POS Solution Reduces Replenishment Delays

Knowing how much inventory you have on hand and when replenishment products will arrive is essential to maximizing sales and keeping your customers happy. Canadian merchant Fields Stores (Delta, British Columbia) recently implemented an automated merchandising and enterprise management system that helps it achieve those goals. Fields Stores is a subsidiary of Toronto-based Hudson's Bay Company, Canada's largest department store retailer. A total of 106 Fields Stores with a collective 186 cash lanes are located throughout British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. The stores carry about 10,000 to 15,000 SKUs (stock keeping units) of merchandise, ranging from apparel to food products.

Prior to its recent software deployment, the retailer used electronic cash registers to ring up sales in each department. Transactions involving high-end hard goods and apparel were executed by manually entering information from perforated hangtags attached to each item into the registers. Hangtags were then sent to corporate headquarters, where a semi-manual process was used to determine replenishment quantities. Replenishment of items without hangtags was handled by assigning an employee to compare the quantity of products on the shelf with preset inventory levels recorded in stores' master order books, then keying this information into preset order forms. A majority of reorders were placed by telephone.