Welcome to Part Two of this conversation with Will Luke (Senior Director, Retail Operations & Project Management) and Kellie Jones (Manager, Retail Operations), aptly named "Elevated Innovation in Retail Operations." In this episode, Will and Kellie recount several major project wins that they achieved along with their team in 2023. All major project wins that resulted in improved guest experience, more efficiencies, and significant cost savings.
These major, ELEVATED project wins included the following:
- Google Reviews: Over 14,000 customer reviews were obtained in 2023 with an average score of 4.74 across all of those reviews
- Inventory Accuracy Results: Resulting in counting over $50,000,000 of retail inventory and reducing inventory shrink across 31 stores to an all-time low of $51,000. $51,000 Inventory Shrink is an incredibly impressive result across all 31 retail locations and represents a 300% reduction from 2022's also impressive total retail inventory shrink of $154,000.
- Retail Inventory Process Improvement led by the CIA (Chief Inventory Analysts): This involved an overhaul of the annual inventory program from an outside 3rd party service to a much more efficient in-house program that resulted in faster counts, more accurate counts, more cost effective counts, and better resolution on root cause analyses.
- Project Checkmate: Resulting in a conversion from a legacy check provider to a new check verification process with a new vendor, UTA (https://www.UnitedTranzactions.com)
- Project Redeem: Led by Kellen Holmes of the Riverwatch Team (the Coast Guard of Broad River), this project involved a brand new virtual gift card program that leveraged existing functionality within our ERP system, STORIS (https://www.storis.com) to create a more efficient process that is better for the guest, better for the store, and better for the company financials.
- Scan Guns: by partnering with IT, we moved away from paper to an electronic and more efficient means for receiving product in our system.
- Project Papercut: this project included an innovative approach to business cards with the implementation of a digital business card program in partnership with Mobilo (https://www.mobilocard.com) that is a more sustainable, more cost effective, and more visually stimulating approach to connecting with our guests by unlocking new digital capabilities.
>> check out Will's business card: https://link.mobilocard.com/social_profile/rjQO1Svb9zPJUSJ4JAvUFEJkY6b2?cardCode=YLAOoYyg6ofn
- Project DocuSign: this ID verification and electronic signature project has made phone orders much more convenient for our guests to save them time, provider a layer of efficiency, particularly on higher volume sales. http://www/DocuSign.com
And, in looking ahead to 2024, to keep the momentum going, Kellie and Will shared their ideas for an innovation encore with initiatives including:
- Raising the bar for Google Reviews (https://business.google.com/reviews)
- Changing the REM role with the launch of the Versatile Credit (https://www.versatilecredit.com) program that will also incorporate DocuWare (https://start.docuware.com)
- Project Dredge: a complex, large scale, enterprisewide project that will focus on improving the overall health of our inventory across our stores and our distribution centers by reducing our despised inventory and leveraging the 'faucet' and the 'drain'.
- Order Accuracy Program: ensuring that a new customer is setup for success on delivery for their new order.
This is an information-rich episode that covers the broad spectrum of innovation in Retail Operations.
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This episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/WWzZB7lOD2k
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