be able to maximise support to their members by:
Creating automated marketing campaigns and customer experience processes on behalf of all their network members to drive more foot traffic and sales
Achieving a single omni-channel view of customers that both national office and franchisee stores can leverage
Eliminating the need for stores to import and maintain product and pricing data
Delivering benchmarking data so franchisees get insights into their performance versus other stores
Centralised data for marketing automation and single customer view
With Retail Express' POS software integration with Forty Winks data warehouse and BI platform, individual store data is continuously fed into the National Office without the need for any manual data admin. Store and eCommerce data can then be combined to create a unified view of each customer and leveraged by the Marketing Automation platform.
“The integration with Retail Express will make it easy for stores using that POS software to share data with national office, allowing us to then build out a wide range of automated marketing campaigns on behalf of franchisees to help us grow sales and optimise the customer experience.”
– Chris Panagiotou, Head of Technology.
Streamlining data management for franchisees
Product, pricing and customer data can also be fed from Forty Winks National Office into member stores using Retail Express without any manual admin. Not only will this allow these stores to maximise their productivity, but it also ensures they have reliable, up-to-date data to base their operational processes and business decisions off.
“Our goal is to make data management as easy as possible for our franchisees so they can focus on delivering the best customer experience and maximising sales. The integration between our data warehouse and Retail Express means that members using POS are supported in that goal. They don’t need to manually import or maintain data which is a big efficiency gain.”
– Chris Panagiotou, Head of Technology.
Delivering powerful benchmarking data to stores
By having the POS data from stores fed into a centralised data warehouse, the National Office team are able to provide their franchisees with insightful benchmarking data. They can compare their performance against other similar stores within the group.
“The Retail Express POS software integration to our data warehouse facilitates us being able to generate powerful insights for our franchisees, such as the store performance benchmarking data — all without any manual data admin required by franchisees to share their data.”
– Chris Panagiotou, Head of Technology.
POS Software Maximises Support to Franchisees
Forty Winks recognise that the POS system used by franchisees will play a critical role in the unified data model they are building:
“By adopting a POS system that integrates into our Omni-channel software stack, franchisees are feeding into a model that maximises support opportunities we can provide to them in the form of marketing automation, powerful insights and data management efficiencies.”
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