Consolidate Disparate POS And Inventory Systems

Nova Jarvis was responsible for remedying a time-consuming inventory management problem. As Information Technology Manager at Party Packagers, a party supplies store in Canada, Jarvis was tasked with synchronizing separate store-level and corporate inventory management systems. When Party Packagers opened its doors, implementing corporate-level and store-level inventory management systems from the same vendor were not a concern. In fact, the retailer's decision makers went out of their way to purchase corporate-level and store-level inventory management systems from two separate vendors. In recent years, Party Packagers has experienced rapid growth and currently operates 20 stores throughout Canada. To gain real-time inventory visibility and same-day sales data, Jarvis unified the retailer's inventory management systems.

The Importance Of Real-Time Sales, Inventory Data
The retailer had no way to report on today's sales today. This is because Party Packagers' legacy POS system communicated with the corporate level inventory management system, Magstar Total Retail, only one time per day — at the end of the day after all sales were final. Once the legacy POS system was closed for the day (i.e. all debit and credit transactions were complete), that data was transmitted back to corporate via a VPN (virtual private network). Neither store-level nor corporate-level employees were able to check that day's sales traffic, making replenishment very difficult. "Store-level employees ran minimum/maximum [min/max] inventory replenishment reports each morning," says Jarvis. "We reordered low or out-of-stock items in the morning. If a store had communication issues the night before, items that were sold to below the minimum level would not be included in the current replenishment cycle." Jarvis' goal was to reduce the amount of time required to report on the current and previous day's sales. Party Packagers employees spent three hours per day completing the process.

Solve Sales Problems With New POS System
Jarvis researched POS systems to alleviate the exhaustive sales and inventory problems. "We realized the life cycle of the POS equipment in some of the older stores was coming to an end, and we did not want to open any new stores with our store-to-corporate communication problems," says Jarvis. The retailer used this opportunity to consolidate store-level and corporate-level systems. Jarvis chose to implement Magstar Total Retail POS software in all new stores and would later rip and replace the legacy system with the new system in each existing store. Magstar Total Retail and Magstar Total Retail POS are two separate applications that operate on the same database structure. Magstar Total Retail POS runs on the Linux platform, and Jarvis purchased touch screen modular terminals and pole displays from NCR. This POS system, like the legacy POS system, communicates with the corporate-level inventory management system via a VPN. Now, once a sale is registered, the data is sent to corporate immediately, providing real-time inventory visibility and sales data.

Jarvis anticipates that all older stores will be converted to Magstar Total Retail POS in 2010. The retailer has eliminated the time spent verifying communications and running previous-day sales reports, saving three hours per day or 15 hours per week. The primary justification for this implementation is the management team's ability to check sales information in real time.

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