Manage Inventory Across Multiple Locations

Sports retailers must plan their inventories carefully across any number of sales locations, while remaining flexible enough to meet consumer demand that can change in the space of a halftime show. And so it goes with the merchandising unit of the Philadelphia Eagles. The merchandising unit manages all the retail operations for the Eagles, including the Eagles Pro Shop in Philadelphia and the Eagles End Zone outlet store in Lancaster, PA. Also, the merchandising unit manages 20 small stores inside Lincoln Financial Field on game days, a retail store at the team's training camp at Lehigh University, and an e-commerce business. In total, the stadium store locations operate 50 POS machines, and within an hour of game time, the Eagles generate the majority of its game-day sales. Yet, the Eagles' merchandising operation experienced problems with the scalability of reporting and inaccuracies with its POS system. Brendan McQuillan, director of merchandise for the Philadelphia Eagles, took on an overwhelming task when he and his management team oversaw the overhaul of the organization's six-year-old POS system in just three months.

The impetus for the overhaul was clear; the system caused inventory inefficiencies. For example, on game day, the staff was unable to replenish stock because they lacked inventory visibility. With 20 retail locations throughout the stadium, staff had no way to determine what merchandise was available. "Obviously, we do a lot of sales in a short amount of time," says McQuillan. "If we ran out of an item in one location, we had no way to determine if the other locations had a surplus. We don't know how many sales we missed because of our lack of inventory visibility."

Solve Disparate Reporting Among Channels
E-commerce sales were not integrated with brick-and-mortar sales. The staff had to manually retrieve e-commerce inventory from a database, copy it, and enter information into a separate spreadsheet. The separation of brick-and-mortar and e-commerce inventory information proved cumbersome, as the staff used these reports on a regular basis. Further, running reports to recap game-day sales was a painstaking endeavor. "After a game-day weekend, it took us three hours to compile basic stock reports," says McQuillan. The staff reconciled inventory manually, going stand-by-stand to enter inventory information onto a spreadsheet. As it applies to credit card processing, the POS system included an integrated credit card processor. However, McQuillan states he anticipated the implementation of a new POS machine, which would increase transaction speed.

McQuillan chose a few vendors to perform on-site demonstrations. In March 2008, he partnered with POSitive Technology, a Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) provider. McQuillan chose the vendor because it had completed similar installations with other professional sports teams. Additionally, McQuillan set a strict go-live deadline — June 16, 2008, a few weeks before the opening day of training camp. Microsoft Dynamics RMS is the base product, or the POS system. The Eagles implemented two tools into the RMS solution: Retail Analytics and Merchandise Planning (RAMP) software and ConnectPRO, which connects RMS directly into the retailer's existing Microsoft Dynamics GP (Great Plains) technology for enterprise resource planning. POSitive Technology recommended IBM SurePOS all-in-one POS terminals. The vendor installed the software onto the terminals before installation.

Implement Wireless Scanners For Line Busting
The vendor worked on-site with the Eagles' IT team up to and including the go-live date. Prior to go-live, the Eagles' IT team cleaned existing data. "We entered new SKU data to set up new department classes and subclasses for our merchandise," explains McQuillan. "For example, men's apparel is considered a department, men's hats are considered a class, and men's green hats are considered a subclass. Since none of this was set up, we had to rename our entire inventory." Meanwhile, the vendor's team customized the new POS solution and implemented it on June 16, 2008. POSitive Technology worked with TPI Software, a payment processing solutions provider to implement the retailer's new credit card processing system. To sync e-commerce and brick-and-mortar platforms, POSitive installed a feed from the retailer's e-commerce warehouse directly to RMS. Also, POSitive recommended wireless handheld units from Opticon to help with line busting on game days. McQuillan purchased two scanners, which house the same RMS application as the regular terminals.

On The Web: Learn about adidas' inventory management initiative at ismretail.com/jp/7498.

The vendor's team flipped the switch on the in-stadium and training camp locations followed by the Lancaster, PA location. They followed the same process at each place: They installed the hardware, turned off the original system, turned on the new solution, tested it, and remained on-site for the day to ensure it ran properly.

Run Automated Reports For Timely Reorder
McQuillan states the new POS system has met the Eagles' needs, and he anticipates Microsoft Dynamics RMS will allow the organization to incorporate additional stores and wireless handheld registers. Inventory planning and reporting is completely automated. After each game, the management team runs an automated report to reorder items for the next game. "We are still getting accustomed to the system because we've only used it for one season," says McQuillan. "But, we know the system will allow us to react quickly during game time, and missed opportunity sales will go down because we receive real-time inventory updates on game day. When other in-stadium store locations are running low on items, we can restock our shelves appropriately." Also, the merchandising unit tracks sales in real time because the system updates itself in seconds. Payment processing time has decreased to an average of two seconds per transaction. McQuillan communicates with POSitive Technology regularly to provide the vendor with updates on the system's status. Going forward, McQuillan will incorporate updates to the RMS software as they become available.