Envision Retail Services

Availability Fitting Room Conversion Commerciality Shopper Insight Service & Selling Efficiency Staff Planning People & Change Training

Download related case studies:

Driving in store efficiencies

Efficiency

With staff cost often being the single largest controllable cost for store retailers, using fewer staff hours to do more must be high on the wish list. The best way we have found to deliver this is to make changes that naturally result in a change of behaviour without people even noticing it.

This is especially so where customers are involved, as it is their prerogative to be inefficient should they chose! Around the checkout, a till design that allows customers to pack faster and operators to scan faster is a great example of covert process efficiency. Similarly, ensuring that there are the right numbers of the right types of tills all operating at the right time, is key to this area of the store running smoothly.

Replenishment is another classic area where in-store efficiencies can be realised and we have also delivered significant results here, without forcing our client to undergo complex training.

Of course it is easy to strip hours out of tasks like the checkout or replenishment and this is often done in an unsophisticated manner with the effect of damaging availability, customer satisfaction and ultimately sales. To prevent this happening we take the customer as our conscience and look for improvements in processes that improve checkout times and availability, or at worst keep them neutral.

Using tools such as our queuing model, developed by university professors, has enabled us to understand what a change in process will do to queuing and transaction times before we make it happen in stores.

To see how we used this approach with a client to reduce checkout staff costs and customer queuing times click here.